ARCHIVED – A description of the ethnic segregation/mixing within major Canadian metropolitan areas project

Organization of maps by city

The project is divided between maps that depict the distribution and concentration of groups in terms of place of residence, and those that focus on individuals in the employed labour force for each group with regard to their places of work and residence. Given that the proportion of any ethnocultural group which is active in the employed labour force is substantially smaller than the total size of the group, small number problems preclude making reliable maps for birthplace or visible minority groups in terms of workplaces in smaller cities. The cities retained for the two parts of the project are:

Place of Residence:

  • Toronto
  • Vancouver
  • Montréal
  • Ottawa-Gatineau
  • Calgary
  • Edmonton
  • Winnipeg
  • Hamilton

Employed Labour Force:

  • Toronto
  • Vancouver
  • Montréal
  • Ottawa-Gatineau
  • Calgary Footnote 3

a) Place of residence

The series of maps that examine place of residence are structured in the following manner for each city:

  • Period of immigration (all ages): A series of four maps that depict the distribution of the foreign-born population in terms of period of arrival in Canada:
    • 1981-1990
    • 1991-2001
    • 1991-1995
    • 1996-2001
    The immigrants who arrived in the most recent decade (1991-2001) are further subdivided into five-year cohorts to enable comparison of groups in terms of changes in settlement during the critical first decade of settlement.
  • Significant locations or enclaves of recent immigrant settlement: Many researchers and policy makers have a strong interest in being able to identify those areas of the city that might be considered to be new immigrant enclaves – those neighbourhoods where newly arrived immigrants are a significant component of an already large foreign-born population. To highlight these areas, one map is produced for each city showing just those census tracts in which: a) the foreign-born population constitutes at large proportion of the total population in the tract, and b) new arrivals (1996-2001 and 1991-1995) constitute a large proportion of the total immigrant population in the tract. The benchmarks used vary from city to city as a consequence of differences in the absolute and relative size of the foreign-born population, and especially the recent immigrant cohort.
  • Largest Immigrant Groups – all ages: These maps depict the geographic distribution and areas of spatial concentration for the five largest immigrant groups in each city without any controls for age.
  • Largest Recent Immigrant Groups – all ages: These maps depict the geographic distribution and areas of spatial concentration for the five largest recent (1996-2001) immigrant groups in each city without any controls for age.
  • Largest Visible Minority Groups – all ages: These maps depict the geographic distribution and areas of spatial concentration for the five largest visible minority groups in each city, as well as for the visible minority population overall, without any controls for age.

Following this group of maps, a series of maps depict only the adult population between the ages of 15 and 64 by a small number of socio-economic or immigration status indicators. Given that there are important age structure differences between immigrant and visible minority groups Footnote 4, and that children and seniors often have the least amount of ‘choice’ in residential decision making, the maps focus only on the adult population that normally participates in the employed workforce. These maps enable examination of some of the social diversity that exists within particular immigrant and visible minority populations and enables investigation of whether people who share the same ethnocultural background, but have different social characteristics, locate in the same areas of a city. The immigrant status and socio-economic variables examined are: a) period of immigration (for immigrant groups); b) Canadian-born or foreign-born status (for visible minority groups); and household income (all groups). Although the maps pertain to the population that is most likely to participate in the labour force, they are not restricted just to individuals who are active in the labour force. The maps in this series are organized in the following blocks:

  • Immigrant Groups by Period of Immigration: The following immigration periods are depicted: a) before 1981; b) 1981-1990 and c) 1991-2001. For each map, a graph is also provided depicting the number of individuals in each time period group.
  • Recent Immigrant Groups by Period of Immigration: The following immigration periods are depicted: a) 1991-1995 and b) 1996-2001. For each group, the number of recent immigrants who comprise the 1991-2001 category is indicated, as well as the proportion of individuals that fall into each of the two five-year time intervals.
  • Visible Minority Groups by Birthplace: The maps in this series enable a comparison of the degree of difference between the distributions of individuals belonging to a visible minority group based on place of birth. Specifically, for each group the following maps are available: a) Foreign-born; b) Canadian-born and c) Total group (foreign- and Canadian-born combined). The total number of people who belong to each individual visible minority group is indicated, as well as the proportional breakdown of the group by foreign- or Canadian-born status.
  • Immigrants (Total and Recent) and Visible Minority Groups by Household Income: Socio-economic status can play a major role in influencing where people live in Canadian cities. To investigate the degree to which socio-economic status structures the residential geographies of immigrant and visible minority groups, maps were created for the following household income categories: a) less than $35,000; b) $35,000 – 69,999; c) over $70,000. The categories are meant to approximate low-, middle- and high-income status, but they must be interpreted with care. There are important differences in employment income earning levels between metropolitan areas due to cost of living differences, and this means that for some cities these categories under- or over-estimate the degree of relative affluence experienced by households. For each map, a graph is provided that indicates the number of individuals in each immigrant and visible minority group belonging to a household income category.
  • Diversity Index: The final map in the residential series depicts the degree of ethnocultural diversity at the census tract level for each city. The map utilizes all of the visible minority categories provided by Statistics Canada (including the non-visible or European-origin group) and depicts the degree to which all of these groups are equally present as components of the total tract-level population. The map is based on Diversity or Entropy Index scores; Footnote 5 the higher the score, the more ethnoculturally diverse is the census tract.

b) Employed labour force: Residence and workplace

The series of maps that investigate the distribution and relative concentration of immigrant and visible minority groups across places of work are structured in a slightly different manner, owing in part to the fact that the people in the employed labour force constitute the base population. Given that the focus is on where people work, it demands that only those people in the employed labour force are mapped (i.e., those who receive an income from paid employment in the formal wage economy).

To this point in the project, the place of residence maps have not focused exclusively on people in the employed labour force. For most of the place of residence maps, the base population is much larger and for some maps includes everyone regardless of age. In order to facilitate meaningful comparisons of place of work and place of residence maps for individual groups, another set of place of residence maps was created that only include individuals in the employed labour force. As a consequence, for each city a set of residence and work maps is produced for each immigrant and visible minority group based on individuals in the employed labour force who have a geographically fixed work location (i.e., people whose job location changes are excluded from the analysis as are people who are unemployed but who are actively looking for employment).

Finally, a distinction is made only for the place of work maps in terms of where women and men find employment. Given that there is such overwhelming evidence that women and men work in different kinds of occupations, industries and locations in a metropolitan area, the maps reflect data controls for sex. While women and men occupy the same households, they often work in very different industries and occupations that take them to different parts of a city. Consequently, separate place of work maps are produced from women and men in each immigrant period of arrival, birthplace and visible minority grouping.

The employed labour force series of maps are organized as follows:

  • Place of Residence and Place of Work:
    • Period of Immigration:
      • Prior to 1981
      • 1981-1990
      • 1991-2001
    • Immigrant Groups:
      • Five largest individual foreign-born groups in each city Footnote 6
    • Visible Minority Groups:
      • Five largest individual visible minority groups in each city Footnote 7
      • NOTE: For the Place of Work series, separate maps are produced for each ethnocultural group depicting the distribution and relative concentration of: a) the total population; b) women and c) men
    • Diversity Index: The final map in the employed labour force series depicts the degree of ethnocultural diversity in terms of who works in each census tract of the city. The first set of diversity maps in the place of residence section of the project are based on the resident population, but the maps in this section depict only the population that works in the tract. As was the case for the first set of diversity maps, here again the index is based on the relative presence of some or all visible minority groups, including the non-visible’ European origin groups, in census tracts. The more equal is the representation of all groups in a tract, the higher will be the diversity score for the tract.

      It must be emphasized, however, a smaller number of individual visible minority groups are examined in terms of places of work due to small number of individuals belonging to some groups that are demographically small in Canada. As a consequence, the smallest groups have been aggregated into an “Other Visible Minority” category. Caution should be exercised when directly comparing the Place of Residence and Place of Work diversity maps because the individual groups used in the calculation are not the same. The groups used to calculate the Diversity Index for the place of work map are:
      • East Asian (Chinese, Korean, Japanese)
      • South Asian
      • Black
      • Southeast Asian (Southeast Asian & Filipino)
      • Arab
      • Others (Latin American, West Asian, Visible Minority not identified elsewhere, multiple visible minority)
      • European-origin (non-visible) population

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