ARCHIVED – Recent Immigrants, Earlier Immigrants and the Canadian-Born: Personal and Social Trust
Tara Gilkinson and Geneviève Sauvé
Research and Evaluation
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
June 2010
Trust is a “complex and multidimensional phenomenon” (Khodyakov 2007, 115) and a key element of social life. Trust is often used as an indicator of social capital (Bryant and Norris 2002), social cohesion, and is at the heart of many conceptualizations of social integration (Kunz 2005). The degree to which immigrants and the Canadian-born express trust in their family, neighbourhood, as well as other Canadians has powerful micro individual, meso community and macro societal implications. For recent immigrants, trust is an important ingredient of successful integration in that it lubricates social life (Putnam 2000, 136) and enables the building of social, human and cultural capital.