Immigrant entry pathways and sense of belonging in Canada


Yvonne Chang, McGill University

Human capital selection is central to Canada’s immigration policies, which are tailored toward the mass recruitment of economic migrants, particularly high skilled workers. Immigrants’ human capital characteristics can affect their cultural competence in the host society and are closely connected to the social networks that they may rely on after entry, which may influence their sense of belonging. Moreover, belonging may be especially dependent on the nature of labor market experiences for economic migrants, who are admitted for their presumed employability (Kazemipur and Nakhaie 2014). In this study I use the 2013 General Social Survey – Social Identity to explore how sense of belonging to Canada and to the town/city varies by admission class for Chinese, Indian, and Filipino immigrants. In particular, I examine whether distinctions between primary economic applicants and tied migrants (economic dependents or family migrants) extend beyond the labor market context, given gendered admissions and household roles (Banerjee and Phan 2015; Elrick and Lightman 2016). My findings suggest that the associations between primary/tied migrant status and immigrants’ sense of belonging are cohort- and gender-specific, with some parallels between women who entered as economic dependents and men in the family class.

This paper will be presented at the following session: