Pathways to Prosperity: Canada

The primary aim of this project, which is supported by CIC, is to document the ethnic, lingual, and human capital factors, at both the individual and community level, that affect retention of francophone immigrants, especially those outside of Quebec. The project will use the IMDB, a sophisticated, longitudinal immigrant database that consists of immigrant landing records linked to tax return data, and the 1981-2006 harmonized census files.

The research questions that the project seeks to answer include:

1. Where are the Francophone communities outside of Quebec?
2. Where do Francophone immigrant tax-filers settle? How does this differ from where they land? Do retention rates differ by province of residence? Country of citizenship? By education?
3. What are the individual and community characteristics that determine retention? How likely is it that a Francophone immigrant will stay in a predominantly Anglophone versus Francophone environment?

To address the third question, the project will use a multivariate model in which an individual’s migratory status (whether they have moved but stayed in the province, moved to another province, or left Canada altogether) is estimated using both personal and community characteristics. The personal characteristics include knowledge of English or French, province of residence, marital status, IMDB tax year, age, admission category, and size of the immigrating family unit. The community characteristics include the lingual concentration of the community (percent speaking English, French or another language), human capital (percent with a university degree), percent who are immigrants, and the community’s median income.

The report from this project is expected to be submitted to CIC by March 31, 2014, to be made publicly available according to CIC regulations. The lead researcher is Michael Haan, University of New Brunswick and co-investigator on the P2P.