Course talk:POLI380JAN2011Owen/Survey/Immigration--Issues of Settlement

Hope you guys are putting on the last touches to your assignments! This is due in 5 minutes. lets vote on the 5 questions i've put on the "course" page of our thread with an x at the bottom of each. If you'd like to make any changes, perhaps just do it right on there. lets go! ElysiaLee 11:18, 9 February 2011 (PST)

My Proposed question would be: Whether or not previous social status when arriving to Canada contributes to an immigrants level of financial and social opportunities. Do immigrants arriving with a higher source of income and wealth in their previous country receive better opportunities and resources than less wealthy immigrants? Or does income not play a role in immigration settlement?

1) How many years have you been a resident of BC? (a) less than 1 (b) 1-3 years (c) 3-5 (d) 5-10 (e) 10-15 (f) more than 15

2) What was your region of origin before arriving to BC? (1) North America/Caribbean (2) South America (3) Western Europe (4)Eastern Europe (5) Middle East and Africa (6) Asia-Pacific (7) Southeast Asia (8) Australia/NZ/Islands

3) How would you describe your social/financial status prior to arriving in BC? (1) impoverished (2) lower-middle class (3) middle class (4) wealthy

4) Since arriving in BC, how would you rate the BC government's ability to provide you with the resources and opportunities to fit in financially? (a) poor (b) somewhat poor (c) average (d) somewhat good (e) good (f) excellent)

5) Since arriving in BC, how would you rate the BC government's ability to provide you with the resources and opportunities to fit in socially? (a) poor (b) somewhat poor (c) average (d) somewhat good (e) good (f) excellent)

6) In your local municipality, how many services are you aware of that give immigrants an opportunity to adjust to their new cultural surroundings and meet other immigrants who are new to BC as well? (a) 0 (b) 1-2 (c) 3-5 (d) 5-8 (e) 8-10 (f) Over 10

These survey questions may provide us with a better understanding of how wealth levels among immigrants may play a role in their ability to achieve better opportunities in BC. Currently, I don't know what would be the best way to carry out the survey and select are sample (whether it is random or not) so hopefully you guys have a couple ideas in terms of that.

Feel free to critique or make changes to this or offer your own questions. I think it's important we start creating threads asap and begin deciding on the type of research questions we wish to pursue.

I think those are great survey questions Cyrille, they cover the broad range of socio-economic aspects of our 'immigrant' construct. If we decide to take this particular direction; surveying respondents based on their perceived accessibility to government programs contingent on their sociological profile and financial bracket, I suggest we take extra precaution in delineating the boundaries that differentiate the relevant traits and components of our immigrants. More specifically, if we include in our survey questions querying the respondent on his/her language background and exposure to various Canadian social paradigms in their home country prior to immigrating, we might get a clearer understanding of what type of 'immigrant' we are dealing with.

For example, recall Lucy's hypothetical where a native English speaker who emigrated from Britain, having lived in BC for 10 months, versus a Vietnamese immigrant whose English isn't nearly as good, compares in their relative comprehension and utilization of government programs. All that being said, I'd personally add or incorporate somehow the following survey questions:

Prior to immigrating to BC, to what extent were you at all familiar or trained in the English or French language?

(a)Not at all (b)basic or elementary level (c)moderate or intermediate level (d)fluency

Prior to immigrating to BC, to what extent were you exposed (through electronic or print media, etc) to what you would now consider 'Canadian cultural norms'?

(a)Not at all (b)a minor extent (c)enough to enable significant familiarity (d)complete exposure; seamlessly adjusted to Canadian lifestyle

These are only possibilities, and I think your survey is quite alright the way it already is, but the above questions might lead us a little further to a clearer understanding of the immigrants; allowing us to ascertain the causal relationship with less ambiguity.

I really like your research question proposal Cyrille - it's actually testable and makes causal relationships. Just to structure it a little, I take it we can break it down to:

Research Question: "Why do some immigrants receive better opportunities and resources than other immigrants?"

Theories: "Does income and wealth status in their previous country affect the opportunities and resources that immigrants will receive once residing within Canada?" 1) Theory of Income Status Hypothesis: Immigrants who hold higher incomes in their previous country will have more opportunities and resources once immigrated to Canada than those immigrants who earn lower incomes in their previous country Independent Variable: Income in their previous country before immigrating to Canada Dependent Variable: Opportunities and resources received once immigrated and residing in Canada

2) Theory of Social Status Hypothesis: Immigrants who hold higher social status in their previous country will have more opportunities and resources once immigrated to Canada than those immigrants who earn lower incomes in their previous country Independent Variable:Social Status in their previous country before immigrating to Canada Dependent Variable: Opportunities and resources received once immigrated and residing in Canada

Just a couple of edits to your questions Cy:

3) How would you describe your social/financial status prior to arriving in BC? (1) impoverished (2) lower-middle class (3) middle class (4) wealthy o Do you think that this is clear enough so that they rate what is status they thought themselves to be compared to the rest of their homeland citizens, and not to the status here? For example, someone who might have been middle class in a poorer country may arrive here and realize that standard of living, currency value, etc. may actually put them in a low class here. I.e. perhaps their view of their life previous to coming to B.C. may have been changed due to such circumstances? Or perhaps I'm just overthinking this.

4) Since arriving in BC, how would you rate the BC government's ability to provide you with the resources and opportunities to fit in financially? (a) poor (b) somewhat poor (c) average (d) somewhat good (e) good (f) excellent) o Should we perhaps include a small blurb defining what resource and opportunities are compromised of - i.e. we can write a small paragraph introducing this survey and defining. Maybe something along the lines of... "Multiculturalism and Immigration have become official policies within Canada. Approximately 35,000 immigrates arrive to British Columbia every year. The B.C. government has funded [insert various resources and opportunities]... Through this survey, we are trying to establish whether these resources and opportunities have been effective and extended to you."

5) Since arriving in BC, how would you rate the BC government's ability to provide you with the resources and opportunities to fit in socially? (a) poor (b) somewhat poor (c) average (d) somewhat good (e) good (f) excellent) o Same as number 4

6) In your local municipality, how many services are you aware of that give immigrants an opportunity to adjust to their new cultural surroundings and meet other immigrants who are new to BC as well? (a) 0 (b) 1-2 (c) 3-5 (d) 5-8 (e) 8-10 (f) Over 10 o Would it also be of interest that opportunities to meet locals and integrate into local Canadian society are considered just as important, so that we should perhaps include this as well as "meeting other immigrants"? Or does meeting other immigrants even matter in helping people integrate into life in Canada?

Let me know how these edits sound.

One more thing I've realized:

We should perhaps concentrate all the questions to specifically talk about immigration to B.C.?

Right now, the questions address immigrants in general and B.C. government, but this leaves out those who may have immigrated first to different provinces and have received different programs within their own provincial government. For example, we have students at UBC who may have been immigrants but first resided and grew up within East Coast, thus they may not be concerned about the immigration programs offered to them once they have arrived here in B.C.

Some comments on Cyrille's questions

3) How would you describe your social/financial status prior to arriving in BC? (1) impoverished (2) lower-middle class (3) middle class (4) wealthy o Do you think that this is Like Minjeong, I am also wondering if it would be better for us if they are relatively better off now, ore before immigration...but maybe that is just my preference

Like Minjeong suggested, I think we should have respondents read another immigrant's relevant account of their experience with (insert whatever we are trying to ask here - perhaps, governmental programs?)and what their ratings are before posing the questions for our own respondents to answer - this would probably be suitable for value judgment questions with answers like (a) poor (b) somewhat poor (c) average (d) somewhat good (e) good (f) excellent. One person's degree of "averageness" or "excellence" might be different than another's. Then again, if we do that, maybe TWO accounts should be given for respondents to read. A positive account, and a negative account in attempt to avoid any possible measurement biases.

Or maybe I am just thinking too much??

Thanks for the feedback Alex and Minjeong! I've read over both of your posts and you both provide some valid points that could definitely add to the effectiveness of the proposed RQ.

Alex:

I think the question you provided on immigrants prior knowledge (if any) of english or french would be an asset for this survey. It could help us determine whether or not language also had an effect on a new immigrants ability to adjust in BC, and whether it is as strong or a stronger indicator than income in determining whether an immigrant has more opportunities to succeed compared to others. I'd definitely like to add it to the list of questions previously brought up, however, I'd like to know if there's a certain limit to the number of questions we are allowed to ask per survey? If yes, then we would need to collaborate and decide which question(s) is least relevant and should be removed, otherwise we'd need to reconstruct the questions so that that all our variables of interest can be expressed effectively in 5 questions or less.

Though I understand where you are coming from in your second question, I feel the idea put forth on "Canadian cultural norms" is too difficult a concept to interpret. What exactly are Canadian cultural norms? How would we define it? Just my thoughts, others may disagree with me on it though!

Minjeong:

Your breakdown of the research questions are great and after going over your response I also think it is necessary to revise the questions. For question 3, we should definitely all come up with ways to decide how an immigrant can accurately place him or herself within the categories.Perhaps we can alter the question and ask what range their average salary was in their previous country based on the country's average annual income Also, I am all for providing a short paragraph introducing and defining the significance of question 4. The two theories you offer do a better job than I did in explaining the proposed objectives I was looking for and I think we should use one of the two. Personally I favor the first theory, however hopefully more people comment asap so we can all decide together which one the consensus prefers.

Hey Elysia,

My goal for the questions would hopefully answer what you were wondering about in Question 3. And that is, discovering whether or not they became better or worse off after settling in BC. The respondents would be asked about their previous situations in their regions of origin and depending on how they answer Questions 4-6, we'd then be able to determine which immigrants are better or worse off after settling. Hopefully I'm making myself clear, if not we can by all means alter them until they make better sense and everyone can understand them clearly.

I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting in the second part, but if an immigrant were to read another immigrants response in regards to their experience dealing with so and so organization, doesn't that also incur the possibility of some bias in their response as well? I'm a little confused by what you've said so I may have misunderstood your idea on that.

Agreeing with you Cy, I think sticking to the first theory would be easier as it may be easier to measure financial status through income over social status which may be bias and doesn't quite have a concrete measure. This would also allow us to focus question three and cut out question five.

Hey guys,

This is a really well-thought out question Cyrile, I'm glad you posted it. A lot of good ideas being floated around.

I don't have a lot of time so I'll revisit this asap, but one thing that strikes me as potentially confounding is the use of terms like "impoverished" and "poor". Some respondents might be unwilling to reveal previous economic hardships. While it does get us straight to the point of whether or not they felt they were poor before coming to the country, we may be sacrificing some of the survey's internal validity by using those specific terms. The problem is the alternative- using a scale "on a scale of 1 to 7, how wealthy were you before you came to Canada" is ordinal and doesn't tell us much more information about whether or not they were poor before coming here. We could try and define those terms within the survey, but it's equally frustrating.

It's just something to consider when we're coming up with these sorts of questions.

As an addition, when doing the 'regions' it might be just a bit more relevant to Vancouver to do something more like this:

(1) North America/Caribbean (2) South America (3) Western Europe (4) Eastern Europe (5) North Africa/Middle East, (7) Sub-Saharan Africa (6) South Asia (7) East Asia (8) Southeast Asia & Pacific Islands (8) Australia/New Zealand

It's a little more complicated and could do with a bit more refining, but the clusters allow for a bit more flexibility in reported regions and a wider breadth of diverse responses. Alternatively:

(1) North America/Caribbean (2) South America (3) Europe (5) Africa (6) Asia/Pacific (7) Australia/New Zealand

Collapses them simply into smaller generalized geographic regions. This has the downside of eliminating the distinction in Europe (which is significant economically), but since in the original no such other distinctions were made elsewhere in the world and people will likely have conflicting ideas of what is now East anyway (there might be some variance for instance from people in places like Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary in reporting themselves as "Eastern Europe"). As I understand it, we'd want to be making that distinction to get a better idea of economics. However this simpler version keeps a rough geographic parallel to the continents and is pretty intuitive for people to respond to.

But I digress. Feel free to shoot these down if they're not good, and I look forward to revisiting this, it's a very promising idea for our survey!!

Hey guys,

Here is my 2 cents on this:

3) How would you describe your social/financial status prior to arriving in BC? (1) impoverished (2) lower-middle class (3) middle class (4) wealthy

I think this questions needs a bit more work, especially because we do have many immigrants who come from regions where the state circumstances are really poor, so the class classifications that we're used wouldn't make sense/translate properly. I don't know if it would be effective, since I would assume that most people would cite a positive relationship, but we could ask if they think their financial circumstances have improved. Some people, surely, would indicate a negative relationship as they might be in a lower financial bracket here, having exchanged status for certain freedoms and opportunities that Canada offers.

6) In your local municipality, how many services are you aware of that give immigrants an opportunity to adjust to their new cultural surroundings and meet other immigrants who are new to BC as well? (a) 0 (b) 1-2 (c) 3-5 (d) 5-8 (e) 8-10 (f) Over 10

This question (as well as 4 and 5, but less so) becomes less relevant the longer immigrants have been in Canada. Settlement programs are much more important to someone who got here 6 months ago than someone who has been here for 15 years. Therefore, there is likely to be a discrepancy in the answers because someone who has been here for a long time may not be aware of programs because they don't feel like they need to use them at this point.

Midas - I actually think that we should complicate the regions; wealth discrepancies in some parts of the world (East/West Europe, for example) need to be accounted for, esp when we consider when the immigrants came here. Someone coming over from Britain in '95 vs. Poland in the same time period would have had a completely different background and experience regardless of personal income.

hey guys, Cyrille, I likes some questions you proposed. However, I have small concerns. For question 3, I suggest we make the answes more "comparable" to another source or group/ etc. What I mean is, an immigrant might not know how to answer the question, as the situaton of "imporverishment" in a third world country is way more impoverished or poor than what "impoverished/poor" is in Canada. thus, I suggest we first ask them where they came from. Thus, question 1. Where was your place o residence before arriving to Canada? ____________________****

     question 2. PRIOR to comming to BC, how was your financial situation in your place of residence? a.impoverished b. lower middle class c. middle class d. etccc.... 

• • • • by asking them FIRST in question 1 EXACTLY WHERE THEY COME FROM INSTEAD OF ANSWERING FROM A RANGE OF PLACES WITHIN SAY CHOICE A., we can then see question 2 and understand their status/income better as we will now know if they say "impoverished from India" we know they were poorer than say "impoverished" from "Britain".

Also, Minj, While economic status of the immigrant is influential in their opportunities, I think it is important to not generalize. Although they migh come with wealth, 1. a lot do not NEED the government or depend on the government's programs or aid to survive here and 2. they simply might not care to become involved or etc. Some wealthy immigrants, as I mentioned last week in another commentaire, they are not as interested in becommming interated within the rest fo their community or becomming a true "Canadian" or whatever it may be,as they have strong ties with their home country (either economically still or socially) and may not even live here for part of the year. Another exemple I can provide is someone who has just been recruited to Canada for a few months to work on a project, he may not need the government and may not care to become involved or assimilated into the community or the rest here. This I also speak from experience, I have a couple family memebers that have done this, but I also do nto want to generalize, I just want to ing this point as it is veryyy important and may have a great effect on our understanding of income and involvement settlement relations.

Also,as for question 5. and 6. I feel as if they can be put in to one question, as well, if I feel like the immigrants must be aware to be able to then take advantage on the programs provided. Also, again speaking from experience (I hope ou do not kill me:) but governments do not provide as many programs as we may assume, for immigrant assimilation/facilittion in to the community, or maybe at leats not in all communities. Perhaps they eist more though OTher sources or institutions as churces etc..

SOMETHING WEIRD HAPPENED WITH MY LAST POST...I HOPE YOU CAN SEE IT IN NORMAL FORMAT! SORRY MY COMP IS BEING STUPID!

Perhaps, in order to overcome this issue of those who may not be interested in programs offered to immigrants, etc. for whatever reason, we should include a question that observes this. It could be something like "How important do you think that the opportunities and programs offered by the B.C. government is to you? 1. Very unimportant 2. Unimportant 3. Neutral - do not have an opinion 4. Important 5. Very important". Another could be asking if they had perhaps actively sought these programs, or are currently doing so, or whether they felt a need to depend on these programs when they immigrated here. This way we can make a distinction between those who have used the program and need the services provided versus those who have no interest in them.

I think that in regards to the concern on question 3, I like the previous suggestion of asking if their financial situation has improved since coming to B.C. compared to their last country. In this way, we might be able to tackle the issue of what exactly their financial situation was before immigrating, through comparison rather than trying to set a concrete measure (which as most people have pointed out is difficult due to wording of scale and differences in income and standard of living throughout the world).

I agree with Midas' input that we should expand the regions in question 2. It would help make our comparisons more accurate.

I really like the point Minjeong brought up. Some immigrants might have little or no interest in government programs so I think it's essential for us to take this into consideration in our survey. I would suggest incorporating questions like :

How necessary do you perceive government programs in aiding immigration settlement? Very necessary, somewhat necessary, somewhat unnecessary, very unnecessary, neutral/NA

How effective are government programs in promoting successful immigration settlement? Very effective, somewhat effective, somewhat ineffective, very ineffective, neutral/NA

Have you or anyone you know used government run programs on immigration settlement? Yes/No

          If yes, do you think the program was effective in helping you achieve your goal?
          Yes/No
          If no, do you know of any government run programs on immigration settlement?
          Yes/No

(Questions not necessarily in that order)

Hey all,

Sorry for the late reply I've been busy working on other assignments over the last few days.

Midas, I completely agree with your altered version of question 2 on the immigrants previous regions. You're right to point on the economic disparity across Europe between east and west and it is important that we do split those regions up. Like Minjeong and others have noted on Question 3, I'm all up for changing it to asking whether their financial situation has improved since arriving to BC.

Mayra, you are right to suggest that it would pose some problems as there are differing levels of "poverty" depending on where you are from. Someone considered impoverished in Canada could be considered middle class in another area of the world etc. I understand your suggestion for Question 5+6, however the key differences in these questions is that 5 asks the immigrant on his/her sentiments toward the BC government on providing benefits for immigrants and 6 asks whether the immigrants area of residents provides enough benefits. Provincial level and municipal level governments differ and one may do a better job than the other in providing an immigrant with the resources he/she needs to get off on the right foot. For example, the provincial government may increase services for immigrants etc. over a certain period of time which may cause an immigrant to favor the provincial level, however the community in which the immigrant resides within BC may lack the fundamental services needed for the immigrant to go out in his/her community and adjust to his/her new home. A quick example I can think of is between rural BC areas and metro Vancouver. There is no question that metro Vancouver offers services for new immigrants, however an area up in Northern BC or the Cariboo may not. This may suggest that immigration services should be available for all immigrants throughout the entire province, not just in metropolitan areas.

Awesome! i would like to clarify something i had previously mentioned ::::

I was wondering if we could give a little anecdotal note prior to asking them some questions that are sort of value laden. This would hopefully put all respondents on the same page as to what being "relatively wealthy" really means because we may have different definition on say...what being in "middle class" means. for instance we could say "Mary makes 15$ an hour, works 40 hours a week from 9 am to 5 pm, and she has the time to exercise on a daily basis. she also has time to socialize with friends. She identifies herself to be in middle class. " ...then we ask the question? just an idea.

Cyrille - good call bringing up location differentials. It is a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg argument (i.e. do immigrants not settle in rural areas because there are few immigrant services, or are there few immigrant services in rural areas because immigrants do not settle there), but I'm sure we can address rural/urban differences in a way that provides useful information.

Hi,

I would agree with your latest comment, Cyrille, rural areas in norther BC etc, would most likely lack the services available to recent immigrants as to what Vancouver would offer. That being said, questioning respondents about both provincial and municipal immigration services would most likely give an accurate picture of his/her settlement experience. Like Heather said, differentiating between the two allows us to narrow the scope of our resulting findings.

To tie in what some of the other threads are discussing, I think the issue of languages proficiency (both before and after admission) will also have baring in our discussion of immigrant settlement in rural and metropolitan areas. More specifically, I think we may find that respondents answers to his/her educational background as well as initiative in attending English and French languages programs in BC will bare results we might expect from either a successful or less-successful immigrant in rural BC.

Also, depending on the government's policy agenda at the time, it may be the case there is a significant push on behalf of the government to develop and settle those rural areas with more densely populated towns. Given Canada's declining birth rate, I see no other option then to favor, immigrants whose intention it is to settle in rural BC, which might have an impact on the services the government makes available in those areas.

Just a few of my thoughts, I tried to jump right into the discussion, so please excuse me if I may have repeated what someone else said.

Alright, since this is due in about an hour, and this is by far the thread with the most activity, it seems like this will end up being our research question. I went through and compiled all of the questions, and tried to incorporate all of the suggested changes (sorry if I missed yours!) and incorporated some of my own as well. I think we kind of lost our focus, so it’s important to keep the initial research question in mind. Obviously, there are too many questions here, so please indicate which ones sound the best. I think that 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 are the most important (I also like 3, but I’m not sure that it’s completely relevant).

Research Question: Do immigrants arriving with a higher source of income and wealth in their previous country receive better opportunities and resources than less wealthy immigrants?

1) How many years have you been a resident of BC? (a) less than 1 (b) 1-3 years (c) 3-5 (d) 5-10 (e) 10-15 (f) more than 15

2) What was your region of origin before arriving to BC? (a) North America/Caribbean (b) South America (c) Western Europe (d)Eastern Europe (e) Middle East and Africa (f) Asia-Pacific (g) Southeast Asia (h) Australia/NZ/Islands

3) Prior to immigrating to BC, to what extent were you at all familiar or trained in the English or French language? (a) not at all (b) basic or elementary level (c) moderate or intermediate level (d) fluency

4) Prior to immigrating to BC, to what extent were you exposed (through electronic or print media, etc) to what you would now consider 'Canadian cultural norms'? (a) not at all (b) a minor extent (c) enough to enable significant familiarity (d) complete exposure; seamlessly adjusted to Canadian lifestyle

5) How would you say your current economic status compares to your economic status prior to moving to BC? (1) significantly improved (2) improved (3) remained the same (4) declined (5) significantly declined

• • It was suggested that we include an explanatory blurb for questions 6 and 7 indicating what some of these services may include

6) Since arriving in BC, how would you rate the BC government's ability to provide you with the resources and opportunities to fit in financially? (a) poor (b) somewhat poor (c) average (d) somewhat good (e) good (f) excellent

7) Since arriving in BC, how would you rate the BC government's ability to provide you with the resources and opportunities to fit in socially? (a) poor (b) somewhat poor (c) average (d) somewhat good (e) good (f) excellent

8) In your local municipality, how many services are you aware of that give immigrants an opportunity to adjust to their new cultural surroundings and meet other immigrants who are new to BC as well? (a) 0 (b) 1-2 (c) 3-5 (d) 5-8 (e) 8-10 (f) Over 10

Hello, Not to trek too far off course from our current discussions, but does anyone have any thoughts on considering the accessibility to successful immigration from the perspective of respondents from different regions of the world? For example, measuring the presence of Canadian embassies and Canadian involvement in emigration campaigns in Latin/South America versus regions or states on reportedly much better diplomatic and economic terms with the Canadian government?

We could hypothesize that respondents will report an 'easier' time in emigrating to Canada from their home country based on accessibility to Canadian immigration standards and requirements information, availability of Canadian government services to expedite or otherwise better facilitate a smooth transition out of their country, etc. Example questions could include:

What region of the world would you most identify with as having emigrating from? (answer in the space provided)

____________________

In your opinion, how accessible were Canadian government services in providing all the information, requirements and documents needed for a successful immigration to BC?

(a)Not at all (b)Services were available, but difficult to navigate (b)Services were readily available, all the information was given to me up front, including additional services that I wasn't previously aware I could utilize

I think this might provide us with a greater understanding of the relative prejudices of the government's immigration policies, if there are any. Feel free to comment or edit.

Hey Alex,

The only concern I have is that perhaps the area of research you're looking into is actually more relevant to the research on immigration admission, rather than actual immigration settlement. Although it would be interesting to look into how admission experiences affected the settlement thereafter immigrants experienced, that would require researching into both admission and settlement. Immigration admission itself is a whole other issue (thus I'm sure that's why Professor Owen split immigration into two), and within 5 questions, it just wouldn't be realistically doable.

Unless perhaps you want to structure and propose a RQ, theory and hypothesis (along with the variables), and maybe give a quick rough sketch of the 5 survey questions, in which I would be more than interested in reviewing and seeing put into work.

Hi Minjeong,

Your absolutely right... those questions I posed earlier pertain to 'issues of admission'. Though I personally suspect that the respondent or immigrant's experience settling into BC would most definitely have been impacted in some way by the admission process, we're still limited in the depth and scope of this particular exercise; focusing on the settlement aspect.

Perhaps the idea was a little premature after all... a nevertheless thought provoking notion in my opinion; the reality quite possibly involving the two aspects as much more closely related phenomena. Thanks for you input.

Couldn't we tweak the questions to make them address settlement? I actually think it would be really interesting to think about looking at immigrants based on origin rather than the amount of time spent in Canada, which seems to be the primary suggestion so far. We could formulate questions to try and see if there is a difference in the ease of settlement based on the size of the origin community. This could really work in different ways for different individuals: 1) a larger community base from their country/region could provide new immigrants with support systems and employment opportunities within the community or 2) it could simultaneously work to segregate them from the larger society (other immigrant groups, locals). We could ask questions about the amount of time spent in Canada, country of origin and perhaps ask them if they primarily interact/socialize/work with people from their own region or a mixture of people.

Hey!

Alex, although I am totally for your interesting topic, I have to agree with Minj in that it is a little but better categorized within the admission of immigrants. However, that being said, I do think it is important to ask the immigrant's background. Whether we like it or not, governments may have some prejudices with certain immigrant groups. For exemple, A Colombian immigrant vs. another, even Mexican immigrant has an easier time assimilating or being allowed to, by that I mean, requesting citizenship or residency etc takes longer for groups like Colombians or others compared to one with a Swedish background. But like I said, although this may be more on the "admission" of immigrants, I think their background influences the immigration process and assimilation process in places in Canada and BC.

Hey,

I think that this is definitely an interesting topic to go with. If we can tweak the question to fit our theme I would be totally for it. Has anyone considered the possibilities of selective immigration? In that the Canadian government seems to admit the cream of the crop type of immigrants. It's easy to immigrate to Canada through investment or skill. Because of this, immigrants in Canada(specifically Vancouver) may find it easier to integrate/assimilate into local culture because they are more educated of and open to the cultures of developed countries. Compare this to countries in Europe that take shiploads of refugee status immigrants who come with no money or viable skills and large language barriers. These refugee immigrants may find it harder to adjust to local culture and probably need more government assistance than the immigrants in Canada. Also difference fosters discrimination. So response to immigration in Canada may be better since we are admitting skilled labour whereas European countries may look down at immigrants since they may consider them to not be a productive part of society. I don't know if I'm branching too far by suggesting we compare to other countries. But it's just a thought.

There are certain criteria that the Canadian Immigration Department follows when considering applicants. Specifically, besides skill and capital (in the form of investments), familial relations or political reasons among others are also taken into account. That being said, if cases are judged on an individual basis, there may be certain factors within an immigrant's application that will be valued more favorably by the Canadian government. In that case, our focus becomes one that deals with prevalent trends in immigrant admission. However, there could indeed be a link between immigration admission and immigration settlement. One idea I had was what if "prejudices" (if there are any) in the admission process led to sentiments within immigrants that caused them to leave? Within this causal relationship then, the time an immigrant stays within Canada could perhaps be attributed to their perceived level of treatment within the admission process. Just a thought.

Hey thanks for all the feedback on my idea guys, with all this constructive criticism there might be room in our survey (after a little tweaking) for a correlation between admission and settlement after all...

I'd like to work off Jessica's point for a second and consider the notion of the Canadian government accepting 'cream of the crop' immigrants. I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves here, but lets say hypothetically we could associate this type of immigrant to one of the admission categories or criteria; linking an immigrant who utilizes one of the criterion as a 'preferred' immigrant of the government to one who chooses say, familial ties to get into BC. If we then survey respondents based on their chosen method of immigration, categorizing them into 'preferred' or 'not preferred' types of immigrants I think we may soon find not only that the former number of immigrants will exceed the latter, but that those preferred immigrants may indicate far easier times settling into BC (ie: successfully applying for permanent residency).

I think Hiram was also on the right track suggesting that immigrants who have stood up to the challenges of immigration and stayed in Canada might closely relate their success to their perceived difficulties during the admissions process. In other words, the (hypothetical) bias or prejudice of the government's admissions standards may share a direct relationship with the immigrants settlement experience.

What do you guys think?

@ViaraGioreva

I think that's a very intriguing idea, though I have some worries about whether or not we'd be able to fit something like that in 6 questions. We may as well try though- later on when I have a bit more time I can, if you haven't, create a sub-forum for that discussion, since I think it diverges enough from this one to merit it's own topic. Volume of reported immigrant community and social connections would certainly be something very interested to look at it in terms of cultural assimilation, since I can see how it could entrench immigrants into their own community and make them feel segregated, or provide a means to feel more integrated in the country and "Canadian".

@Alex

Heh, we may have to alter "preferred" and "not-preferred" to avoid a bit of stigma, but this achieves a fair bit of parsimony that would be, in my opinion, valuable in a survey like this. I'd be interested to know if the relationship you hypothesize exists, but not to get all negative-nancy, we'll still probably want to narrow it down a bit better. One of the areas that stands out to me is distinguishing between people who came for both familial ties and skills, or who came initially and brought their family over (as they would find themselves simulatenously existing in both groups). Going with Hiram's thought though, it might be more tangible and possible to explore whether or not perceived injustice at admission processes affect feelings of integration among immigrants.

I definitely think this topic is worth continuing to explore though, it's very interesting.

Hey guys,

Clearly it is too difficult to approach a nation-wide immigrant sample on immigrants, so our full sample will likely reside in BC. However, how does everyone feel about keeping our sample study within the lower mainland? For sample purposes, this seems to be the most realistic approach we can take as even with a province-wide sample it'd be essential we include samples from Vancouver Island, Okanagan, Interior etc. and I'm unsure on how we could go about and finding those samples. Thoughts?

Hey Cyrille,

I think sticking to lower mainland is definitely the smart thing to do. I think taking a random sample from lower mainland, which has a rich immigrant population, would definitely provide us with some really good results. I think maybe we all want to state which region of the lower mainland we reside in (i.e. UBC, Vancouver, W. Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, etc.) and we can all collect 6 respondents (I think that's what the prof said, if I'm not mistaken?) from each region.

Some people previously brought up the suggestion of sticking to UBC students. I think the major flaw here would be the age and occupation range - i.e. younger population who may not have had full careers, or even those who may have moved here too young to properly recount their first few years of settlement experiences. If we were to especially go along the route of asking about previous income status, current income status, etc. students wouldnt be able to really provide a useful response as they would have in majority relied upon their parents.

I'm not exactly sure how data-collection works- as I understand it we're expected to collect data on our own. This already violates a significant principle in surveying- random sampling, and this is just an entry level stats course and for most of us our first conducted survey. I don't see a problem with recognizing geographical limitations such as focusing ourselves on the Lower Mainland.

@Min, I don't think sticking to UBC students is a bad thing. If you wanted to study specifically how say, international student or new immigrant student's wealth correlates with their family's wealth etc. then using UBC students would be a very good way to accomplish such a thing. We could also expand it to include SFU students, Langara etc. However, no suggestions have yet been made to focus on students, so this is largely irrelevant.. but it all depends on exactly what we're trying to look at!

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that Dr. Owen is putting all of the questions (as in ours + everything from all the other topics) and we are supposed to all administer the complete survey. That's why I think it's a little odd that so many of the research questions we are coming up with are specific to just immigrants. Again, I could be totally wrong, but I thought that our sample would be the same as everyone's, which means that there would certainly be locals. So, are we then expecting non immigrants to just skip our part? Sorry if someone has already addressed this, the thread is getting slightly hard to follow, and everyone's responses are quite lengthy so maybe I missed this.

I'm not too sure whether we are administrating the complete survey (i.e. surveys are compiled of the whole class's questions) or we are simply handing out just our survey with 5 questions, but either way our issue is immigration settlement, thus looking at immigrant's experiences and the data we collect them would be our focus. If the first arrangement is the case, then those who aren't considered immigrants wouldn't answer our survey questions, since their answers would be of no use to us (that is, if we are sticking to the two surveys proposed thus far). If the latter is what the professor wants us to do, then the immigrants of lower mainland would be our individual units of analysis.

Midas - My point of not wanting to stuck to solely UBC students was based on the idea that we might be going along with the research proposal of economic status before arriving in B.C. affecting opportunities and settlement progress thereafter. My reasons for were obviously because students wouldn't necessarily be able to know their family's financial status beforehand, nor perhaps be able to access such information from parents/guardians. If we were to go along the route of the ESL research topic, sticking to university students, as you've mentioned UBC, SFU, Langara, etc. would definitely not be a bad idea.

Since we are doing immigrant settlement, limiting the survey to just UBC students would limit the scope of our investigation. I don't think using UBC students as our whole sample would be productive just because student immigrants are probably less exposed to the realities of immigration than say their parents, or those who come to find employment and make a new life. School itself is a social institution that helps to promote integration and cultural exchange, as well as a support system, so students already have a leg up from those immigrants who lack these opportunities.

What do you guys think of targeting specific groups. Like for example in the lower mainland, there are specific areas that tend to attract one type of immigrant (e.g. Richmond=Chinese, Surrey=Indian, Commercial Drive=Italian etc.)

I think that communities provide social structure/support to immigrants so even if you come not knowing the language in vancouver, you're bound to find somewhere to fit in. Do we want to control this factor or limit it?

I completely agree with you Jessica, targeting a student population would provide us with little valuable knowledge on the realities of immigration settlement. Since international students come to UBC to study, they don't usually work more than p/t and their education is often paid for by their families, loans etc. Their views immigration settlement would be much different from others who have settled in BC in search of work/better opportunities for their family rather than educational purposes. If we can somehow branch outside of UBC and look at immigrant populations throughout the lower mainland that would be extremely significant towards our proposed research.

Since it seems we are sticking to Lower Mainland, instead of targeting specific communities depending on their ethnic background, how about targeting certain communities depending on income? This would split regions of lower mainland up, i.e. vancouver west, vancouver east, richmond, burnaby, downtown vancouver, etc. then these areas perhaps into areas that we know are better off and areas that are poorer? i.e. residents of yaletown vs. residents of chinatown/gastown. This may have more to do with the income aspect, rather than ethnic aspect of immigrant settlement.

I know this is probably no helpful since it's all speculation but I think Prof. Owen wants us to take on all 50 of the survey questions, and not just the 5 we will come up with. I agree that it's a little bit... "fruitless" that many of our questions seem to specifically target new immigrants. I suspect Prof. Owen wants us to find a sample of convenience, as we obviously don't have the resources to travel up and down the province. I suppose we will find out about how to correctly select the sample and carry out the survey this week or after the reading break.

I like the idea of artificially separating Vancouver into various regions, so long as we specifically notate the process and why we're doing it. It's inevitably going to end up being subjective and normative anyway given our time, spatial and resource constraints- however this process will significantly lighten our survey load while allowing some increased diversity in response.

Hey everyone, In light of the issues discussed so far, I think that income equality is highly related to the level of english proficiency that immigrants develop over time. In particular, it would be interesting to see how education in the form of ESL (English as a Second Language) programs affect the level of "settlement" that immigrants experience after moving here. Im guessing that those who took the ESL program at an early age would have been able to develop and consolidate a strong english foundation, which would prove to be beneficial as one moves into post-elementary education. In this train of thought, those who participated in the ESL program at an early age would perhaps be more likely to experience better job opportunities in the future. In addition, I would suspect that ESL programs early on would facilitate higher levels of post-secondary education. This is especially true in BC, with the significant amount of immigrants in UBC or SFU. Conversely, for immigrants moving to BC at an age suitable for high school, I would think that ESL programs would have a lesser effect on English learning. This is only a hypothesis, but I would guess that the older the immigrant, the higher the difficulty it would be for them to pick up English. This in turn, could then generally have an effect on motivation in adapting to BC's society. That being said, I think a potential survey could look like this:

What age did you immigrate to BC? (enter age)

Did you attend elementary school in BC yes/no (if yes, state number of years attended __ )

If so, did you enroll in the ESL program offered at your school? yes/no/there was no ESL program

If yes, how many years did you participate in the program? 1/2/3/4/5/6/7

Do you think that ESL education has helped you receive better job opportunities? Strongly Agree/Somewhat Agree/No Effect/Somewhat Disagree/Strongly Disagree

Do you think that ESL education has facilitated your assimilation into BC's society? Strongly Agree/Somewhat Agree/No Effect/Somewhat Disagree/Strongly Disagree

Feel free to post your thoughts on this issue, I look forward to what you guys have to say.

Hey Hiram,

There definitely could be a connection between the immigration settlement, and language programs offered/taken. The only concern I have is that these questions seem to tackle only the experiences of those who have taken an ESL program, and not of those immigrants who haven't taken the program. Do you perhaps think we should rephrase or include questions that would address all immigrants? Therefore the independent variable (being ESL program attendance), and it's effectiveness can be measured through assessing both those have taken it and those who haven't. I think it may be too one-sided if we observe only those who have taken the program.

Furthermore, is there an effective way of actually measuring assimilation and job opportunities offered to those who have taken ESL program and those who haven't taken the program on another scale other than the one you have proposed? The scale you've offered works for those who have taken the ESL program, but would it be just as effective for those who haven't? I.e. asking whether an individual thinks that they may have received better job opportunities if they had taken the ESL program (strongly agree - strongly disagree) can open up to biases of what the individual may perceive, as well as they may be comparing themselves to others who may have had other factors attributing to better job success apart from ESL program attendance.

I'd love to hear your feedback on my thoughts.

Hey Hiram,

This is a very interesting idea and one worth exploring more. I am unsure exactly of what we're trying to measure here. What is meant by the term "settlement"? Reading through again, essentially you've merged two research questions into one in (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong): "are ESL programs more effective in teaching English to kids at younger ages" and "does learning English affect job opportunities and/or opportunities in post-secondary education for new immigrants?" These are both good questions, and the latter obviously holds a considerable amount of weight in political discourse.

However, with only five survey questions to ask it will be very difficult to get a good idea of whether one or either of these are true. In order to ensure that our survey maximizes external validity it seems like we'd need to also include a sample of individuals who hadn't taken ESL, to compare the effectiveness of it as a medium to teach English to people. This gets us off-track a bit and is probably more fit for experimental studies.

Rather than focus on ESL as a medium, I would focus simply on the time in which new immigrants learned English. This may seem counter-intuitive: since all we've discussed so far is specifying and narrowing things down, but in this case if we focus on the mediums through which people learn English we're going to be expanding the potential for unwanted confounds and reducing the precious amount space we need to formulate questions. So again, rather than ESL, I would suggest we use age that the respondent remembers learning English. It would be important then to find out:

- Whether they already spoke English - If not, what age did they learn English (rather than using numbers, perhaps we can sacrifice some external validity for parsimony and use intervals of 6-7 years i.e. 1-7, 8-14, 15-21, etc.).

After that, we'd want to also narrow the focus down to either job opportunity or post-secondary education. Measuring the latter is much easier since degrees are a tangible thing we can point to, so perhaps we should go with that.

I'd like to hear your thoughts though. I know I'm quite picky so feel free to rip me apart too- criticism is I think, the best way we can develop these questions and come up with an effective study even given our operating constraints.

Hey Minjeong and Midas, Both of you bring up very valid points regarding this idea. In regards to Minjeong's concerns, it would most definitely be necessary to survey immigrants who did not take part in any ESL programs. That way, it becomes possible to measure the extent of the effect that ESL programs have on immigrant's lives in general. Questions such as "how has the ability to communicate in english affected your level of success within job opportunities in BC?" would initially allow us to deduce the level of importance that english has in general on job opportunities for immigrants, and follow up questions assessing the role of ESL in contributing to their current level of english proficiency would then allow us to deduce the overall impact that ESL has on all immigrants in terms of job opportunities. In addition, ESL only represents one of the many ways that immigrants could learn english. Enrolling in private classes, tutoring, or even self-study could be potential factors that we should consider. As for your second concern, I think we can solve this issue by surveying immigrants in terms of the overall level of "success" that they have experienced in BC, with or without ESL programs, and see if those who had participated in ESL faired more favorably.

As for Midas, it seems I have confounded my research focus. I am interested in measuring the effect of an immigrant's english proficiency level on their level of "success" within job opportunities in BC. I am also interested in seeing how effective government programs (hence ESL) are in helping immigrants learn english. It would seem pretty straightforward to assume that the better english one speaks in a predominantly english speaking society, the better one's job opportunities are. However, I have several concerns of my own regarding this assumption. Firstly, it would be necessary to attribute values to what we consider a "standard english proficiency"; the ability to communicate does not necessarily mean the ability to articulate. Such factors will come into play when considering job opportunities (interviews by potential employers and such). Therefore, it would also be necessary to measure the english proficiency level in the people we survey (I admit this could be difficult). As for the level of success, I think that a question like "How important was english for you in job seeking?" would allow us to qualitatively measure each individual's perceived level of importance that english had, and allow us to see whether the premise that better english leads to more jobs is true. If it is true (which I personally think it is), additional questions asking how the respondent learned english ("Did you participate in any public school funded programs whose aim was to teach english?") could then allow us to extrapolate the effectiveness in governmental programs that aimed to assimilate immigrants into BC's society. If governmental programs like ESL significantly helped immigrants in learning english, and higher levels of english proficiency was empirically linked to higher levels of job opportunities, then we can essentially gauge how good a job the BC government is doing to help immigrants "settle" into society.

My only concern with your suggestion of measuring the time in which a respondent has learned english is the fact that 1) people learn english at different speeds (motivation, natural mental capabilities, etc) and 2) there are varying levels of education (someone taking ESL at school compared to someone taking ESL at school AND hiring a private tutor/enrolling in weekend classes would achieve different results at the end of the year)

What do you think?

I think it's totally feasible to create a research question exploring the relationship between level of English and likelihood of success (in school, work, etc) but I think that if we focus on elementary school ESL programs our results won't be very interesting. It's a fair assumption that the longer you spend in an English speaking environment, the easier it will be to learn English; in fact, most kids who come here at the elementary school age end up completely fluent and with no/very slight accents. (Also, if I remember correctly, when you are in elementary school, your level of English is assessed and you are placed at the appropriate level of ESL; I don't think the students or parents have a choice, so there would be no variation - if the student was in a Lower Mainland elementary school, they would have been in the program)

If we want to focus on the relationship between English proficiency and success, I think it makes more sense to look at people who come here in high school or later. We could tailor our questions to this demographic, and maybe look at immigrants who chose to take government provided English courses, no courses or other private courses.

Hey guys, so I have read this proposition on a question related to the ESL proficciency and overall success in immigrating. However, first of all I feel like this topic although very interesting, as it would proide us with answers as to why someone's immigation process is facilitated while others are not and the impact comming from their English profficiency, it might be a little hard to examine. I absolutely believe that there is some sort of causal link, I have lived here with my famimly for 10 years and I do see a difference in my mom and dad's fluency in the English language, however, their level of English does not seem to affect their interaction or success within the community or even their job acquisition when they arrived (a small accent may not infringe on a lot!) Not all immigrants take ESL courses, and a lot who do, like it was mentioned, are most likely to be older than high school students, as before that age, it is expected that they will learn at school and due to their age, they are able to acquire it quicker. Also, those who do come later, as adults may also come with an offer already, or a job waiting for them, so in relaity IF they do not have already acquired fluency in ENglish, their lives may not be affected that much in a negative way, take the Asian population- a loooot do not even speak fluent English aand still manage to live successfuly every day lives (perhaps not as integated in to the "Canadian" society thogh).

I just feel this is a difficult topic to research to be honest, but if there is more support on this topic I am open to feedback!

I think what we have to consider with this question is whether or not ESL is by choice. From personal experience many elementary schools don't really allow a choice for ESL enrollment. In some schools even if you were born here,if you are a visible majority you are made to take ESL. Does this not hinder the success rate of immigration? Kids who are introduced to their immigrant status may begin to classify themselves as different and thereby maintaining an immigrant mentality. Also in ESL you are not exposed to the level of language other kids your age are and may in fact depreciate English levels.

It might be better to have questions on the age of arrival in Canada and how age affects the ease of fitting in.

I strongly agree with Myra's concern. There are many confounding variables that could make the relationship between "experience with the ESL program" and "success in assimilating into Canadian culture/workplace" spurious. It is very difficult for us to account for these variables, and impossible to control all, if any of them. In addition to the fact that many Canadians don't need to use English in order to get on with their daily lives, most new immigrants already have varying degrees of language proficiency when they first come into Canada (some speak and write English much better than the average Canadian or have it as their first language). All of these factors make these survey questions difficult to carry out practically.

I also think the using of the word "assimilation" could be problematic. It is a highly subjective concept that vary from each each individual. Even if we were to try to define it as a general, concrete theme, it would be nearly impossible for us as researchers to agree upon, let alone the hundreds of respondents who will be answering the survey.

Anyway, I am definitely interested in finding out the relationship between English proficiency and professional success for new Canadians. I do think that there is a causal relationship between the two, and it's important to pin-point that relationship for the sake of improving government programs that aim to help new Canadians. However, there are just so many confounding factors that could disprove the relationship. I don't think it would be feasible to tackle this question with the limited survey space and resources that we have for this particular assignment. It would be definitely interesting to create a comprehensive survey (say, 30 - 50 questions) on this specific subject targeted only toward new immigrant respondents who have had formal or informal experience with the Canadian ESL system.

I'd also share Myra's and Lucy's concerns about the confounding variables for this research question; many potentially challenging to control for, but I wouldn't quite dismiss them as 'impossible' just yet. The bottom line is this: there are of course varying degrees of either English or French proficiency among immigrants who are seeking permanent residency in Canada, and like someone else said in another thread somewhere (sorry there just too many to find it), there are also numerous application categories to which an immigrant may identify with; including familial ties, previous professional and/or trade experience, etc.

I started a thread with a couple possible questions a few days ago, and I missed the mark a little bit in terms of addressing the right topic: admission vs settlement... That in mind, I can see us going down a similar path here in Hiram's thread; though English/French proficiency may not be the 'deal breaker' on the success of an immigrant's application to get in to BC, it certainly may play a role in the immigrant's ability to demonstrate successful integration into his/her community when applying for permanent residency. I don't think I'm making too large an assumption when I say those who can't speak English or French all that well in BC will on average, not receive a high paying job; a unit of analysis we can easily identify with 'successful settlement'.

That being said, ESL programs are prevalent not only in the public school system, but are abundantly available in the form of night classes etc, for adults to take in their transition from 'landed immigrant' to 'permanent resident' or Canadian citizen. However, like many of you have suggested, ESL programs are not the only option out there for the immigrants; a variety of colleges and other institutions accept applicants on a roling basis, offering a variety of language instruction, like the services offered here. Perhaps we can tweak the questions a bit so that a larger base of respondents could identify with the question of where/how much/how helpful language instruction was in getting a 'higher paying' job then what you could have got first stepping on Canadian soil?

I'm not saying everyone's shutting down Hiram's thread, but there is definitely a 'negative' trend, so I thought I'd mix this up a little for scholarly purposes, and point out that this idea, once tweaked a little could actually be a worth while path to explore earnestly.

A detailed answer on where one lives would be helpful in finding out how important proficiency in english has been to immigrants lives. For example, someone who speaks only Punjabi living in a certain part of Surrey could likely live and work without must difficulty, and the same goes for many groups in different areas. Asking something along the lines of "what is the dominant language in your community" may help explain a person's reason for why a person did or did not take advantage of ESL services. Of course, we would need to produce the survey in one or two other languages in order to get a response from people who don't speak english (as was suggested previously). Not taking advantage of such services may not have been an issue of not knowing about it or being resistant to integrating, for many it may have simply been unneccessary as they can get along fine without it.

Hello group! I did a little question content brainstorming, and this is what I came up with.

I am particularly interested in how information is likely miscommunicated to new immigrants due to language barriers, and how that in turn stalls (or may even prevent) them from practicing their former professions in Canada. I would like to ask our respondents, immigrants and citizens alike, if they would like the Canadian government to allocate more money into our immigration settlement services. These services would offer immigrants personalized information that is tailored to each specific individual, instead of the presumed ‘one-size-fits-all’ suggestions. This is because newly arrived immigrants may lack information on how to obtain the needed credentials to practice their former occupation in Canada.

I am also quite interested in whether or not our respondents would find it beneficial to have immigrants mandatorily participate in cultural events, since this involvement may compel them to feel more integrated in Canadian culture sooner than later.

IF these two questions are asked, I think that the response format : "Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree" would capture the best response

What do you think? Any thoughts?

--ElysiaLee 23:39, 25 January 2011 (PST)

Hey Elysia, I think that's a great start for ideas and brainstorming. We should be aware also that miscommunication of information to immigrants or lack of interpretation and supposed language deficiency may not be the primary structural disadvantage that bars new comers from practicing their former professions.

income discrimination against visible minority workers, which is generally more related to the trend of 1)underutilization if immigrant skills in the Canadian Labour Market 2)pay inequities for immigrants doing the same work as native born Canadians. Some bodily evidence, Reitz (2001) identifies total annual immigrants earnings in 1996 amassed 15 billion, of which 2.4 billion was underutilization, while 12.6 billion dollars was in the form of pay inequities. More observations related to income discrimination and this issue of immigrants not being able to assume their former professions where they are may be highly skilled are like when employers tend to give little credibility to foreign education or foreign work experience

an article by "Omidvar Ratna" in the Laidlaw Foundation also identifies structural changes in the international economy being related to this as part of the bigger picture, with the liberalization of world trade, globalization of markets making domestic economies and subsequent employment rates more unstable, so now jobs are focused in the service sector rather than the industrial sector which is where immigrants from earlier decades like the 50s and 60s could garner decent jobs with low skill requirement and decent wages... but that's a little much to pursue for now

and perhaps we could look at this general phenomenon of interest not just with regards to immigrants being able to practice former professions, but maybe as a trend in increased rates of poverty among immigrant families as identified by the census of the last 2 decades? that would be an interesting causal effect to study perhaps - their social and economic exclusion from Canadian society.

Hello Elysia, Jom, and Group,

Are we suggesting a research question along the lines of "Does higher government funding on immigration settlements decrease the level of poverty among new immigrants?". I think this is a good start but it may be a bit too broad to analyze. This question can be broken down into three parts: 1. government funding on immigration settlements 2. Income of immigrants 3. How immigrants utilize government funded settlement programs. Therefore, I think we need to figure out which part(s) we want to focus on.

I am also interested in finding out to what extent these programs are utilized by immigrants. I don't think the funding has a direct influence on the effectiveness of the programs, because immigrants may not even know that these programs are available. Therefore, I think doing a research on how often immigrants utilize settlement programs and how they learn about these programs would be interesting. Questions can include: "How many government funded immigrant settlement programs do you know of? a. More than 10 b. 6 - 9 c. Less than 5 d. None" "How many of these programs have you participated in? (skip this question if you answered "d" in the last question) a. All of them b. Some of them c. None of them"

Carmen I agree that narrowing our questions down to 1. government funding on immigration settlements 2. Income of immigrants would make it easier for us to formulate our questions.

Possible Research Question(s): (?)

1. What effect does government funding of immigration services have on immigrants' career success?

- If so : We would need to define "success", which could possibly be measured by immigrants' annual income.

- Carmen, I do agree that many immigrants may not even be aware of the programs that are available to assist them. That is precisely the problem. Would more funding by the government equate to increased effectiveness of these existing programs? For instance, could we actually try to promote these programs by having more translators that speak different languages spread the word? The programs are established because they are intended to help immigrants find suitable careers. If services are not promoted, immigrants do not know that they exist. If immigrants do not seek these services while people are still hired to perform them, then perhaps government money should be allocated elsewhere so that it is not wasted. In this sense, funding does influence effectiveness of these programs. I think "How many government funded immigrant settlement programs do you know of? a. More than 10 b. 6 - 9 c. Less than 5 d. None" is a great start to our question. Before asking this though, maybe we should first ask "are you a(n) (a)immigrant or(b)Canadian born citizen" then something like "if answered (a) go to question 2, if (b) go to question 3. This is because citizens may be more aware of these programs, while immigrants may not. Maybe if we want to be even more specific, we could as if they are second or first generation Canadians. What do you think?

- JomChu - I'm interested in what you mentioned with regards to "increased rates of poverty among immigrant families as identified by the census of the last 2 decades". Do you know if they came to Canada rich, or at least with a large sum of money? Or if they are admitted "poor"? Like you, I am interested in whether or not immigrants are doing less well economically because they are excluded, or if they are just poor to begin with (which would then just have to do with the issue of admission.

Hey everyone,

I'm stepping a bit outside the box on the current research suggestions on immigrant settlement, so bear with me. Rather than grouping all immigrants together under one research question, i'd like to split the survey between two types of immigrants: wealthy immigrant settlers in Canada and the less advantageous immigrants. While many immigrants arrive to Canada with little money in search of better opportunities, the Canadian government also places substantial emphasis on recruiting wealthy foreigners through the Business Immigration Programme. There is no question that many of these immigrants arrive with the necessary resources to thrive in their new setting, however, does the Canadian government pay as close attention to less fortunate immigrants and provide them with equal opportunities at success?

The proposed research question could be, "Does the Canadian government provide equal opportunities and resources to all Canadian immigrants?". The sample could be asked "what their income was in their previous country" prior to arriving in Canada and then they would be split into two groups: wealthy/well off and middle/lower income immigrants. From a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest, 1 the lowest), members of both groups could then be asked to answer the following: 1) "since settling in Canada, how well has the Canadian government provided you and your family with the resources and opportunities to adapt to your new surroundings socially and financially?"

Just an idea. It's bordering on the immigrant settlement and immigrant admission, but it is a possible question I find interesting and we could brainstorm and improve upon.

Hi everyone,

I'd like to run with Cyrille's idea for a moment, and introduce some demographic figures on the labour market intention, occupation and skill level of permanent residents taken from previous surveying data on the 'Citizenship and Immigration Canada' web page, found here: link title. Although this particular page doesn't explicitly illustrate the income levels of immigrants as per category of occupation and skill level, its probably fair to assume the 'higher skilled' and 'professional' categories, positively correlate with higher levels of income and vise-versa for lesser trained or educated occupations.

With the relative levels of permanent residents categorized in a descending order, the basic time-series chart starts with managerial, then professional, skilled and technical, clerical, and labourers etc. essentially ending with 'unskilled' or 'new worker' immigrants, and those not intending to work. A noticeable pattern emerges (notwithstanding any exceptions) where over each year, numbers of permanent residents who belong to a 'higher skilled' or 'professional' category proportionally rise and fall depending on overall immigration trends, but nevertheless remain at much higher levels. That in mind, there's probably something to be said for why this would occur, perhaps the relationship is causal where, those whom belong to a higher bracket are either provided with greater opportunity to settle into Canada, or even that they just may be more cognizant of the many programs available to all immigrants in general.

However, another prevalent trend (found elsewhere on the government site) suggests that, regardless of the skill level or type of occupation prior to successfully achieving permanent residence, immigrant workers still tend to shift from higher-trained positions to that of lower paid, less skilled occupations. Whether this could be a consequence from the immigrant not taking advantage of government programs in the following months/years after successfully achieving permanent resident status or otherwise, it would appear this is an unfortunate pattern for both skilled and unskilled immigrants alike. There could be a variety of explanations for this, making it easy to loose sight in developing a coherent, testable hypothesis, but it could be worth while to explore this phenomenon a little more.

Overall, I think everyone's, including Cyrille's ideas are excellent contributions to our discussion, and I also think it could be beneficial to take into account the various social/economic profiles of the surveying sample in addition to their involvement in government settlement programs. AlexVanSeters 16:39, 30 January 2011 (PST)

Hi everyone!

I agree with narrowing down the immigration group in to different sections, ad Cyrille proposed, however at the same time using more social categories as well. I think while classification based on economic value is important, the social aspect for differentiation should be looked at. First of all, do you think that after establishing who an immigrant is, that it is important to define the number of years they have been here? They could answer from a choice of for exemple: 1-5, 5-10, 10-20, etc? I think this is important to account for as their views may be different regardless of their immigrant status, from their experiences and feelings towards Canada. Also, where do second generation immigrants fit in?

Another important question would be to establish the motive in moving to Canada. The issue on wealthy immigrants has been brought up already, however, asking the level of dependence in Canada on certain issues is important to consider, as it can also affect their involvement with government and their community. For exemple, "For you, Canada provides you most importantly with: a.economic satisfaction b.social satisfaction and safety (something along those lines) and c.a little bit of both.....What I want to establish basically, is the level of importance of aspects such as economic, social, safety etc for immigrants and their purpose in being here, as it may afect the level of involvement within governmental issues, community, etc (one who might view Canada as a provider of safety and societal satisfaction might have different views and involvement within their government and community, as they might value it more than one who has recently moved here with foreign money and does not feel as dependent on Canada- more on personal satisfaction than the other scenario of gained liberty and other freedoms).

I guess I am concerned with that last idea, because speaking from experience as an immigrant who moved mostly for obtaining a life of more freedoms and , my family and I value civic responsibility and involvement more than I have seen in other immigrants who are very "wealthy" and do not feel as strong of a bond to this country.

Hey guys, I'm jumping in a bit late into the discussion so I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said about the original posts but here we go.

I like the observation that Alex and a few others brought up about the general trend of professional downgrading of skilled immigrants in the Canadian job market. We've already established a good line of ideas for examining the problem on a macro level by asking questions like what kind of and how much educational and vocational training support the government provide for new immigrants. On the subject of defining "new immigrants", Mayra's concern for the number of years of residence is very valid. I think we should be very careful in trying to define the term "recent immigrant" by looking at years of residency because of the overwhelming presence of multiple and heterogeneous diasporic experiences in Canada. Is a British immigrant whose first language is English who has only lived in Canada for 4 months worse off than a Vietnamese immigrant who has lived in Canada for 10 years and speaks no English in terms of professional job searching? I know this is more along the normative line of problems rather than purely statistical, and we all know that statistics in the end is all about generalization, but I feel generalizing the term "immigrants" is extremely dangerous in a survey that could potentially affect how the government, and indeed, the general Canadian populace, view "immigrants" and the concept of immigration. I support the previous suggestion that if we were to ask a sample of self-identified recent immigrants, we include questions about their primary language(s), income in their "country of origin" (adjusted in relative terms for more accurate comparisons), race(s), and previous level of education. This is a touchy subject but we also need be reflexive about how ourselves as survey designers define "immigrants". Do we only see people of colour? People who speak neither English nor French? People from the "developing world"? The clearly "disadvantaged"? Or do we see an array of folks who come from any country that is not Canada? All of these implications could affect the validity of our data and research question as a whole. Lastly and not quite related to my previous line of thought, for a survey that is to be filled out by recent immigrants, I imagine distributing the questions in multiple languages would greatly boost the participation rates.

Now on to something a bit more difference, I thought of another possible types of surveys that could be asked under the topic of immigration and assimilation. I was thinking of a survey that would be posed to "local" "non-immigrants" (which we know there is no such thing as in Canada). By this I mean anyone from "long-term" residents to potential "local" employers to government workers who provide services to recent immigrants. We would ask them about their attitudes toward assimilation and multiculturalism. Here are a few possible questions to ask to an employer for example: - How is your decision to hire an employee affected if he or she speaks with a non-English/French accent? - How is your decision to hire an employee affected if he or she is a racial minority? - How likely are you to grant a leave of absence for an individual employee for the purpose of observing a religious or cultural holiday that is not on the statutory calender? Of course, this is a very sensitive and potentially offensive line of questions, as one would imagine, but the private nature of mail-in and online surveys with the appropriate preamble would allow us to ask more daring questions and push for more honest answers. I for one believe it is very important to ask the "hard" questions on assimilation and multiculturalism.

Hi everyone! Sorry for jumping in so late, it took me a while to sort out how to work this thing.

I'm really glad that the last two comments began touching on issues of cultural assimilation rather than just looking at income inequality. Of course, it's easier to do statistics with numbers, but I really like the idea of focusing on the tough questions, as Lucy says. Personally, I am interested in three of the topics mentioned so far:

1. Immigrant qualifications and how they are counted in Canada. As most of us know, I'm sure, it's not so easy to get into Canada, and often times immigrants need post secondary degrees to be allowed in as permanent residents. I think it would be interesting to look at things like what kinds of positions these people held previously, and whether or not they have been able to get their degrees credited, as well as whether or not they have been able to find positions in the same field/ position.

2. Immigrant assimilation from the immigrant pov. Use of programs, language classes and whether or not they sense a general level of acceptance from the rest of the population. I guess that would be targeted more towards recent immigrants (as in the last couple of years or so). I work with a lot of people who are fairly new to Canada, and I get the sense from a lot of them that their experience has been much more difficult than they assumed it would be, so I was wondering if there was any way we could get to the bottom of that miscommunication. So asking them how easy they thought it would be to find work/a place to live/make connections with neighbours and coworkers etc. vs. their actual experiences.

3. The rest of the population's view of immigrants. This is especially interesting with the current state of the economy; we all know that Canada needs immigrants, but when people who already live here are having a hard time finding jobs, I would imagine that the level of acceptance would decrease. I like the questions that Lucy proposed, I just wonder how/if we could work on the phrasing to make it sound less offensive so that we can get a more honest answer.

Also, are we accounting for large immigrant communities (mainly South Asians and East Asians in the Vancouver context) and the amount of support people who belong to those groups could get from within the community, rather than the federal government? Immigrants with a large base might have an easier time because they could help each other out, whereas people who are from more underrepresented areas may be pushed into the greater 'Canadian' society (whatever that means) with a bit more force.

I think here (and in many other places, really) we run into the problem of how we are going to define immigrants and locals - are we going by amount of time spent in Canada? Are things like level of English, race, existence of cultural community relevant in terms of accounting for the ease of the transition and the level of acceptance? Once we sort that out, I think we need to structure our questions with follow up (If yes, than...) subsections, but we need to really structure those clearly.

Also, does anyone know what the base questions will be? It might be that Dr. Owen has already sorted out how to phrase this question and that it will be one of the early identification ones.

Hey everyone,

The discussion so far has been really interesting. Here’s my input:

So far, we've touched upon the concepts of income inequality, government assistance and resources, language barriers, and attitudes of both immigrants and "locals". These definitely are important issues to address, yet we need to develop a research question that can incorporate (some of) these. I brainstormed a little and questions such as, “Why do immigrants have difficulty transitioning/settling into life in Canada?” or “Why do immigrants feel segregated from the rest of Canadian society?” yet I know I’m not quite hitting the mark and being way too vague, not to mention might be bringing up normative claims. Can anyone else think of a research question? Or perhaps we should vote upon a specific issue and develop upon it, as currently I might be going about it wrongly and not being focused enough. If we were to focus, perhaps it would be of interest to go into specifically individual income, which would include language, careers/jobs, attitudes of immigrants and their employees/coworkers, etc. which are all relevant to settlement.

I think we can all agree that we definitely need to define our concept of “immigrant”. One method could be to look at the legal status they are given. That being visas (student, work, etc.) which could all inclusive as non-permanent residence, permanent-residence, and citizens. If we do this, we might be able to see an interesting divide between citizens and non-citizens. The reason being that in order gain citizenship, application restrictions are that they must be over the age of 18, have lived in Canada for at least three of the four years preceding the application, be able to communicate in English and/or French, etc. (It can be found here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/adults.asp). We can then expect these immigrants to have had a longer period of assimilation into Canadian life, as well as have a grasp of the official languages spoken here. Then from these three different categories (non-p, p, and c) we can then branch off into number of years they have resided here, languages primarily spoken, etc.

In order to address the issue of the “large communities” that Viara brought up, we could consider community support as another factor that either help or hinder settlement. This would mean perhaps including questions such as: “Do you reside within a residence that is primarily occupied by: Caucasian Canadians, other immigrants, fellow ethnic immigrants…” or “Do you belong to a community that is made up of those who are from your home country/from the same ethnic background?” or “Does your community or city provide you with opportunities to participate in events that you consider to be important to your culture/tradition/ethnic background? (such as events for Chinese New Year, Hanukkah, etc.). In this sense, we could also distinguish between community support from government support, and also perhaps how community support could also influence settlement and transition into Canadian society.

Hey everyone,

I think everyone has some really good ideas. I just want to remind everyone that we have to collaboratively condense all this information above into 5 research questions. So far from all that i've read, most questions propose two theoretical factors, and i think now we need to 'operationalize' to get two measurable factors. I think instead of getting onto the topic of definition differences and continuing to increase our scope, we should start condensing everyone's thoughts into questions that we can actually use for the survey.

Heres just a brief summary of what questions were provided above...

- How is Information miscommunicated to new immigrants due to language barriers? - Cultural integration Questions: o Whether respondents would find it beneficial to have immigrants mandatorily participate in cultural events o Do you reside within a community that is primarily occupied by: Caucasian, Other immigrants, Fellow ethnic immigrants o Why do immigrants feel segregated from the rest of Canadian society? o Why do immigrants have difficulty transitioning/settling into life in Canada - Income discrimination Questions: - ‘Does higher gov funding on immigration settlements decrease the level of poverty among new immigrants?” - Settlement program/Govt funding Questions: - How often immigrants utilize settlement programs and how they learn about these programs o How many govt funded immigrant settle programs do you know of? o How many of these programs have you participated in? - What effect does govt funding of immigration services have on immigrants’ career success? - Does the CDN govt provide equal opportunities and resources to all Canadian immigrants?

I think one last thing we need to keep in mind is this question........... "How many government funded immigrant settlement programs do you know of? a. More than 10 b. 6 - 9 c. Less than 5 d. None" "How many of these programs have you participated in? (skip this question if you answered "d" in the last question) a. All of them b. Some of them c. None of them".......... counts for 2 questions.

I believe the easiest & most impartial way for us as a group to focus our questions may be to use the 5 examples that Prof. Owens gave us in the original thread... and gear one research question to each example provided. *e.g. accommodation, assimilation, multiculturalism, tolerance, language etc*

Do we think this is a reasonable idea to move forward with?

Hey everyone,

I think everyone has some really good ideas. I just want to remind everyone that we have to collaboratively condense all this information above into 5 research questions. So far from all that i've read, most questions propose two theoretical factors, and i think now we need to 'operationalize' to get two measurable factors. I think instead of getting onto the topic of definition differences and continuing to increase our scope, we should start condensing everyone's thoughts into questions that we can actually use for the survey.

Heres just a brief summary of what questions were provided above...

- How is Information miscommunicated to new immigrants due to language barriers? - Cultural integration Questions: o Whether respondents would find it beneficial to have immigrants mandatorily participate in cultural events o Do you reside within a community that is primarily occupied by: Caucasian, Other immigrants, Fellow ethnic immigrants o Why do immigrants feel segregated from the rest of Canadian society? o Why do immigrants have difficulty transitioning/settling into life in Canada - Income discrimination Questions: - ‘Does higher gov funding on immigration settlements decrease the level of poverty among new immigrants?” - Settlement program/Govt funding Questions: - How often immigrants utilize settlement programs and how they learn about these programs o How many govt funded immigrant settle programs do you know of? o How many of these programs have you participated in? - What effect does govt funding of immigration services have on immigrants’ career success? - Does the CDN govt provide equal opportunities and resources to all Canadian immigrants?

I think one last thing we need to keep in mind is this question........... "How many government funded immigrant settlement programs do you know of? a. More than 10 b. 6 - 9 c. Less than 5 d. None" "How many of these programs have you participated in? (skip this question if you answered "d" in the last question) a. All of them b. Some of them c. None of them".......... counts for 2 questions.

I believe the easiest & most impartial way for us as a group to focus our questions may be to use the 5 examples that Prof. Owens gave us in the original thread... and gear one research question to each example provided. *e.g. accommodation, assimilation, multiculturalism, tolerance, language etc*

Do we think this is a reasonable idea to move forward with?

I also agree that we need to have a draft of questions to work with now so that we could ameliorate them.

I was also wondering if we could narrow our sample down to surveying only those that would identify themselves as immigrants (hence first generation Canadians). If so, then we would not need to ask the following question.

- What is your status in Canada? (a) permanent residence (b) international student (c) Canadian born citizen (d) other - this is to identify the person

Below is my attempt at condensing what we have discussed into a few survey questions

(1) I am financially better off now than before immigrating to Canada. (a) strongly agree (b) Agree (c) Neutral (d)Disagree (d) Strongly disagree - to see if immigrants are better off or worst off after settling in Canada

(2) Most people in my community are of the same ethnic background as me. (a) strongly agree (b) Agree (c) Neutral (d)Disagree (d) Strongly disagree - maybe those who selected "agree" to the previous question would choose "disagree" in this question. If so, then perhaps this suggests that immigrants whom are unable to integrate themselves with people of another ethnicity earn much less than their other more multicultural counterparts

(3) I primarily speak English at work. (a) strongly agree (b) Agree (c) Neutral (d)Disagree (d)strongly disagree - If "agree" = then see if they are now earning much more as Canadian immigrants than they did back where they came from. (to see if there is correlation between English language ability and income)

(4) I feel included and integrated socially and politically as a Canadian citizen. (a) strongly agree (b) Agree (c) Neutral (d)Disagree (d) Strongly disagree

(5) I participated in ______ government funded programs as a new immigrant. (a) 1 - 2 (b) 3 - 4 (c) 5 - 6 (d)7 - 8 (e)9 - 10 or more - see if new immigrants that participated in more governmental programs are economically better off relative to those whom participated in less gov. funded programs.

Lets come up with questions to work with, and to vote for the best five perhaps by Sunday since this assignment is due on Tuesday. Please edit! I'm not sure if some questions like "i primarily speak English at work" is too simplistic or not.

• wording, sequence of questions...etc

I have a quick question. I like how many of the questions we've come up with so far specifically target respondents who are recent immigrants, but I'm unsure if this fits the purpose of the omnibus survey project. Did Prof. Owen explicitly say that the target survey sample are B.C. residents in general, or did I just imagine that detail while dozing off during the lectures? Since we have to actually go find real life respondents to answer our survey after we have designed them, how realistic would it be that every person would know 5-6 recent immigrants to answer our questions? If my suspicions are correct, we should stick with asking how the general populace views immigration services/assimilation/cultural diversity rather than specifically only questioning immigrant respondents.

Hi All,

I’ve gone through everyone’s discussion contributions and would just like to first say that I am so thankful for working with such a focused and passionate group on this survey assignment. I do really like the topics that we have come up with so far especially regarding immigrant services. As much discussion has already been made on the topic itself, I’d like to take the time to examine the survey aspect of this project.

Here, I have to agree with Lucy. I feel that we have gotten a bit ahead of ourselves. Since this survey is only five questions long, it would be really difficult to find anything if we spread the questions out to much. I think rather than having five questions targeting different areas, it might be better if we had a succession of topics on the same topic. I think that before we really try to make our survey questions, we should first come up with a specific topic. Like we have been taught to do in class, we should first propose a theory then generate a hypothesis; only after that can we move into formulating concrete survey questions. Otherwise I feel that our survey would cover too broad a topic and the results we receive may not be enough for a good analysis.

Therefore, after reading through the previous discussions and recaps, it seems that we all have an interest in immigration opportunities once they arrive in Canada. However, I think we should also keep in mind who our demographic target is. Some questions/roadblocks we might encounter are:

• Are we as a group going to go out and look for recent immigrants to do our survey? Or are we going to focus on student groups in UBC? Or do we want a range of both? – I think our survey demographic will have a large impact on our result. Immigrant or International university students will have a different level of income on say a refugee – how are we going to analyze or value this? – As well are we willing or do we have the time to go into our communities and look for respondents? o Also, how do we differentiate rich immigrants from poor ones? o Will immigrants be willing to reveal their level of income? (some people may feel uncomfortable with this, so how do we phrase this question) o Maybe we should target students so it is easier to carry out our survey? • If we are looking at a predominantly immigrant base, depending on whether they are new/old immigrants our group may have trouble communicating due to language barriers. Do we, within our group have people who are multilingual enough to guarantee a diverse demographic of respondents? o How do we phrase the questions so our survey respondents don’t get confused with the language? Or how do we communicate the survey to them (Orally or Written)? o Perhaps it may be easier if we narrow our survey down to comparing between two groups instead having a great span. This might make it easier to communicate and narrow our survey down and not have it so ambitious. • The last pitfall might be how do we eliminate survey bias. As an example, if we finished our survey questions and decided to ask them, how will we do it? Will we send it to all of our friends on MSN/Facebook or will be stand somewhere and ask random people. In both these situations we risk incurring a lot of biased responses. Are friend circles are probably pretty narrow and like minded. And if we stand somewhere random we might only get the type of people that frequent that area.

Ideally, I think we should within the next few days narrow down what is it exactly that we hope to get out of this survey, be it how comfortable new immigrants feel when they arrive in Canada, how easy it is to assimilate into I suppose Vancouver culture, or the difference between poor and rich immigrants. Does anyone want to propose a theory? A hypothesis? • A possible preliminary question would be – Do Chinese immigrants find it easier to assimilate because there is a large Chinese community in Vancouver as opposed to _________ other immigrant group?

We should finalize what our survey demographic would be. (Personally I think UBC students would be easiest to survey since we have access to them)

Anyways, thank you for reading my very long post. I am looking forward to our future discussions. (Also should we set a time to meet up?)

In trying to answer my own question, I had another look at the survey assignment outline (in lecture notes 2.1 & 2.2 on Vista). It does say that the survey will be targeting BC respondents, but it does not say anything about random sampling (e.g. anyone on the street of Downtown Vancouver), selective sampling (e.g. people living in immigration population-dense neighbourhoods), or samples of convenience (e.g. friends and family members). Furthermore, I'm confused as to exactly how many questions we are asking in the practical exercise... are we asking only the 5 questions that we made up about immigration settlement, or are we asking all 50 questions as a class set to each respondent? For me, it would make more sense if it's the latter because having a large sample set with different questions would defeat the purpose of an omnibus survey....

I also had another look at the survey wiki page. It says, "And remember that you'll be able to use all the other variables we collect: attitudes on all the other topics we're going to ask about, plus some socio-demographic and political variables that I'll tack on to the survey, like age, gender, place of residence, party attachments, past voting behaviour, etc. " This leads me to believe that we are suppose to construct a survey targeted towards a general BC audience. The latter part of that quote will definitely help us identity who holds what attitude.

So, with that in mind, I came up with a few possible questions. One of the question I thought of is a modification of my earlier idea. So I though instead of specifically asking "how strongly is your decision to hire an employee affected if he or she speaks with a non-English/French accent?", one might ask:

"How strongly is your decision to socially accept another Canadian resident affected if he or she speaks with a non-English/French accent?" I foresee a few problems with this question. First of all, how does one define "social acceptance"? Can we make with more clear without making it too specific/impossible to generalize? Secondly, how does one define a "Canadian resident?" Does it mean a certain legal status, or does it simply define any person who lives in Canada? How can we explain this to the respondents?

The second question I've been brainstorming has to do with legal issues, specifically, the multiculturalism section under the Charter. It reads, in all its glorious obscurity: "27. This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians." There are a few questions we can ask about sec. 27. For instance, the most obvious:

"In the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, Section 27 is dedicated to the value of multiculturalism. It reads, 'This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.' How strongly do you agree with this Section?"

Or, a little more complex:

"In the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, Section 27 is dedicated to multiculturalism. It reads 'This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.' How strongly do you feel that the Section 27 should be more strongly and/or more specifically worded in order to protect the legal rights of Canadians who belong to neither English nor French cultural heritage?"

And finally, the last questions is probably the most general. I've always been a little cynical of Canada touting its own horn about its "celebrating" of multiculturalism, I thought this might be an interesting question to ask.

"Multiculturalism is an official policy of Canada. On a numerical scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "extremely disrespectful toward cultural diversity and its related socio-political issues," 5 being "tolerating toward cultural diversity and its related socio-political issues", and 10 being "extremely respectful toward cultural diversity and its related socio-political issues," how respectful do you think is the Canadian government toward multiculturalism?"

I agree with what the last two ladies brought up - we need to bring a focus point and then propose a theory and hypothesis before we can develop the five concrete survey questions that are asked of us. It also seems too narrow for us to target a specific demographic, thus we should make these questions correspond to the BC residents in general.

The questions that Lucy proposed seem to be developing a theory that addresses attitudes and tolerance towards multiculturalism and immigration (if I'm not mistaken?)My only concern is that are we going to be researching into a casual relationship between attitudes/tolerance and settlement issues that immigrants face? Or is it that perhaps we would be left to assume a casual relationship as it may not directly deal with immigrant settlement, thus not fully addressing the issue of settlement directly. I like the third question you posed about multiculturalism, although I think using the term "respectful" may be misleading as what would this exactly mean? Not everyone may agree on what being "respectful" exactly entails, which could include showing public support for, or having an open mind to, or giving funding to promote multiculturalism, etc. Perhaps we should reword this question in more specifics, such as questioning whether the government puts priority or importance(i.e. funding, public support, etc.) into this policy, whether the respondents actually know of any government actions to support this policy, etc.

If we were to go along with this question, I think would be back to specifically government involvement in affecting immigrant settlement. That is whether government support, be that in funding, offered programs, opportunities, etc. increase/decrease immigrant income, careers, etc. Other questions that would be within this area of research could be the questions that we used previously, such as asking if respondents knew or participated in any programs or opportunities that the government had provided, and then perhaps within the same question ask how much of an impact these have had on their income, career, etc. If we were to make it a survey open to BC respondents in general, we should ask if they know of such programs, and how important or what impacts they think these to have on immigrants.

As has already been mentioned, I think we need to narrow down our research interests to maybe 1 or 2 questions and come up with survey questions that correspond.

I like Lucy's strain of questions on multiculturalism, perhaps we could formulate one research question around that. For example "Does Canada's official multicultural policy enhance immigrant settlement/integration?"

I'm not sure how we could figure that out, unless we draw a link between people who view the policy as important and people who "like" immigrants/ immigrants who have had an easy time settling. This is also kind of tricky, because I don't think a lot of people would answer these sorts of questions negatively.

As for definitions, could we just ask them to identify themselves? I'm sure amount of time in Canada and legal status would be part of the default questions in the beginning, but we could ask them how they identify. I would be interested to see how many people say Canadian, immigrant, other national identity, and how that would correspond with their legal status.

I've been looking around through other groups' discussions to see how they are organizing themselves, and it seems like a few of them are starting new threads for each question. Perhaps we should do that, and then comment individually on the questions; that way we'll be more focused and our responses won't be quite so lengthy.

Hi again!

Okay so I read all the responses from where I last left off and wow, first of all we definetly have to narrow down the AREA of research and come up with a question or two. I like how there have been a few questions proposed earlier (5), that's a start, and after reading other ones I came up with an idea for a question,

First however, like I mentioned before, and the previous student supported, the respondants should identify themselves within categories: recent immigrant (first generation), immigrant (more general, for those who have been here for 5 years +) and Canadian. As mentioned before, it is important as well as very interesting to see What KIND of person (even if they are clasifying themselves as that) is anwering which answers in our research (perhaps this way we can detect more biases or external/third variables affecting the answers). AS for who should be asked, I suggest spreading it around so we are not faced with the sample convenience problem which may lack validity for population generalizability and our further research. Thus, maybe asking a few people walking downtown, some on a bus stop, some on campus and others at a grocery store or rec center. This will be able to take a little bit of the different types of people- perhaps working people, metropolitan, family members, students, etc.

Now, as for the question, we could focus on a question like this: "How the government's program initiatives for facilitating immigrants affects the allocation of the immigrant in to that area?" Here we can see how much the government is thus affecting immigration in to regions, like BC or even Canada....I propose we do our reserach on "Vancouver and the lowermainland"- that way if we are all from different places around here we can very well have a valid sampling variety of respondants, also as they would differ if we ask in different places (also depicting different lifestyles) like in the city area, bust stop, etc.

a Theory to that question I proposed could be something involving governmental efforts and programs established in the Vancouver and lowermainland area and its effect on immigrants there. How those programs provide assitance and resources to integrate as an immigrant, and in effect the decision of immigrant allocation in a particular area within Van. Something alongthose lines...

Anyways, let's start agreeing on the basics and then progress together with the details. LEt me know what you think about what I have suggested and even the question and theory etc..

Hey guys; wow that's a lot of responses, you guys are way more on top of this for me. Sorry for getting to this so late, my internet was down yesterday and the night before, it's been pretty lame. I look forward to working with you all, it looks like this group is quite motivated (which is a relief). I'll try and add what I can into the discussion here, but you guys have done a great job so far.

@Lucy with regards to your survey question on multiculturalism in Canada: I like that direction of thought you took there though and we should definitely explore multiculturalism further as a potential area for our survey's focus. We should be really very careful when crafting these sorts of questions however word-wise. This is a good start, but asking this question if we use terms like "disrespectful" can inadvertently prime readers towards certain responses, so when we do the real thing we should just keep it in mind. I know you just threw it out there though so no need for me to have a fussy-fit over wording.

In general, perhaps we should start breaking down our questions into big chunks? Start very broad with areas of focus (i.e. "issues of multiculturalism among immigrants in Canada" or "opportunities for employment amon newly settled immigrants) and then perhaps start a voting or, consensus measure so that we can get a better of idea of where we're going to focus on. If we can choose an area of focus, we can break it down even further and pick out some specifics so that we can put together a theory and generate a hypothesis. If this seems like a bad idea just, feel free to dismiss it, but if this works I'll try and summarize some of the general areas of focus people have come up with so far:

Income inequality among new immigrants in Canada (i.e. poverty levels among new immigrants in Canada before and after settlement, differences in opportunity between wealthy/unwealthy, skilled/non-skilled immigrants, etc.)

Employment opportunities among new immigrants in Canada (i.e. likelihood an employer will hire someone with a thick accent, differences between work opportunities among anglophone vs. non-anglophone/first world vs. third world/etc. immigrants and non-immigrants, etc., skilled immigrant return rate to professions of expertise ''after'' immigration)

Government assistance and resources for new immigrants in Canada (i.e. work assistance and training programs, outreach for schooling and language instruction, effectiveness of programs addressing income inequality actually reducing income inequality, etc.)

Attitudes towards new immigrants and immigrant attitudes towards Canada (i.e. attitudes among locals towards immigrants in terms of employment, assimilation, multiculturalism, etc., attitudes among new immigrants towards their adopted country, differences of attitudes between immigrants seeking residency vs. citizenship, attitudes among new immigrants towards effectiveness of gov't programs and/or perceived gov't outreach)

Multiculturalism as a policy towards immigrants (i.e. does multiculturalism exist as an attitude among Canadians/Is it important/Do immigrants feel as if stipulations within the Charter are functioning in their day to day lives, differences between new immigrants' feelings on multiculturalism between those settled in heterogenous vs. homogenous (from their cultural perspective)areas, etc.)

Those are the 5ish generalized suggestions I've seen so far. Feel free to critique or add more (thanks Min for pre-summarizing most of it for me). What I'd suggest is that we break these down into, as Mayra says, different thread topics. Have everyone 'vote' for one they'd like to do and we'll just do a plurality; if there's a tie we'll do a run off (majoritarian style). We're all poli sci students right? (ha). These are purposefully made veryyyyy general, so don't get too caught up in the wording or definitions yet (add or supplement though, for instance if you don't want to just explore new immigrants that is certainly something worthy considering). Once we've selected a specific topic to focus on, we can again narrow the focus of our research and start collaborating on a specific area we're interested in studying (i.e. "does multiculturalism exist as an attitude among Canadians?") and start looking into how it's possible to do that, what kind of survey questions we'd need to ask it (knowing we need and can only use 5 in mind), how we're going to approach it, etc. That way we're not wading through the dark. If someone wants they can put up the other threads that'd be great but I can do it later if not.

Hey everyone,

It's good to read through everyone's two cents and as Midas said, everyone appears to be motivated and this is evident through everyone's thoughtful posts and the abundance of possible research questions everyone has brainstormed!

Since we do have several proposed RQ's, I think it is important that we break up our generalized ideas into separate threads to discuss ways to improve upon them as well as cast votes on whichever questions we prefer. With that being said, we should make sure to avoid ambiguous phrases in our questions to avoid confusing our potential samples. Concepts such as "social acceptance" lacks a concrete definition and may possibly confuse our respondents. Also, let's keep our questions BC based and avoid "in Canada" since our samples will most likely be based off of BC immigrants rather than immigrants from across Canada (I may be wrong on this, and if so please correct me lol).

After reading the generalized questions, I have one small concen, realize they are purposely vague but I wonder if the last two questions on attitudes and multiculturalism are topics that can be narrowed down so that the respondants undestand exactly what is being asked. Do you think those topis are easy to measure too? I think a lot of third/ exterior variables might have a huge influence o those type of questions, don't you think? Income and resources provided, although not my favourite topics, will yield more measurable independent variables..

What do you think? However, I still prefer one of the last two questions, ofcourse, done in a more specific way. So, let's get everyone's thoughts on this topic of chosing and analyzing those topics and their measurability and possible results etc...

Hi everyone,

So we've clearly branched out and started working on several research questions which have all resulted in great input and potential questions for the survey. Since all of this needs to be done by Tuesday, I think we all need to come to some sort of consensus on a topic and run with it in order to refine those particular questions. So far, the most activity is in "Income inequality and opportunities among immigrants in BC" so maybe we should all regroup and work on those questions? All of the research questions suggestions have been really interesting, but obviously we can't incorporate all of them. Does anyone else have any preferences?

If everyone could reply to this thread by Monday, and state which research question they prefer, then we can get everything together to post by Tuesday. We'll just go ahead with majority vote, even if we dont get everyone's input.

I personally prefer to go along with "Income inequality and opportunities among immigrants in BC" because like Viara pointed out, there's been a lot of discussion and editing going on in that thread and things seem to be piecing together pretty solidly.

"Income inequality and opportunities among immigrants in BC" just because i think we can get more "solid" answers that way - whatever that means

although i am personally more interested in education .

I like Income inequality as well. Though I do think the education topic would be interesting to work with.

Hi everyone. I agree that "income inequality and opportunities among immigrants in BC" is a solid topic to run with. A potentially important factor in this is the status under which a person came to Canada. Three major classifications are economic, family unification, and refugee/asylum seekers. A persons economic reality in Canada would be largely influenced by their reason for coming. For example, if a person was able to come here based on their economic status, they are clearly a person with a substantial amount of money and education. They are therefore not only starting off with money, but have a good deal of income-earning potential. Family reunification could go either way, as it does not ensure that a person is well-off, but it does mean that they have kin already settled here, which gives them a variety of advantages (a place to live, possible connections to employment, etc.). Refugees and asylum seekers are clearly the least advantaged from the start. Once permanent status is received (which is instant upon their approval to stay), they are given a few months of government assistance then they are on their own. So by simply knowing the status under which an immigrant comes we may have a good place to start. Perhaps that should be the first question?