Research Reports

Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s research program furthers our understanding of the impact of immigration on Canadian society.

Analytical research reports prepared to support Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s research program.

• Typology of Canada’s Francophone minority communities
  The objective of this research is to learn more about the diversity of Francophone minority communities (FMCs) in Canada and the factors that determine their vitality by establishing a typology for FMCs and a classification system based on the identified criteria. To do this, we sought to further understand the criteria used by CIC and the other federal institutions involved in delivering services aimed at revitalizing and enhancing the growth potential of official language minority communities (OLMCs) for Anglophones in Quebec and for FMCs outside of Quebec. The objective was also to gain insight from the communities themselves with respect to the factors that contribute to their vitality and the differences between them.
• Statistical portrait of English-speaking immigrants in Québec
  This report provides a statistical portrait of immigrants in Quebec whose First Official Language Spoken (FOLS) is English. The portrait applies 2006 Census data results to a comparison of the demographic and socio-economic outcomes of immigrants in the two English-speaking FOLS categories (English FOLS and English-French FOLS) with the French-speaking category (French FOLS) within the Province of Quebec and in Quebec Economic Regions (ERs).
• A new residential order?: The Social Geography of Visible Minority and Religious Groups in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver in 2031
  This report presents the third phase of a study of the changing ethnocultural landscapes of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. It adapts the ethno-demographic projections made by Statistics Canada for 2031 at the metropolitan scale to the intra-urban scale. According to the projections, while Montreal is likely to undergo changes that mirror the general Canadian situation, Toronto and Vancouver are likely to have a social geography that is entirely new to Canada.
• IMDB 2008 Core Report – Provincial portrait of immigrant outcomes: 2001-2008 employment earnings
  This report complements the National Portrait and taken together, the Provincial Portrait and the National Portrait form the IMDB 2008 Core Report which is the central report of Research and Evaluation’s Longitudinal Immigrant Database (IMDB) Research Series describing immigrant outcomes for 2008.
• The role of migrant labour supply in the Canadian labour market
  One of the major objectives of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) is to support Canada’s economy and competitiveness. Canada’s immigration program does this by attracting new immigrants, helping them integrate into the labour market and ensuring that success is attainable for all newcomers. Current demographic trends indicate that these newcomers will play an increasingly important part in the labour market. This is underscored by the twin demographic challenges on the horizon: the first being the retirement of a large number of baby boomers and second, a limited number of new workers who are coming from domestic sources. The central questions addressed in this paper, then, are how will the Canadian labour market evolve over the coming decade and what will be the role of the immigration program in this challenging environment?
• Employment outcomes of postsecondary educated immigrants, 2006 Census
  Drawing upon the newly available information captured in the 2006 Census, this study explores how differences in immigrant employment and occupational outcomes relate to the country of highest educational attainment and different fields of study. The paper examines the following research questions: Do country of education and field of study matter in the Canadian labour market?
• An educational portrait of postsecondary educated immigrants, 2006 Census
  Drawing upon the newly available information captured in the 2006 Census, this study looks at statistical variations in country of highest educational attainment and field of study among PSE immigrants. This paper examines the following research question: What is the picture of postsecondary degree holders in terms of field of study and place of the highest degree among various immigrant groups?
• The housing experiences of new Canadians: Insights from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC)
  This report outlines several aspects of the residential experiences of recent immigrants to Canada. It uses the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) to document the experiences of newcomers as they learn how to navigate Canada’s housing market.
• IMDB 2008 Core Report – National Portrait of Immigrant Outcomes: 2001‑2008 Employment Earnings
  The IMDB 2008 Core Report is an annual update of previous research that focuses on incidence of employment earnings, average entry employment earnings, and growth in average employment earnings during immigrants’ first five years in Canada. The IMDB 2008 Core Report provides outcomes for those landed in the period 2001 to 2008.
• IMDB 2008 Immigration Category Profiles
  This series contains 12 immigrant category profiles. Each profile consists of two main sections:
  
  • Background characteristics: Provides demographic landings information for the target category by province, country of last permanent residence, family status, age, and gender; and
  • Economic outcomes: Provides information on the economic performance of the target category compared to other selected immigrant categories and all Canadians including, average employment earnings, income distributions as well as incidence of employment earnings, social assistance and employment insurance.
• Who Drives a Taxi in Canada?
  This document uses 2006 Census data to examine the participation of immigrants and the Canadian born in the taxi driving occupation. Specifically, it asks to what extent highly educated immigrants are employed in this occupation and how this compares to their Canadian-born counterparts. The document also draws a general portrait of taxi drivers in Canada and for eight major CMAs in terms of their immigration status, landing period, country of birth, educational attainment, field of study, and location of study.
• Recent Immigrants, Earlier Immigrants and the Canadian-Born: Association with Collective Identities
  Collective identities are statements about categorical membership, which can be understood to be, on the one hand, socially constructed, yet, on the other, real and meaningful. Levels of identification provide insight into feelings of belonging, perceptions of settlement, and overall life satisfaction and therefore can be used as an important indicator of social integration. High levels of identification have “widespread instrumental value in virtue of satisfying desire or needs to belong (or to identify with others, or be recognized by others) and thereby secure goods such as psychological security, self-esteem and feelings of being at home in the world” (Mason 2000, 54).
• A literature review of Public Opinion Research on Canadian attitudes towards multiculturalism and immigration, 2006-2009
  The report is a review of publicly-available data on public attitudes relating to multiculturalism and immigration, from 2006 to 2009. We believe that a review of attitudes can play a critical role in policy and program development in these domains. That said, relatively little data on the state of Canadian public opinion on issues of multiculturalism and immigration exists since 2006, and the current state of Canadian opinion on these critical issues has been scarcely explored. There has been some intermittent and partial exploration of these attitudes in various individual commercial and in some academic work, but no systematic review of the public literature on the state of opinion on these issues. The primary purpose of this project is to identify and analyze existing public opinion data on the Canadian public’s attitudes towards multiculturalism and immigration, and review literature that analyzes such data.
• A profile of foreign students who transition to permanent resident status in Atlantic Canada
  This paper has been prepared at the request of the Atlantic Population Table. The Atlantic Population Table (APT) is a multistakeholder initiative of key federal and provincial partners, namely the Atlantic Opportunities Agency (ACOA), the four Atlantic Provinces, HRSDC and CIC, working together in support of regional development, including increased immigration to meet local needs.
   
  There are five streams of the APT initiative: Attraction and Promotion, Awareness, Retention, Research and Labour Market Integration. Under the research stream a comprehensive three year research plan (2007-2010) was developed, based on priorities identified by the APT Research Sub-Committee.
• Social Capital and Employment Entry of Recent Immigrants to Canada
  There is growing evidence that the economic outcomes of recent immigrants declined in comparison with earlier cohorts (e.g. Bloom, Grenier and Gunderson 1995; Picot, Hou and Coulombe 2007). Examining the determinants of labour market outcomes for recent immigrants, including social capital components, is an essential step in understanding this phenomenon. In light of the difficulties of recent immigrants to assimilate into the Canadian labour market, the role of social capital as a mechanism for understanding the socio-economic progress of immigrants is increasingly prompting public interest (Kunz 2005). Different definitions of social capital have been used to examine broad contexts such as educational attainment (Sun 1999; Israel and Beaulieu 2004), job search (Montgomery 1991), and health services utilization (Deri 2005).
• Portrait of an Integration Process
  This study examines the progressive process of the LSIC immigrants during the initial settlement and integrating period, with a focus on the barriers new immigrants experienced and resources they relied on in the first 4 years in Canada. Four key areas of settlement and integration are explored including: finding employment, getting education, accessing health care and finding housing. The paper tries to identify core integration barriers and possible sources of assistance for these hurdles. Challenges to assimilation process are also examined in terms of unmet needs in the key integration tasks over time. The paper draws on the advantages of the LSIC, by examining the dynamics of the integration process. Special attention is given to the progressive nature of the initial 4 years for immigrants.
• Social Capital and Wages
  It is now well established that social capital is a resource that resides in interpersonal networks and that workers draw upon it to access employment and better job opportunities (e.g. Granovetter 1995; Lin 2001). Returns to social capital in the labour market have been explored increasingly over the last decade (e.g. Lin 1999; Staiger 1990; Calvó-Armengol and Jackson 2003). Despite an important theoretical literature arguing that using contacts or networks increases wages and occupational status (e.g. Granovetter 1995; Lin 2001), the empirical results on the effects of social capital on labour market outcomes vary with the contexts of the studies. The disparity of measurements of social capital and the unavailability of relevant data leave the empirical question open.
• Initial Labour Market Outcomes
  The completion of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) provides a unique opportunity to capture initial settlement and integration experiences of recent immigrants who landed in Canada from October 2000 to September 2001. The longitudinal nature of the LSIC enables researchers to examine the dynamics of the whole adaptation process in the first 4 years in Canada.The results from the first two waves of the LSIC showed that as time went on, the LSIC immigrants had made considerable progress in the Canadian labour market. The current report takes a comprehensive look at the employment outcomes of these immigrants during their first four years in Canada, with the focus on transitions in the labour market over time.
• The Labour Market Progression of the LSIC Immigrants
  Labour market participation is a key aspect of the settlement and integration process for newcomers in Canada. Results from the first wave of the LSIC showed that during the first six months most of the LSIC immigrants had tried to enter the labour market, and 4 out of 10 had found work. As time goes by, have these newcomers progressed in the labour market? The second wave of LSIC can offer insights on the labour market experience of the new immigrants two years after arrival.
• The Interprovincial Mobility of Immigrants in Canada
  This document highlights some of the key findings of analysis carried out on the interprovincial mobility of immigrants and the retention of immigrants, based on data extracted from the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB). The information presented focuses on the 2006 tax year.
• An examination of the Canadian Language Benchmark data from the Citizenship Language Survey
  In the summer of 2006, Citizenship and Immigration Canada requested a comprehensive analysis of an existing data set. Data for the pilot test were collected in six cities from immigrants who were waiting to take their citizenship test. Assessors administered the combined listening and speaking component of the Canadian Language Benchmark Assessment tool (CLBA). In addition, the participants provided demographic information on a wide array of variables. The chief purpose of this research was to examine the relationships between these variables and the language proficiency of the immigrants, as determined by the CLBA scores.
• Health Status and Social Capital of Recent Immigrants in Canada: Evidence from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada
  Using data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC), the author look at the dynamic changes in the health status of recent immigrants in their initial four years in Canada, focusing particularly on the effect of social capital on immigrant health. Our descriptive and regression results provide support for the “healthy immigrant effect”; however, the results show that this effect diminishes over time.
• Recent immigrant outcomes – 2005 employment earnings
  This research report provides a longitudinal study on immigrant labour market outcomes with the use of data from the Longitudinal Immigrant Database (IMDB) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The report discusses major factors affecting the labour market outcomes of recent immigrants to Canada. This is an annual follow-up to 2004 report.
• Socioeconomic Profiles of Immigrants in the Four Atlantic Provinces — Phase II: Focus on Vibrant Communities
  This research project, conducted for Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), is one of the research activities scheduled under the Atlantic Population Table Research Workplan for the year 2007-2008. The question of attraction to, and promotion and retention of, immigrants in Atlantic Canada has been identified as a key priority for this research. Building on the project sponsored by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), the Rural Secretariat, the four provincial governments of Atlantic Canada and Saint Mary’s University on demographic and socioeconomic profiles of immigrants in all four provinces, this project makes use of data on annual inflows of immigrants and data on resident immigrants based on the 2001 and 2006 censuses to provide a profile of immigrants in vibrant communities of Atlantic Canada.
• An annotated bibliography of francophone immigration to Atlantic Canada
  What follows is a series of bibliographical annotations for publications dealing with the subject of Francophone immigration to Atlantic Canada. They fall into three major groups, namely works products by academic researchers, works published by community organizations, and works distributed by government institutions.
• Exploring minority enclave areas in Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver
  The population of immigrants and members of Visible minority groups in Canada is concentrated in the three largest metropolitan areas of Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Further, there are pronounced variations within these cities, and researchers and policy analysts have become increasingly interested in the tendency of some groups to form ethno-specific enclaves in certain neighbourhoods.
• Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada: Client Profile and Performance Indicators
  The Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program provides basic language training to adult permanent residents in one of Canada’s official languages to facilitate their social, cultural and economic integration into Canada. By developing linguistic communication skills through LINC, immigrants and refugees are better able to function in Canadian society and contribute to the economy. For this report, special tabulations from two administrative data sources were combined in order to get consistent time series data that is used to develop a demographic profile and performance indications for LINC. The two administrative data sources are:
  1. the Immigration Contribution Accountability Measurement System (iCAMS); and
  2. the History of Assessment, Referrals and Training system (HARTs).
• Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada: Performance results by LINC level
  The following analysis looks at the LINC program by specific LINC level. For each of the levels, the following three broad characteristics are examined:
  • Number of clients in training at a specified LINC level.
  • Number of clients who have completed courses at a specified LINC level.
  • Average number of hours taken to complete a course at the specified LINC level.
• Impact of Canadian postsecondary education on recent immigrants’ labour market outcomes
  This paper uses data from three waves of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) that cover the period 2000-2004 to assess short-term employment outcomes for recent immigrants who had prior university education and chose either to enrol in a Canadian university, college, or other postsecondary educational institution. The key research question we sought to answer is: Do different PSE pathways lead to successful employment outcomes among recent immigrants with prior university education?
   
  Copies of the full report are available upon request to Research-Recherche@cic.gc.ca.
• Recent immigrants: A comparison of participants and non-participants in Canadian post-secondary education
  In this study, the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants in Canada (LSIC) is employed to examine the extent to which immigrants utilized the Canadian post-secondary education (PSE) system soon after arrival, the focus being on adult immigrants who had obtained a post-secondary credential in their country of origin, thus allowing for an analysis focused on the experiences in Canada of immigrants who have post-secondary education at time of immigration.
  
    Copies of the full report are available upon request to Research-Recherche@cic.gc.ca.
• A description of the ethnic segregation/mixing within major Canadian metropolitan areas project
  This report investigates and analyzes residential and workplace geographic distributions of immigrants and visible minority groups living in Canada’s largest cities and depicts the findings through a series of colour coded maps.
• Elderly immigrants in Canada: Income sources and self-sufficiency
  Using data from the Longitudinal Immigrant Database (IMDB) this report builds on two aspects of previous research in this area. First, this paper investigates the demographic characteristics elderly immigrants in an attempt to highlight differences that may affect income. The second part of this analysis takes a more in-depth look at the income sources of elderly immigrants in Canada.
  • Summary
• Immigrant income and the family
  Throughout the entire report the immigrant and non-immigrant populations are compared with respect to socio-economic characteristics and family income situations.
• Recent immigrant outcomes – 2004
  This research report provides a longitudinal study on immigrant labour market outcomes with the use of data from the Longitudinal Immigrant Database (IMDB) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The report discusses major factors affecting the labour market outcomes of recent immigrants to Canada. This  is an annual follow-up to 2003 report.
• Recent immigrant outcomes – 2003
  This research report provides a longitudinal study on immigrant labour market outcomes with the use of data from the Longitudinal Immigrant Database (IMDB) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The report discusses major factors affecting the labour market outcomes of recent immigrants to Canada.
• Recent Immigrants in Metropolitan Areas
  Read about recent immigrants living in Canada and in selected metropolitan areas at the time of the 2001 Census of Population. A set of comparative profiles is available with information on the origin and background of immigrants, their family and household structures, economic participation, income and housing.
• Labour Market Outcomes for Migrant Professionals: Canada and Australia Compared – Executive Summary
  This report was co-funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, and Statistics Canada.
  
    Copies of the full report are available upon request to Research-Recherche@cic.gc.ca.

Older Research and Statistics reports can be found on the Library and Archives Canada website