Research in Progress list

Pathways to Prosperity Partners with Career Edge to Examine Factors that Contribute to the Benefits of Internships for Internationally Qualified Professionals

Pathways to Prosperity is pleased to be partnering with Career Edge (a non-profit organization that arranges paid internships for internationally qualified professionals and Canadian individuals) in supporting the work of Rui Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at York University and University of Western Ontario. Through a Mitacs internship, Rui is examining Career Edge internships for internationally qualified professionals and factors that improve the labour market integration of highly qualified immigrants. The project is utilizing an online survey and follow-up interviews to address questions such as: What are the factors that contribute to the success of Career Edge internships for internationally qualified professionals? What improvements can be made to optimize their utility? Do the factors that contribute to successful internships differ according to the characteristics of the intern (e.g., country of origin, skill type)? and What are the essential features of promising practices in the provision of internships for internationally qualified professionals? Members of the supervisory team include Richard Lalonde, York University, Victoria Esses, University of Western Ontario, and Naguib Gouda and Charmaine O’Connor of Career Edge.

P2P Uses Current Datasets to Examine the Integration of Official Language Minority Immigrants

In a project funded by the Research and Evaluation Branch of CIC, the P2P will be providing a detailed analysis of the economic and sociocultural integration of official language minority immigrants in communities across Canada. Based on analyses of data from the 2006 census and the 2007-2008 Canadian Community Health Survey, the project will provide a portrait of the outcomes of official language minority immigrants, including comparisons to other immigrants and non‐immigrants. Official language minority immigrants will be identified using immigrant status and a combination of home language and knowledge of official language. The project will also examine factors that may drive successful integration, including demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, source country, recent versus established immigrants), and characteristics of the communities in which the immigrants settle. The latter will include the development of a welcome‐ability index for communities across the country. The welcome‐ability index is a newly developed measure of the capacity of communities to welcome and integrate newcomers. The final report from this project is expected to be ready by the end of May 2014. As an added benefit, the analyses conducted for this project will provide a baseline and set of procedures that can be applied to additional datasets, including the 2011 National Household Survey (for which Public Use Microdata Files will be available in June 2014) and the 2011‐2012 Canadian Community Health Survey.

The research team consists of Zenaida Ravanera, University of Western Ontario, Victoria Esses, University of Western Ontario, Aurelie Lacassagne, Laurentian University, Carlo Lavoie, University of Prince Edward Island, and Leah Hamilton, Mount Royal University. They will be assisted by graduate students. The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada (FCFA) was helpful during the project’s development and is continuing to assist with advice.

P2P Develops a Survey to Examine the Attraction, Retention, and Integration of Official Language Minority Immigrants

The P2P has extensive experience developing surveys to assess the settlement and integration of newcomers, including work on the Alberta Settlement Outcomes Survey and the Western Settlement Outcomes Survey. In a new project funded by the Research and Evaluation Branch of CIC, P2P will be designing and validating a new survey instrument to better understand the settlement and integration experiences of official language minority immigrants and the factors that drive their attraction, retention, and integration into communities. In partnership with the Environics Research Group – a P2P partner – the research will include the design, implementation, and analysis of a pilot survey of recent official language minority immigrants across Canada. The goal is to develop a reliable and valid survey that can be used in individual communities of interest, as well as in provincial and national level surveys. The survey instrument will consist of blocks of questions that can be selected for use in specific surveys tailored to the requirements of particular clients or circumstances. It will include blocks assessing:

attraction factors
retention and mobility factors
availability, access to, and satisfaction with Francophone/Anglophone institutions and activities in
the community
civic and political participation
language practices
social and cultural integration
economic integration
well-being

In addition, the survey will include questions on key demographic variables. The report on this survey development is expected to be available by the end of May 2014.

The research team consists of Leah Hamilton, Mount Royal University, Victoria Esses, University of Western Ontario, Aurelie Lacassagne, Laurentian University, Carlo Lavoie, University of Prince Edward Island, and Zenaida Ravanera, University of Western Ontario. They will be assisted by graduate students. The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada (FCFA) was helpful during the project’s development and is continuing to assist with advice.

P2P Studying Promising Integration Practices in Francophone Official Language Minority Communities

P2P will be examining promising practices that promote newcomer retention, cultural retention, and settlement assistance in Francophone minority communities. The study, funded by CIC’s Research and Evaluation Branch, builds on the P2P’s earlier work in this area and the Partnership’s commitment to improving integration by tapping the expertise of the settlement sector. The research will focus on retention activities that: (i) help build relations with employers; (ii) promote newcomer engagement into Francophone cultural institutions; and (iii)improve the delivery of services, in French, to newcomers in remote and Northern communities. The study aims to answer such questions as whether there are promising reception and integration practices that can be adapted to a wider range of circumstances and whether some institutional arrangements are more effective than others in promoting a welcoming environment. The research will also shed light on the desirability of a larger exercise to identify more examples and to address a broader set of policy concerns. The report is expected to be ready by December 2014.

The study team consists of Meyer Burstein, from P2P’s National Hub, and Gerry Clement and Sheila Petty, both from the Prairie Node. They will be assisted by graduate students from various universities across the country. The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada (FCFA) was helpful during the project’s development and is continuing to assist with contacts and advice.

Individual and Community Level Determinants of the Retention of Francophone Immigrants across Canada

The primary aim of this project, which is supported by CIC, is to document the ethnic, lingual, and human capital factors, at both the individual and community level, that affect retention of francophone immigrants, especially those outside of Quebec. The project will use the IMDB, a sophisticated, longitudinal immigrant database that consists of immigrant landing records linked to tax return data, and the 1981-2006 harmonized census files.

The research questions that the project seeks to answer include:

Where are the Francophone communities outside of Quebec?
Where do Francophone immigrant tax-filers settle? How does this differ from where they land? Do retention rates differ by province of residence? Country of citizenship? By education?
What are the individual and community characteristics that determine retention? How likely is it that a Francophone immigrant will stay in a predominantly Anglophone versus Francophone environment?

To address the third question, the project will use a multivariate model in which an individual’s migratory status (whether they have moved but stayed in the province, moved to another province, or left Canada altogether) is estimated using both personal and community characteristics. The personal characteristics include knowledge of English or French, province of residence, marital status, IMDB tax year, age, admission category, and size of the immigrating family unit. The community characteristics include information on the lingual concentration of the community (percent speaking English, French or another language), human capital (percent with a university degree), percent who are immigrants, and the community’s median income.

The report from this project is expected to be submitted to CIC by March 31, 2014, to be made publicly available according to CIC regulations. The lead researcher is Michael Haan, University of New Brunswick and co-investigator on the P2P.