Recent Immigrants, Earlier Immigrants and the Canadian-Born: Personal and Social Trust
Executive summary
This research report draws on data from the Canadian sample of the fifth wave of the World Values Survey, 2006 to examine personal and social trust.
Research suggests that an increase in cultural and ethnic diversity leads to decreased levels of generalized trust and community cohesion (Putnam 2007; Stolle et al. 2008). According to the 2006 Census, the proportion of foreign-born population is the highest it has been in 75 years. Additionally, the increase in cultural-linguistic diversity brought on by immigration from changing source countries makes this research particularly relevant (Statistics Canada 2007).
This report addresses the following questions: How do recent immigrants, earlier immigrants and the Canadian-born population compare in the degree of trust they place in family members, people they know, people in their neighbourhood, Canadians in general, recent immigrants and people they meet for the first time? Are there theoretical dimensions of trust (personal and social) reflected in the data?
Trust is an important aspect of social relations and interactions. Cross-tabulations reveal that immigrants and the Canadian-born are generally trustful of others. However, the World Values Survey results show that both (recent and earlier) immigrants and the Canadian-born are found to express higher levels of distrust in recent immigrants than in Canadian people in general. Recent immigrants are found to express lower levels of trust in ‘people you know personally’ and ‘in your neighbourhood’ than earlier immigrants and the Canadian-born.
Personal and trust indices were created, and along with their corresponding analysis, reveal that a vast majority of recent immigrants (73.5%), earlier immigrants (77.6%), and the Canadian-born (79.8%) have high levels of personal trust. Medium levels of social trust are found with recent immigrants (86.8%), earlier immigrants (85.8%), and the Canadian-born (84.6%), with less than 10% of all three population groups exhibiting low levels of social trust. Results suggest that size of town may be a marker of significant differences in the response patterns of individuals in terms of both personal trust and social trust. Results show that although respondents from large urban centres (more than 500,000) are less likely than those residing in smaller cities and towns to show high levels of personal trust, they are, however found to exhibit higher levels of social trust.