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Social Capital and Economic Integration of Visible Minority Immigrants in Canada

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Abstract

On the basis of the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey, we study the role of human and social capital in explaining the personal earnings of foreign born persons working full-time, aged 25–64 years. The income differences associated with given visible minority categories are reduced after controls for human and social capital, but the differences remain significant, especially for men and for all but the Chinese category. Among the human capital factors, education and speaking English or French at home are positively related with earnings, while having the highest degree or diploma from outside of Canada is negative for all groups, although not statistically significant. Among the social capital considerations, trust was associated with higher income, while lack of participation in community organizations was an earnings disadvantage. Counter to expectations, individualization, or weak bonding and weak bridging ties, was associated with higher income, for men and for the other/multiple visible minorities and white immigrants.

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Notes

  1. The word “Asians” is a combination of South and South East Asians and should be read accordingly in rest of the manuscript.

  2. For example, if ln(Y) = β 0 + β 1*(females) where the coefficient for females is (−0.514), the coefficient in the original scale of income is the ratio of the mean income for females over males, i.e., exp (−0.514) = 0.5981. In terms of percentage change, we subtract (0.5981 − 1) = −0.402. Now, we can say that females earn 40.2% less than males.

  3. When introducing social capital variables one by one (not shown in the table), the introduction of bonding and bridging social capital removes the disadvantage associated with not speaking an official language with friends, for Asians, Chinese and Blacks.

  4. Due to the proxy measures for bridging and bonding social capital, the causality of relationship of bridging and bridging social capital with the earnings of immigrants may present spurious relationship. Furthermore, given the dynamic nature of bonding and bridging social capital, the categorization of individuals may change over time and these trajectories cannot be measured in our data. See Ryan et al. (2008) for a detailed discussion of dynamic nature of bonding and bridging social capital.

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Acknowledgement

The authors are most thankful to colleagues who have been very generous with suggestions for improving the manuscript: Teresa Abada, Rajulton Fernando, Eric Tenkorang, and two anonymous reviewers for the Journal of International Migration and Integration.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2

    Muhammad Raza, Roderic Beaujot & Gebremariam Woldemicael

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  1. Muhammad Raza
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  2. Roderic Beaujot
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Correspondence to Muhammad Raza.

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Raza, M., Beaujot, R. & Woldemicael, G. Social Capital and Economic Integration of Visible Minority Immigrants in Canada. Int. Migration & Integration 14, 263–285 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-012-0239-3

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