Question content, Scope, Purpose

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.

JomChu‎

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"

Sze Wan Carmen Tsang‎

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.

CyrillePanadero‎

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)

AlexVanSeters‎

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.

LucyXie‎

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.

MinjeongShin‎

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?

JanYu‎

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?

JanQuinnYu‎

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.

LucyXie‎

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?)

JessicaJiang‎

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?"

LucyXie‎

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.

MinjeongShin‎

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.

MidasPanikkar‎

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).

CyrillePanadero‎

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.

MinjeongShin‎

"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.

JessicaJiang‎

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?

HeatherGauvin‎

Don't mean to jump on my own bandwagon, but I also think "income inequality" is a good topic to run with :D lol however, I do feel that ESL programs in BC is another solid topic to use as well and wouldn't mind going along with that one as well

CyrillePanadero‎

Hey! finally my internet works! anywayss yes agreed income inequality as it is interesting as that may have an effect on integration or settlement or at least the process in doing so.

However we should be careful to not generalize but let's keep an open mind as to what we can find as there are many different situations for different immigrants - as I have mentioned in my previous posts (reference to how not all wealthy are integrated from facilitation or resources- the opposite may happen where they even stay within their own little bubble with a lack of integration and civic responsabilities etc, all has been mentioned before in depth).