Immigrants' perceptions of quality of life in three second‐ or third‐tier Canadian cities

Abstract

The majority of immigrants in Canada live in the country's largest cities; however, many immigrants are choosing to reside in smaller centres, suggesting the need for further research regarding the immigrant experience in second-and third-tier Canadian cities.This study found that immigrants have lower perceptions of quality of life than Canadian-born individuals, a finding that echoes research in first-tier cities.Issues of employment, income, and language barriers contribute to lower quality of life amongst immigrants.There has been a call for further research regarding immigrant experience in second-and third-tier Canadian cities. This study examines perceptions of immigrant quality of life (QOL) in three smaller urban areas: 1) Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; 2) Hamilton, Ontario; and, 3) Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The underlying objective is to further our knowledge of immigrants' perceptions of QOL in these smaller centres and, in so doing, contribute to the understanding of immigrant integration and adaptation. This article employed a mixed-methods approach consisting of a household-based telephone survey (n¼1,529) and a series of focus groups (n¼11). Four components of QOL were examined: 1) overall perceptions of QOL, 2) the direction in which research respondents feel their city is headed, 3) perceptions of the quality of schools and recreation programs in the research respondent's neighbourhood, and 4) cultural integration. The research found that immigrants have lower perceptions of QOL than Canadian-born individuals, a finding that echoes research into immigrant QOL in the country's largest urban centres.

Residential Settlement Patterns among Immigrants in Atlanta Metropolitan Area, Georgia

“…In addressing the last research question for this study—which considers whether local job opportunities, education level, and English proficiency correlated with the relate to the spatial distribution of FB residents—correlation coefficient analyses were conducted between the percentage of foreign‐born populations at the Census tract level (both for region of origin and overall) with local job opportunities, education level, and English proficiency. These social factors have been found to differentially affect the distribution of immigrant populations in previous research (Yu and Myers ; Williams and others ), findings replicated in this study. The results of this analysis are shown in Table .…”

“…Overall, the highest correlations were between the number of retail jobs and the percentage of immigrants from South America (r=0.217, p<=0.01); construction and the percentage of populations from Central America (r=0.226, p<=0.01); and professional jobs and the percentage of those from South Asia (r=0.220, p<=0.01). These findings confirm findings concerning a split labor market for immigrants (Yu and Myers ; Williams and others ). For the percentage of foreign‐born population as a proportion of the total population, the strongest correlations were with education and health jobs (r=0.315, p<=0.01), manufacturing (r=0.304, p<=0.01), retail (r=0.319, p<=0.01), “other jobs” (r=0.305, p<=0.01), and transportation (r=0.291, p<=0.01).…”

“…Many factors affect the path to settlement for immigrant groups, including English language proficiency. English language proficiency is a barrier to labor market participation and acculturation, with those having lower English language ability gaining access to a narrower range of job opportunities (Yu and Myers ; Williams and others ). Level of education also predicts labor market participation; traditionally, it was assumed that all immigrants had lower levels of education and correspondingly entered lower‐skilled jobs.…”

“…The findings of this research extend the literature by documenting a broader overview of residential locations across different groups of immigrants such as by their continents and regions of origin, as well as socioeconomic conditions of birth place. These findings also may then contribute to future research concerning how immigrants merge into American culture, or don't assimilate, as the case may be (Massey ; James and others ; Williams and others ; Jimenez ), along with future research concerning the differential life outcomes related to housing location.…”

“…Previous research suggests that immigrants from different regions of origin will present differential settlement patterns (Aradhya and others ). At the same time, ethnic clustering depends on immigrants’ ability to speak English, job skills, and a host of other socio‐cultural variables, along with the socioeconomic status of their country of origin (James and others ; Xie and Greenman ; Frey ; Hall ; Williams and others ). This complicates studying settlement patterns of immigrants in relation to socioeconomic variables in the United States (Sharma ; Jimenez ).…”