Abstract In this article the writer discusses that the patterns of immigration by blacks, and especially black women, over this century demonstrate discriminatory and preventive measures by the Canadian government. The paper relates that this pattern is best understood through the structural functional perspective because immigration policy is designed to ensure that Canadian society is of a certain type. The writer explains that the Canadian government permits certain quotas of immigrants into the country at specific times for labor needs. However, it also carefully controls immigration and prevents family formation. This paper argues that the intention of the Canadian government is and always has been to ensure that blacks and people of color would never be a dominant group and have access to power in the country.
From the Paper "Immigration policy provided a means to cope with labour shortages while it also defined what is meant by a suitable permanent citizen. That definition was determined by race, ethnicity, class, and also by gender. Black women from the Caribbean were in the worst position. Black workers received half the pay for performing the same work as whites. For domestic workers, conditions went beyond discrimination since they had to endure intolerable conditions of no free time, unpaid overtime, and had to live in. The live-in requirement guaranteed that the women could not form families."
Abstract This paper explains that Canadian senior immigrants are more vulnerable to social isolation and exclusion than Canadian-raised seniors; therefore, it is important to consider the importance of social inclusion for this population. The author points out that problems, such as the lack of social and family support, the lack of knowledge of the English/French language and the lack of community resources have resulted in senior immigrants becoming more socially excluded. The paper stresses that, to encourage social inclusion, social workers need to help break down these barriers, which have caused senior immigrants to face problems of accessibility to services. The author underscores that it is important to not homogenize the senior population but rather to offer culturally sensitive and accessible programs that meet the needs of specific immigrant senior populations and that encourage them to meet their own specific needs.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Senior Immigrants: Exploring Assumptions and Reality
Social Exclusion to Social Inclusion
Barriers to Services
Recommendations
Conclusion
From the Paper "Contemporary Canadian society is among the most diverse in the world: the 2001 Census lists around two hundred ethnic groups. Among the immigrant population, 68% of all immigrant seniors are originally from Europe and 19% come from Asia (one in five). This development is the result of a change in immigration patterns since the 1960s, when the trend of admitting immigrants from Europe shifted to one admitting people from all over the world, especially Asia. For the purpose of this paper, senior immigrants can be defined by age as legal immigrants 65 years old and above."
Tags: holistic, inclusion, language, barriers, process
Abstract This paper examines how Chinese and Blackimmigrants have fared in Canadian society. In the face of social pressure and at the same time, it must be recognized that both groups have faced substantial discrimination in Canada. This is why efforts need to be made to make Canada a more multi-cultural and tolerant society.
Abstract This paper consists of an interview with a woman who was born in Los Angeles in 1932, during the Depression to a black mother and a Mexican citizen father who had immigrated to the United States. In the paper, the interviewee speaks of her life growing up in Los Angeles and some of the challenges she faced due to her unusual parentage. She also discusses some information about her father Renaldo and how he came to America, and the experiences he had here and how he ultimately met and married her mother, Violetta. The paper also includes some discussion based upon what the interviewee learned in her studies of race and ethnicity and how one distinguishes different aspects of one's background and culture, and how this affects one's relationships with other members of the community. Finally, the paper includes a brief discussion of her siblings and her own grown children, and the decisions they themselves made in terms of selecting what they felt to be the most appropriate genetic matches for themselves, taking into account the experiences of their mother.
From the Paper "Mrs. Diaz notes that her own reading and study has taught her that "Latin" is not a racial designation, but a language designation. While her Mexican father spoke Spanish, racially he was known as a mestizo, partly of Spanish descent and partly of Aztec descent, but, she tells us, "even he could not say in exactly what proportion," since an exact genealogy was long ago lost to memory over the generations. Like most mixed Mexicans, he did not fare as well in his country as more pure-blooded Spanish, who tended to rise to the upper castes; so, he emigrated to the United States. He worked in Arizona cotton fields, then migrated to California to work in fruit orchids; after saving some money he moved to Los Angeles to get involved in a small grocery store with a couple of partners. This would have been shortly before the Depression."
Abstract The paper observes the diverse Canadian workforce as it applies to the immigrant contingent. The paper illustrates how immigrants face many struggles and inequalities when entering the workforce. The paper discusses some of these inequalities, which include earnings upon entry, cheapening of their human capital, expectations and difficulties with assimilation, and troubles with furthering their education. These problems are discussed, as well as some policy changes which Canada might implement in order to make the workplace more fair and friendly for its immigrant workers.
From the Paper "During the past century, the civilized nations of the world, most importantly those found in North America in Canada and the United States, have done much in the way of diversifying their workplaces and workforces. Minorities have been given greater opportunities for not only workforce placement and advancement, but also for better education and training, as well as overall better treatment. Yet, while native-born Canadian minorities might now be receiving better and even just treatment and opportunities, those that immigrate to Canada still are doomed to face discrimination, lesser economic and employment prospects and an overall lesser quality of life."
Abstract This paper explores how racism in America has affected public opinion toward immigration and minorities. The paper begins with a discussion of America's historic support for immigration and then argues that this support has been corrupted by racism. The paper also cites statistics about demographic changes in the U.S. over the past several decades, examining how certain minority populations have actually grown to be nearly on par with the Caucasian majority in some places. This realignment, according to the paper, has challenged some of the deeply-rooted notions of what it means to be in a majority, which, in turn, has sparked a new wave of racism from previously more tolerant quarters. The pain concludes by studying recent research efforts to to explore the structural roots of inequality in America, focusing on a Rhode Island study on the tension between strong individual rights promised to U.S. citizens and ethnic or racial discrimination against African-Americans and other minority groups.
From the Paper "The paradox of a US national identity involves multiple contradictions, such as citizenship rights promised to US citizens in contrast with differential group discrimination; of external and internal forms of racism with and through one another accepting and excluding certain categories of citizens; of civic and ethnic nationalisms that respond to the established but unstable two-faced US national identity; the combined change and continuity that has allowed American society to constantly and repeatedly transform while retaining a deeply entrenched racial hierarchy; and a deeply gendered or masculine American family ideal that constructs and hides these contradictions, at the same time. Addressing these inconsistencies, inequalities and contradictions requires listening to those with different interpretations of how it is to be treated "like one of the US national family" but actually excluded from that US national family altogether. It will mean finding a way to reconfigure that long-standing relationships among race, ethnicity and that idealized US national identity as well as working to reclaim the language of family in the process."
Abstract America as the land of opportunity is a concept that has been around since the country's inception. Americans should have the economic opportunity that is associated with this general concept. As such, the topic of income inequality is of great importance. This paper explores the effects of international trade, immigration, and unionism on income inequality.
Outline:
Abstract
Introduction
Income Inequality The Effects of International Trade on Income Inequality The Effects of Immigration on Income Inequality The Effects of the Decline of Unionism on Income Inequality Is Income Inequality Getting a Bad Rap?
Conclusion
From the Paper "Rising inequality and decreasing poverty could very well be a consistent feature of the New Economy. Rapid technological advancements have not only created great fortunes for a select few, but have also substantially improved the wages and quality of life for people at the lower end of the economic ladder. A better-educated society has also led to less poverty, while still increasing the income inequality gap, since those with college degrees have a wider spread of incomes. Although income inequality is disturbing, it is far better than poverty. More income inequality, with a faster growing economy, and less poverty is far more desirable than an economy with equal distribution of income but a high rate of poverty. This is not the first time in history that this blend of greater income inequality and reduced poverty has occurred."
Abstract This paper looks at what distinguishes an immigrant from a Canadian, and argues that this occurs, over time. The paper refers to several works to indicate educated notions of Canadian society as excluding or racist, in contrast with testimony from everyday immigrantCanadians. Becoming Canadian seems largely a process of osmosis, so that a person realizes they no longer think like persons where they came from, or otherwise are changed by the experience of living in Canada. Testimony provided by immigrants, in every case, contradicts what educated immigrant theorists have argued about Canadian society.
From the Paper "This paper owes to conversation with immigrants to Canada on the topic of when they knew they had become Canadians. Several people said they had become Canadian without realizing it, till an experience of their old culture or country made them see that they were different, that they thought differently and that their minds referred to Canada as home. Much academic literature refers marginalization, or adaptation versus assimilation, as in Eva Karpinski's collection of short stories, poems and essays on what it means to be Canadian that stresses how authors feel they do not belong or are opposed, somehow, in Canada."
Abstract This essay critically examines the issue of immigration and Canadian nation-building within a sociological perspective. A particular focus of the paper is on the contradiction between the ideal of immigration, as reflected in the changes to immigration policy in the 1960s and the introduction of official multiculturalism in the 1970s, and the realities of immigration in regard to its being embedded in the social class and power distribution structures of Canada. In this context, the paper argues that in our capitalist society immigration policy has primarily served the interests of capital in the form of labor force reproduction. This being said, it is then argued that the existence of a multicultural and multiracial society represents a clear challenge to the existing power distribution in Canadian society; a challenge that has been met by policies such as official multiculturalism which are instruments by which the capitalist state seeks to control and channel dissent and thereby ensure the perpetuation of the Canadian status quo.
From the Paper "Thus, the labour force of Canada was not biologically reproducing itself on a generational basis by the later decades of the twentieth century. In order to meet this shortfall, the Government of Canada resorted to immigration to supply a labour force to meet the demands of the Canadian economy. These demands are complex, for the Labour Force Reproduction model indicates that the economy needs a labour supply not only in terms of production but also to consume the goods produced. As a result, in the years in which the Canadian fertility rates were declining (after 1956) the Canadian immigration levels were increasing. From 1954 to 1992 Canada accepted 5.7 million immigrants. These immigrants fulfilled a wide number of economic roles in Canadian society, from contributing as business class immigrants and supplying entrepreneurial investment funds, to those who work in the commercial and corporate sectors. In addition, we must not forget the significant numbers of immigrants who worked as unpaid labour - often women - and so subsidized the paid labour force in Canada."
Abstract The problem for immigrants to Canada is cultural confusion. Immigrants do not know to which culture, that of their original country or that of Canada, they belong. This is the problem discussed by Bannerji in her essays on cultural conflicts for Canadianimmigrants. In this paper I argue that Bannerji does not support the Canadian government's policy of "multiculturalism" towards the cultures of immigrants. Yet, while she retains an interest in her original country of India, Bannerji does not seem to have many cultural traditions of her home country. This is, I think, a sign of the cultural confusion that she says immigrants have.
Abstract This paper explains that, of all the ethnic groups to migrate to British North America, the Irish are perhaps the most neglected and ignored in Atlantic-Canadian history. This paper discusses the history of their arrival and their absorption into Canadian culture and society. It also examines where they lived and why these areas were chosen.
From the Paper "The Scottish settlers are widely acknowledged, after all Nova Scotia means New Scotland, and the French identity is strong from when the area was united under the title of Acadia. The English have a long Maritimes history basing most of the colonial war with the French, and the Aboriginal Canadians existed in the area at least one thousand years before any of the others. However, since European colonization began, the Irish have always been present, with the largest concentration in Saint John, New Brunswick, a primary immigration port in the New World, and a city with stronger connections to Ireland than Boston, Massachusetts. In fact Saint John was the destination for more than thirty thousand Irish fleeing the Potato Famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1854, with roughly sixteen thousand of them arriving during 1847, called Black 47 due to the fact that it was the worst year of the famine."
Abstract This paper reviews the defining characteristics of the Canadian government's public policies regarding immigration and settlement in recent years, and the emphasis upon the economic value to Canada of immigrants and immigration. This essay argues, that if one examines Canadianimmigration and settlement policy in a larger historical context, one can recognize how both racism and sexism have been played important roles as primary factors in shaping these policies.
Abstract In this article, the writer looks at the approaches taken by Himani Bannerji and Neil Bissoondath when discussing the Canadian model vis-a-vis immigration. In comparing and contrasting the two, the writer notes that it becomes evident that Bannerji, while she may very well have solid grounds for her vehement stance with regards to Canada and its treatment of new immigrants, is also guilty of being very selective in terms of how she defines the Canadian society of which she is a part. On the other hand, the writer points out that Bissoondath offers a rebuke that, because of its moderate tone and use of example strikes a chord with the reader; more than that, he explains how Canadian approaches to culture institutionalize incompetence and make race a criterion in matters where it should have no place. The writer maintains that in the end, Neil Bissoondath's belief that Canadian multiculturalism encourages omission and self-deception is a stirring critique that resonates.
From the Paper "At this point, a number of things must be said. First of all, being designated a "visible minority" in Canada does not necessarily have the pejorative connotation Bannerji applies to it. For one thing, "visible minorities" are viewed favorably for affirmative action programs in both the workplace and in post-secondary institutions; secondly, given the aggressive, interventionist nature of Canadian multicultural policies (something Neil Bissoondath will discuss later), it is difficult to countenance the idea that being designated a minority in Canada makes one automatically marginalized - or subject to special "control" by the state. After all, Canada has some of the strongest anti-discrimination and workplace harassment laws in the world; therefore, if anything, being designated a "visible minority" grants someone protection from abuse and (if the wording of federal hiring policies is to be taken seriously) a "leg up" in the scramble for society's spoils."
This is a research proposal that was done to look at the effects of poverty on immigration in Canada. The proposal attempts to answer the question: Why are Canada’s immigrants more likely to end up in poverty than native-born Canadians.
3,660 words (approx. 14.6 pages), 6 sources, 2001, $ 101.95
Abstract This is a research proposal that was done to look at the effects of poverty on immigration in Canada. In Canada, immigrants are more likely to live under the poverty line than native Canadian-born citizens. The proposal attempts to answer the question: Why are Canada's immigrants more likely to end up in poverty than native-born Canadians. It is a qualitative proposal, which includes a literature review. The author discusses census data and utilizes interview questions and answers. The proposal was written in first person narrative, and is 13 pages long, including bibliography as well as a potential newspaper ad for gathering applicants to the study.
From the Paper "This study will hopefully show why it is that immigrants to Canada , at least those who arrived since 1981, are more likely to live in poverty than native-born Canadians. It will attempt to find possible solutions to prevent this from happening to future immigrant populations, whether the problem lies in the hands of the immigration system, or if it has to do with something else. Optimistically, my study will also serve to educate the public and policy makers to adopt different views on immigration and immigrants than the ones currently harbored by many. In my opinion, education of the public and lawmakers will prove crucial after the findings to start finding ways to make some changes to get these people out of poverty, which would benefit everyone."
Abstract This paper discusses the challenges facing immigrants in the Canadian work force. More specifically, the paper examines three primary problems that immigrants face. The first is the difficulty of even getting in the country. The second is the problem of language. The third is the non-recognition of skills.
