Différence dans la qualité de logement: Immigrants et non-immigrants à Montréal Toronto et Vancouver

The immigrant population in Canada has risen substantially during the last decades. This increase has produced some tension and raised questions about the institutional arrangements of the host society. In response to these tensions and questions, the government of Canada adopted a policy of multiculturalism in 1971 and promoted the constitutionalization of human rights through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This response was successful in terms of the evolution of the liberal democracy in Canada, the management of diversity and the building of an inclusive identity. However, it remains to be evaluated in relation to the struggle against discrimination and inequalities. While the reponse has already been evaluated in regard to employment, no evaluation has been undertaken regarding housing. This article tackles this issue through the decomposition of differences in the quality of housing for immigrants and non-immigrants in three metropolitan areas. The quality of housing is measured by the number of rooms per capita and is studied in relation to several variables to estimate the difference between populations. The results show a convergence in the situation in the three metropolitan areas and clearly reveal a difference in the quality of housing for immigrants and non-immigrants.     

Housing Experiences of Recent Immigrants to Canada’s Small Cities: the Case of North Bay,Ontario

Adequate, suitable and affordable housing is one of the basic needs that must be successfully attained in the process of immigrant integration into a community. This case study consisting of semi-structured interviews and focus groups with new immigrants and landlords centres particularly on the housing experiences of immigrants in North Bay, a small city in Northeast Ontario. North Bay, like many small urban centres in Canada, has undertaken an immigration strategy in order to counter demographic challenges and boost economic development. The housing experiences were examined in terms of suitability given household size and composition, affordability relative to the immigrants’ financial resources as well as ownership and dwelling type. The connection between the immigrant’s housing experiences, their interactions with neighbours and landlords and their perceptions of the city as a welcoming community were also explored. Generally, the immigrants who participated in the study were satisfied with their current housing situation. Several participants were surprised to find a limited and older housing stock in North Bay and rental prices that were not significantly different from the larger cities they had left. Their housing experiences tended to either have a positive impact on their perceptions of the city or not at all. Policy implications and recommendations are also discussed.     

I have cried to Him a thousand times,but it makes no difference: sexual abuse,faith, and images of God

Experiences of sexual abuse may lead to religious struggles and affect a person's faith. This study focused on how victims of sexual abuse describe their relationships with God and with other parishioners. Our interest was in sexual abuse that had occurred outside the religious congregation, not abuse perpetrated by a minister or any other representative of the church. Interviews conducted with seven women and one man were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The informants described a wavering relationship with God and with the congregation. They felt that God had betrayed and abandoned them, and they struggled with different aspects of anger. These emotions made the informants feel different from, and sometimes excluded from, the Christian community. Along with these feelings, however, the informants expressed a strong longing for God and a need to feel protected by the congregation. All informants described the effect the abuse had on their faith as essential to their trauma, and as an issue they needed to work through to learn how to live with their experiences.     

The Representation of Immigrants in Federal,State, and Local Government Work Forces

Public sector employment of immigrants can increase their economic assimilation and potentially improve their treatment by government. Yet, as we show using Census data from 1990, 2000, and 2009–2011, immigrants are substantially underrepresented in federal, state, and local governments. To understand why, we use logit analysis for federal and for state and local government employment in each time period to test whether immigrants’ weaker educational attainment and English proficiency, lower probabilities of being citizens and military veterans, and different age, gender, and race/ethnicity distributions can explain that underrepresentation. Disparities in education and preferential government treatment of veterans are factors, but citizenship requirements appear to be the major obstacle to immigrant employment in the public sector.     

Parent informants for child personality: agreement, discrepancies, and clinical utility

A long-standing issue in child clinical research is the integration of various informants, but this topic has not been comprehensively applied to the domain of child personality. Mothers and fathers rated their children (N = 346) on personality traits and behavioral problems. Mother-father agreement was highest for Conscientiousness and lowest for Neuroticism and Agreeableness. Each parent's ratings added incremental variance in predicting behavioral problems, and mother-father discrepancy predicted internalizing problems. These results suggest that both parents should be used as informants in child personality assessment and discrepancies might reflect meaningful variance with clinical utility.     

Acculturative stress, depression, and suicidal ideation among Central American immigrants

No previous studies have examined suicide risk among Central American immigrants. The present study explored the relationship between acculturative stress, depression, and suicidal ideation among Central American immigrants. Also examined were variables that predict depression and suicidal ideation. Elevated levels of acculturative stress were significantly correlated with high levels of depression and suicidal ideation. Family dysfunction, ineffective social support, nonpositive expectations concerning the future, low levels of religiosity, low levels of education and income, and lack of agreement with the decision to immigrate were significantly associated with high levels of depression and suicidal ideation. The overall findings suggest that Central American immigrants who experience elevated levels of acculturative stress may be at risk for experiencing heightened levels of depression and suicidal ideation. The findings highlight the importance of using culturally relevant clinical methods when assessing and treating depressed and potentially suicidal acculturating individuals.     

Parent Informants for Child Personality: Agreement,Discrepancies, and Clinical Utility

A long-standing issue in child clinical research is the integration of various informants, but this topic has not been comprehensively applied to the domain of child personality. Mothers and fathers rated their children (N = 346) on personality traits and behavioral problems. Mother–father agreement was highest for Conscientiousness and lowest for Neuroticism and Agreeableness. Each parent's ratings added incremental variance in predicting behavioral problems, and mother–father discrepancy predicted internalizing problems. These results suggest that both parents should be used as informants in child personality assessment and discrepancies might reflect meaningful variance with clinical utility.     

Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada: An Organizational Ecology Perspective

Canada receives roughly 250,000 immigrants each year, and the government spends considerable resources on assisting them to settle and integrate into Canadian society through the agencies they support. Most of these new immigrants settle in Canada’s largest cities, where churches meet specific needs that extend beyond the capacities of government agencies. In smaller centers, churches cover a wide range of services because few government supports are available. Little is known about the work of churches in Canada in spite of their importance to immigrant settlement and integration. In this study, we examine the services offered to immigrants by Canadian Christian churches. We show how the service provision of Christian churches is constrained by other organizations and groups in their environment, in ways consonant with the organizational ecology framework. Specifically, churches service the needs of immigrants by adapting to specific niche needs and by filling in gaps left by other service providers.     

Predictors of Living in Precarious Housing Among Immigrants Accessing Housing Support Services

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that explain immigrant housing vulnerability, thereby contributing to the growth of a more substantial knowledge base on the intersection between immigration, housing and homelessness. Administrative data on housing support service recipients (n?=?4168) in Alberta, Canada, were analysed to determine the varied demographic, socio-economic and health-related factors that contribute to living in a precarious housing situation (such as homelessness, couch surfing, staying with friends or family etc.). Logistic regression analysis shows that being an immigrant is a protective factor from living in a precarious housing situation. For the immigrant subsample (n?=?525), logistic regression analysis demonstrates that living in a larger city, having a mental illness and being married were protective factors from living in a precarious housing situation. However, having an addiction and being precariously employed (such as only working part-time, having temporary employment or being unemployed) were risk factors for living in a precarious housing situation. Shared and distinctive vulnerabilities among the immigrant subsample and the full study sample are discussed, along with implications for specific policy and programmes that aim to address the housing needs of immigrants.     

Gender and ethnic differences in psychosocial stress and generalized distress among Hispanics

This study examined the relationship between gender, ethnicity, psychosocial stress and generalized distress in 593 Hispanic immigrants, Mexican Americans, and Anglo Americans using the Hispanic Stress Inventory (HSI) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Findings revealed that immigrant females had higher scores on the Cultural/Family Conflict sub-scale of the HSI and on the CES-D than immigrant males. Also, higher levels of generalized distress and psychosocial stress associated with the immigration process were found among immigrants from Central America when compared with Mexican immigrants. Central Americans' stress appraisal ratings on specific HSI items related to pre-migration trauma were significantly higher than the ratings of Mexican immigrants. Our findings indicate that research and clinical service delivery models must be sensitive to the vast heterogeneity within the Hispanic population with respect to differences in the experiences of psychosocial stress as related to gender and ethnicity.This project was partially supported by Grant USPHS MH24854 to the third author from the National Institute of Mental Health, Division of Biometry and Applied Science, Minority Research Resources Branch.     

Tolerance more than equality? Two facets of tolerance towards immigrants among Czech adolescents

ABSTRACT

This study focused on facets of tolerance towards immigrants among Czech adolescents, drawing on data from 9^th and 10^th graders (n = 2003). The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between tolerance towards immigrants and support for democracy, repression potential, right-wing authoritarianism, and out-group trust. Results showed that tolerance towards immigrants should be treated as a two-dimensional concept: support for equal rights, focused on equality in labour market, housing or access to education, and support for cultural rights, encompassing acceptance of immigrants’ rights to practice their culture and religion. We found that Czech adolescents were generally more supportive of equal rights than of cultural rights, and that out-group trust explained most of the variance for both dimensions of tolerance towards immigrants. The study also indicated ambiguous effects in the relationship between right-wing authoritarianism, repression potential and support for equal/cultural rights of immigrants with out-group trust used as moderating variable.     

Resource loss,resource gain,PTSD, and dissociation among Ethiopian immigrants in Israel

The aim of this study was to examine the loss and gain of resources, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociation among Jewish Ethiopian immigrants in Israel following exposure to stressful events occurring pre‐, peri‐, and post‐migration. Resources are defined as objects (e.g., housing), conditions (e.g., employment), personal (e.g., self‐esteem), or energy (e.g., culture). A random sample (N = 478) of three waves of immigrants participated in the research (N1 = 165; N2 = 169; N3 = 144). The data were collected in 2001. Age, loss and gain of resources, traumatic events peri‐migration, post‐migration difficulties, posttraumatic symptoms, and dissociation were assessed. The relationships between the variables were assessed with multiple hierarchical regressions predicting PTSD and dissociation with gain and loss of resources, over and above age, immigration wave, and trauma. A significant relationship was found between PTSD symptoms and loss of self‐esteem resources (r = 0.17 p < 0.001), while dissociation was positively associated with gain of housing resources (r = 0.20, p < 0.001). Both PTSD and dissociation were predicted by younger age. The findings are discussed in light of the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1988 ), of resource loss and gain among Ethiopian immigrants.     

Resetting the rules of the game: Language preferences and social relations of work between Russian immigrants and veteran professionals in an Israeli organization

Workplace is the main site of the cross-cultural encounter between majority and minority groups in multicultural societies, yet there is paucity of research on workplace language practices and their influence on the social relations of work. The current qualitative study focused on the patterns of language use and their links to social identities, inter-group attitudes and work relations between recent immigrants and veteran employees in a white-collar organization in Central Israel. On-site observations and interviews with the workers—Israeli-born, veteran Soviet immigrants of the 1970s, and recent arrivals—were conducted in Hebrew and in Russian. The findings indicate that language use indeed serves as the key marker of social identity and signifier of work status and group boundaries. The common use of Russian by recent immigrants is a trigger of conflict and mutual antagonism, as Hebrew-speakers perceive it as a sign of their separatism and anti-Israeli outlook.     

The Securitization of Migrant Workers in Sabah,Malaysia

In the past decades, the Malaysia’s economy, particularly in Sabah, faced high dependence on migrant workers, predominantly Indonesian and Filipino workers. This over-reliance on migrant workers made the ruling elites in the country fear that their dominant presence would undermine the government’s policy to move Malaysia from a labor intensive to an automation in order to achieve the status of a developed nation, as well as a policy to prioritize locals over foreigners in all economic sectors. In order to implement this policy and to break the economic sectors from continuing to rely on the foreigners, the ruling elites have continuously associated migrant workers, especially illegal laborers, as a security threat that needs to be flushed out. This paper utilizes the Copenhagen School framework of securitization to explain why the securitizing actors, namely the politicians and the ruling elites, continue to frame Indonesian and the Filipino workers in Sabah as security issue. Two case studies are presented to examine the securitization of migrant workers in Sabah: first, “All-out war against illegals” and Ops Nyah II, 2002–03 and second, Ops Nasihat, 2004–05. However, this paper argues that making illegal migrant workers as security issue and form a sound policy to control immigrants cannot solely rely on the speech act and power of persuasion, as central in the theory because other condition factors, namely the domestic politics of the state, the federal-state relations, nature of state economy, and international pressures, are also significant in explaining why the government has never been consistent in its policy on migrant workers in Sabah.     

Interfering with inferential, but not associative, processes underlying spontaneous trait inference

Three studies explore mental processes underlying spontaneous trait inferences about self-informants and the spontaneous trait transference characterizing third-party informants. Process differences are suggested in that instructions prompting a nontrait inference (truth or lie?) reduce self-informant trait-savings effects and lower self-informant trait judgments. For third-party informants, such instructions have no effect on these outcome variables. Results of a third study are inconsistent with cognitive load as an explanation for these effects. Taken together, these results indicate that inferences, and not merely associations, spontaneously form when processing information about self-informants. The results also show that the inferences and judgments that occur in spontaneous trait transference are not caused by the misidentification of third-party informants as self-informants.     

Attitudes toward U.S. immigration policy: the roles of in-group-out-group bias,economic concern,and obedience to law

California's Proposition 187, directed primarily toward Mexican immigrants, deprives illegal immigrants of many benefits associated with U.S. citizenship and facilitates their deportation. The authors hypothesized that the respondents' opinions on this proposition would be determined by in-group-out-group bias (i.e., the tendency to evaluate the ethnic out-group more negatively than the ethnic in-group). In accord with that hypothesis, variations in respondent ethnicity (Studies 1 and 2) and in immigrant ethnicity (Study 3) were systematically related to the respondents' opinion on that issue. Moreover, the effect of in-group-out-group bias was independent of perceived reasoned economic and legal considerations that underlay the respondents' opinion.     

'Stream of consciousness' and 'ownership of thought' in indigenous people in central Australia

Fifteen Central Australian Aboriginal adults (8 patients, 7 colleagues) were presented with a culturally modified version of Flavell's 'stream of consciousness' experiment (pictures of persons with empty or 'busy' thought-bubbles, and an invitation to assign a picture to the mental state of a second experimenter seen reading or sitting quietly). Only 4 people assigned the empty thought bubble to the quiet experimenter. This result was at least as good as that of a sample of Stanford College students tested by Flavell. The experiment provoked detailed comments from the informants about subjectivity, suggesting great subtlety of phenomenological awareness in Central Australian Aboriginal people, and attributing a kind of subjectivity to non-human entities, including inanimate elements. We learnt that the Western Deserts dialect term watiya was reserved for the subjectivity attributed to trees and rocks. The ownership of all thought was attributed to the tjukurpa (the Aboriginal dreaming). These Aboriginal cultural attributions were compared and contrasted with reflections developed by Jung and the post-Jungian David Holt on the nature of subjectivity, and religious notions of the redemption of matter.     

On the perpetuation of ignorance: system dependence, system justification, and the motivated avoidance of sociopolitical information

How do people cope when they feel uninformed or unable to understand important social issues, such as the environment, energy concerns, or the economy? Do they seek out information, or do they simply ignore the threatening issue at hand? One would intuitively expect that a lack of knowledge would motivate an increased, unbiased search for information, thereby facilitating participation and engagement in these issues-especially when they are consequential, pressing, and self-relevant. However, there appears to be a discrepancy between the importance/self-relevance of social issues and people's willingness to engage with and learn about them. Leveraging the literature on system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), the authors hypothesized that, rather than motivating an increased search for information, a lack of knowledge about a specific sociopolitical issue will (a) foster feelings of dependence on the government, which will (b) increase system justification and government trust, which will (c) increase desires to avoid learning about the relevant issue when information is negative or when information valence is unknown. In other words, the authors suggest that ignorance-as a function of the system justifying tendencies it may activate-may, ironically, breed more ignorance. In the contexts of energy, environmental, and economic issues, the authors present 5 studies that (a) provide evidence for this specific psychological chain (i.e., ignorance about an issue → dependence → government trust → avoidance of information about that issue); (b) shed light on the role of threat and motivation in driving the second and third links in this chain; and (c) illustrate the unfortunate consequences of this process for individual action in those contexts that may need it most.     

Pathways to Housing: The Experiences of Sponsored Refugees and Refugee Claimants in Accessing Permanent Housing in Toronto

In contrast to many new immigrants, refugees normally have limited financial resources upon arrival in a new country. Consequently, most refugees need some form of assistance in accessing good-quality, safe and affordable housing. This paper evaluates the assumption that refugee claimants in Toronto experience a much more difficult pathway to housing than sponsored refugees. The housing trajectories of a sample of refugees are examined using semi-structured interviews. The results confirm that this sample of refugee claimants experienced a more difficult pathway to housing, at least in the initial stages of settlement. Over time, claimants improved their housing position and narrowed the gap with sponsored refugees.     

Corpses,lepers, and menstruating women: Tradition,transition, and the sociology of knowledge

A study of 1148 middle-aged women in 5 Israeli subcultures ranging from modern Central European immigrants to traditional Moslem Arab villagers is the point of departure for this essay on tradition, transition, and the sociology of knowledge. The study is shown as having evolved through the competing hypotheses of the investigators, which in turn reflect the biases born of the experiential framework: 2 men and 1 young woman design a study that assumes an overvaluation of fertility and childbearing. When the findings reveal that middle-aged women do not regret the loss of fertility, regardless of tradition or modernity (and thus of childbearing history), the investigators discover their own assumptions to be erroneous. Further, the meaning of modernity is reconsidered as tradition is shown to incorporate a recognition of the strength of women despite formal status subordination; it is proposed that the dilemma of middle age is inevitably cultural transition. Finally, it is suggested that the broader social context of which the investigators were a part legitimates the study of women as "other" and as objects, while denying opportunity to study men in the same framework--a social context in which men shape decisions that grant or deny research funds, and thus shape the evolution of knowledge of gender.