The Employment and Self-Employment of European Immigrants in Canada: A Longitudinal Analysis by Admission Category

Marcus Fraga , Université Laval
Charles Fleury, Centre d'études de populations, de pauvreté et de politiques socio-économiques (CEPS)
Danièle Bélanger, University of Western Ontario

Canada welcomed over 6,000,000 immigrants from the 1990s until today. However, their employment outcomes, especially the variation among admission categories, have not been frequently examined in detail. Using the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB), this paper analyzes the employment and self-employment probabilities of immigrants landed at the age 20 to 49 by different categories of immigration and different countries of origin from the year 1990 to 2016. A special attention is given to immigrants from European countries. Europe has been the main part of the Canada’s colonisation and demographic composition. Until the 1980s, the continent was the main source of immigration to the country. However, since the 1990s, we have seen a loss of importance in the total proportion of immigrants landing each year. In the years 2010, approximately 30% of new arrivals came from Europe. Thus, through a survival analysis, this paper first compares the employment and self-employment probabilities among immigrants in the main categories of immigration: economic main applicant, economic dependant, family, government-assisted refugee, privately sponsored refugee, In-Canada Asylum Program and other refugee. Then, we control by country of origin and other socio-demographic variables such as age at landing, education level at landing and cohort of admission. In general, we assess the link between the economic outcomes and the immigration policy of Canada. The results will allow us to observe the heterogeneity of the different immigration programmes, specially that of refugees.

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 Presented in Session 63. International Migration