Recent Immigrants, Earlier Immigrants and the Canadian-Born: Personal and Social Trust
5. Conclusion
Using data from the World Values Survey (2006), this report builds on the work of Neil Nevitte investigating the concepts of personal and social trust with a specific interest in the differences between recent immigrants, earlier immigrants, and the Canadian-born. In general, the results were similar across the three populations. This suggests that despite the many barriers new immigrants face upon arrival in a new country, and the relatively short period of time they have spent in Canada, overall, recent immigrants exhibited high levels of trust - an integration outcome that has been found to have a positive impact on the building of individual social, human and cultural capital.
The results also suggest that immigrants, who have been living in Canada for a longer period of time, expressed higher trust levels than recent immigrants. In fact, earlier immigrants were found to express the lowest levels of distrust of the three groups in their family, neighbourhood, recent immigrants and in Canadian people in general. These results highlight positive outcomes for the Canadian population at large since trust is an intrinsic element for social cohesion and sense of community.
The findings from this report also point to some notable differences between the three groups. The most prominent differences relate to trust in one’s neighbourhood, in recent immigrants and in people you meet for the first time. With respect to perception of trust in the neighbourhood, there were differences found in overall trust levels between the three populations groups. Recent immigrants reported a lower likelihood of trusting (“completely” or “somewhat” – 77.9%), compared to earlier immigrants (85.5%), and the Canadian-born (85.2%). It may be the case that because trust is something that is achieved over time, lower levels of community trust among recent immigrants may be reflective of the reality that they have spent less time in Canada than their counterparts.
When asked about the level of trust for “people you meet for the first time”, fewer new immigrants (33.6%) reported being trustful (“completely” or “somewhat”) compared to earlier immigrants and Canadian-born (46.8% and 53.0%, respectively). These findings warrant further attention, qualitative research could be utilized to provide insight into the reasons behind these comparatively lower trust levels.
For trust of recent immigrants, earlier immigrants emerged as the most trustful. Immigrants who have lived in Canada for 10 years or more were more likely (74.8%) than recent immigrants themselves (66.1%) or the Canadian-born (65.6%) to indicate that they are trustful (“completely” or somewhat”) of recent immigrants. Results also indicated that all three groups expressed much lower levels of complete trust in recent immigrants than in Canadian people in general. This finding may be indicative of higher levels of perceived social-cultural distance between the respondents and recent immigrants compared to the perceived distance between the respondents and other groups who have been living in Canada for a longer period of time. Since trust is such a fundamental component to the building of personal and work relationships and to the creation of a sense of community and belonging, these lower levels of trust in recent immigrants are cause for concern; particularly considering the Canadian-born population was found to exhibit the lowest levels of trust of all three groups. This result points to the importance of community based inclusion initiatives that cultivate welcoming communities through the creation of physical spaces for social bridging as well to the importance of programs targeted at host communities that focus on reducing racism and social exclusion. One current project that is aimed at creating inclusive communities is the Government of Canada’s welcoming community initiative (WCI). The WCI promotes diversity and supports anti-racism through educational workshops and empowering newcomers, youth and host communities by providing them with the tools to combat racism (Burstein 2008).
Furthermore, Government of Canada programs such as the Immigrant Settlement and Adaption Program and the Host program can play a significant role in increasing trust levels of immigrants. These current programs can support and promote recent immigrants settlement and integration into Canadian society by facilitating community connections, thereby increasing trust levels.
The results of the factor analysis indicated that although recent immigrants expressed lower levels of personal trust than do earlier immigrants and the Canadian-born, all three groups expressed very similar levels of social trust. Interestingly, individuals who reside in large urban centers exhibited higher levels of social trust than those living in smaller towns. Large urban centers are areas typically characterized by high levels of ethno-cultural diversity (Statistics Canada 2005; Schellenberg 2004b). Therefore, this result suggests that, in Canada, social diversity has the potential to enhance social trust. It is through interactions, communication and relationship building between diverse groups that a generalizable knowledge-based trust can be fostered.
Finally, because trust is such a fundamental component of social life, further research into the impact of trust (as a key element of social capital) and on the various aspects of immigrant integration would be beneficial in expanding our understanding of its importance.
A major limitation of this study is that the sample of recent immigrants in this survey is relatively small (n = 570). Therefore, further analysis of datasets with a larger recent immigrant sample such as the General Social Survey (GSS) or the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) may provide a better understanding of trust levels amongst recent immigrants in particular. Moreover, the analysis of longitudinal datasets like the LSIC could also be beneficial in providing insight into how trust levels change as time spent in Canada increases. Finally, the analysis of datasets such as the GSS and the LSIC which contain information on network size, quality, and diversity would also be helpful in our understanding of variables which impact trust levels.