ARCHIVED – Social Capital and Employment Entry of Recent Immigrants to Canada

Li Xue
Research and Evaluation
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
March 2008

There is growing evidence that the economic outcomes of recent immigrants declined in comparison with earlier cohorts (e.g. Bloom, Grenier and Gunderson 1995; Picot, Hou and Coulombe 2007). Examining the determinants of labour market outcomes for recent immigrants, including social capital components, is an essential step in understanding this phenomenon. In light of the difficulties of recent immigrants to assimilate into the Canadian labour market, the role of social capital as a mechanism for understanding the socio-economic progress of immigrants is increasingly prompting public interest (Kunz 2005). Different definitions of social capital have been used to examine broad contexts such as educational attainment (Sun 1999; Israel and Beaulieu 2004), job search (Montgomery 1991), and health services utilization (Deri 2005).

Evidence from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC)

Acknowledgement: I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my thesis supervisor, Prof. Gilles Grenier, for his valuable insights, guidance and suggestions through the work for this paper. I am very grateful to Prof. Pierre Brochu, Prof. Chris Worswick, Prof. Ravi Pendakur and Prof. Gamal Atallah for their helpful feedback on the methodologies and the drafts of this paper. This paper has also benefited from the financial support and comments from the Research and Evaluation Branch, Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Specifically, special thanks to Martha Justus, Eden Thompson, and Jessie-Lynn MacDonald who provided great continued support for completing my PhD dissertation. In addition, I am so grateful to Jessie-Lynn MacDonald, Stan Kustec, Colleen-Marie Dempsey and Jun Zhao at CIC who gave very helpful suggestions and comments on the earlier versions of the paper and related presentations.

Social Capital and Employment Entry of Recent Immigrants to Canada
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Table of contents

Abstract

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Literature Review
  • 2.1 Social capital definition and measurement
  • 2.2 Relationship between social capital and labour market outcomes
  • 2.3 Social capital in the context of immigrant labour market integration
  • 2.4 Research using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC)
• 3. Data and Methodology
• 4. Social capital indicators
  • 4.1 Social capital indicators
• 5. Model framework
  • 5.1 Theoretical environment
  • 5.2 Estimation framework and model specification
    • 5.2.1 Panel data models
• 6. Estimation and results
  • 6.1 Probability of employment
  • 6.2 Time effects
  • 6.3 Differential ethnic diversity effects
• 7. Conclusions
• 8. References
• 9. Appendix A
• 10. Appendix B

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