Income inequality and opportunities among immigrants in BC

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