Question content, Scope, Purpose

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.