Immigration And Immigrant Groups In Canada

Article Summary The article, The Colour of Poverty: A Study of the Poverty of Ethnic and Immigrant Groups in Canada (Kazempiur & Halli, 2000) sets out to answer the question of how different groups of immigrants are performing economically. Taking into account the ethnic origin, period and age at immigration and immigrant’s geographical location within Canada, the authors are able to examine each group individually and compare them. In publishing this article, the authors clear up the issue of why previous research involving immigrants ' economic performance have had mixed results. Their research shows that to get accurate results one cannot study immigrants as one group.

By analyzing the data from the 1991 Canadian census the authors establish

Even when they are living in cities with high poverty rates, the average citizen of that city tends to be better off than people of visible minorities. Western European immigrants tend to have poverty rates lower than the city’s average poverty rate. While alternatively visible minority immigrants tend to have a poverty rate higher than the average poverty rate of the city.

The authors also compared poverty rates of immigrants with their age at when they immigrated to Canada. They found that people who immigrated to Canada when they were 10-19 years old are more likely to be poor than immigrated during earlier or later years of their lives. While the authors suggest that more research needs to be done in this area, they say that it could be due to the struggles young people naturally face during their adolescent years.

Critical Analysis of Journal

Breaking down the data shows the contrast between different groups of immigrants and shows that while the average immigrant from a non-visible minority does average economically, immigrants from visible minorities are more likely to struggle. A disadvantage of the authors using only scientific data in their article is the lack of data on certain aspects of immigrants. They discuss that while data shows an interesting trend that people who immigrated at a younger age have higher poverty rates than those who immigrated when they were older there is no scientific research available to explain that phenomena. The article is appropriate to the presented research question because the authors suggest that visible minority groups are poor due to their ethnic origins rather than because they made poor choices in