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Article Excerpt
Abstracts
Immigration in Canada is an increasingly urban trend, with immigrants concentrating in the metropolitan gateway cities of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. While Toronto's role as an immigrant magnet is well known, its inter-relationship with other areas through the exchange of immigrants is less known and understood. That is, what role does Toronto play as a centre of immigration exchange as a way-station (or intermediary), origin, and destination? Using data drawn from the 1996 and 2001 Canadian Census Master Files, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the internal migration dynamics of Canada's immigrant population with Toronto as a focal point between 1991 and 2001.
Resumes
>. L'immigration au Canada est un phenomene de plus en plus urbain, avec des immigrants se concentrant de plus en plus dans les villes > metropolitaine de Toronto, Vancouver et Montreal. Bien que le role de Toronto en tant qu'attraction pour les immigrants soit bien connu, ses rapports avec les autres regions en termes d'echanges d'immigrants sont moins bien connus et compris. Ainsi, quel role est-ce que Toronto joue en tant comme un centre d'echange d'immigrants en tant que destination intermediaire, origine ou destination finale ?
En utilisant des donnees provenant du Recensement du Canada de 1996 et 2001, l'objectif de cet article est d'evaluer la dynamique de migration interne de la population immigrante du Canada avec Toronto comme cible entre 1991 et 2001. Trois types de flux migratoires internes sont analyses : les migrations d'etape de quatre ans et d'un an, afin de donner une analyse plus fine de la migration interne differenciee selon des differentes periodes temporelles.
En gros, les resultats suggerent que Toronto fonctionne comme un centre de redistribution des immigrants. Les echanges de migrants sont typiquement soit avec d'autres centres d'immigration tells que Vancouver ou Montreal, ou avec des regions metropolitaines avoisinantes proche de Toronto telles qu'Oshawa ou Hamilton. etant donne le role que joue Toronto dans le systeme de localisation des immigrants au Canada, il n'y a peu de donnees qui suggerent que les petits centres beneficient d'une redistribution de population a partir de cette metropole.
Introduction (1)
Immigration in Canada is an increasingly urban trend: of immigrants arriving between 1991 and 2001, 94 % resided in a Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) as compared to 59 % of the Canadian-born population (Schellenberg 2004). These new immigrant arrivals predominately concentrate in the metropolitan gateway cities of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. In 2002, 49 % of newly arrived immigrants settled in Toronto, followed by Montreal and Vancouver respectively, with 14 and 13 % (CIC 2003). While Toronto has traditionally been a major immigrant gateway into Canada, the proportion of immigrants residing in Toronto has increased, with 37.3 % of all immigrants living in Toronto in 2001, compared to just 29.7 % in 1981 (Hou 2005) and aided by the addition of more than 445,000 immigrants between 1996 and 2001 alone (McIssac 2003).
With 43.7 % of its population foreign-born, Toronto has the largest immigrant concentration in Canada and one of the largest in the world (McIssac 2003). In comparison, metropolitan areas in the United States such as Miami (40 %), Los Angeles (31%) and New York (24 %), and worldwide, such as Sydney (31%) have smaller foreign-born concentrations (McIssac 2003). The immigrant phenomenon in Toronto is not only limited to first generation immigrants, with 22 % of Toronto's population in 2001 being second generation immigrants, defined as individuals with at least one parent born outside Canada (Schellenberg 2004).
As Canada faces an aging population coupled with low fertility rates, immigrants have increasingly been tapped as a source of labour force growth. With proportionately fewer immigrants settling in regions outside of the three main reception centres, smaller regions face difficulties filling their labour demands (see, for example, Derwing et al 2006; Cook and Preugger 2002; Goss Gilroy Inc. 2005). The need for the dispersion of immigrants to other regions in Canada has garnered growing academic attention as well as the attention of both federal and provincial levels of government, with Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) recently implementing measures in their Sustainable Development Strategy to encourage a more equitable distribution of immigrants across Canada (CIC 2006).
While Toronto's role as an immigrant magnet is well known, its interrelationship with other areas through the exchange of immigrants is less known and understood. What was the previous place of residence of immigrants who make an internal migration to Toronto? Where do immigrants migrate to after leaving Toronto? That is, what role does Toronto play as a centre of immigrant exchange as a way-station (or intermediary), origin, and destination? These questions are particularly important in light of the government's attempt to redistribute the immigrant population (CIC 2006). In many ways, the success or failure of these new policies will hinge on the role and attraction of Toronto among new arrivals.
What is therefore missing in the literature is an examination of the internal migration dynamics of Toronto as a way-station (or intermediary), destination, and origin. Recognizing the dynamic nature of migration and immigration, the purpose of this paper is therefore to evaluate this missing aspect of internal migration of Canada's immigrant population in Toronto. In doing so, the paper considers interregional migration at the CMA scale, rather than the more typical provincial scale, and takes advantage of the one- and five-year migration data found within the Canadian Census thereby adding a greater 'temporal dimension' to the analysis. In this research, "immigrants" are used interchangeably with "foreign-born" and define them as all individuals born outside of Canada.
Using data drawn from the 1996 and 2001 Canadian Census Master Files, the objectives of this paper are threefold. First, the paper describes the internal migration flows of Canadian immigrants who use Toronto as a centre of immigrant exchange. Three types of internal migration flows are examined: four-year (migrations over a four-year period), one-year (migrations over a one-year period), and onward way-station migrations (migrations with an intermediary destination). Constructed for a finer grain of analysis of internal migration dynamics, disaggregated flows allow internal migration to be differentiated by varying time frames and number of movements. Second, the paper investigates changes in the internal migration dynamics between the 1996 and 2001 census periods. Third, the paper examines the characteristics of immigrants who undertake internal four- year, one-year, and onward way-station migrations.
Toronto Settlement and Internal Migration
The spatial distribution of immigrants is often examined as a process of integration into the host society (see, for example, Alba and Long 1991; Alba et al 2000; Bartel and Koch 1991; Ley and Tutchener 2001; Murdie 2002; Owusu 1999). That is, the literature has typically assumed that immigrants first settle in areas of immigrant concentration, and then gradually disperse outward through the process of integration and acculturation into the host society, although this generalized process has been questioned in recent years given the settlement of immigrants directly in suburban locations, including Toronto's (Fong and Wilkes 1999; Lo and Wang 1997; Ray 1999).
In fact, immigrant settlement and spatial adjustments within Toronto has been well documented (see, for example, Darden and Sameh 2000; Dion 2001). However, there has been relatively little research on the movement of immigrants into and out of Toronto and other Canadian cities, although this literature is well advanced in the United States (see, for example, Frey 1998, 2002). One exception is Hou and Bourne (2004), who found that Toronto gained visible minority immigrants and immigrants with a university education, while it lost immigrants with less than a university education, as well as Anglophones and non-visible minority immigrants in the 1980s and...
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