Recruitment and Retention in the Atlantic Provinces
Research team: Michael Haan, University of New Brunswick; Yoko Yoshida, Dalhousie University; Carlo Lavoie, University of Prince Edward Island
Institutional partner: Charles Ayles, Population Growth Division, New Brunswick
Atlantic Canadian provinces are relatively new to recruiting and retaining immigrants and, consequently, do not generally have a well-developed knowledge base around best practices, return on investment in settlement services, or even on basic success levels. The research aims to help Atlantic Provinces improve their policies to recruit and retain immigrants.
The study will use the Longitudinal Immigrant Database to examine recruitment and retention in the Atlantic provinces. The focus will be on initial landing, length of stay at first destination, and secondary relocation patterns.
The research will have two parts: First, immigrants to each province will be profiled according to their retention rates, source country, stated destination, principal applicant marital status, and number of children. The profile will also include admission category and economic establishment. Second, the likelihood of immigrants staying in their original province of residence will be analyzed using as explanatory variables their individual characteristics (e.g., language skills, education, source country, admission category, economic establishment), household characteristics (e.g., children, family size), and community characteristics (e.g., population size, size of ethnic community, official language minority community). The findings will help Atlantic Provinces to better direct their recruitment and retention efforts by targeting certain types of immigrants for certain regions. The research will also help to identify immigrants who are more likely to follow through on their stated locational intentions so that regions with low numbers of immigrants can target newcomers who are more likely to come.
