Social Capital, Employment and Occupational Status of the New Immigrants in Canada

Using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants in Canada (LSIC), this study examines the role of social capital in the labour market integration of new immigrants in Canada, utilizing various measures of social capital and treating employment and occupational Socio-Economic Scale (SES) as the indicators of labour market integration. The findings show that visible minority immigrants have significantly lower levels of employment and SES compared to white immigrants. Furthermore, social capital contributes significantly to an increased likelihood of employment and also to higher SES positions. However, the effect of social capital varies by the types of social capital, ethno-racial origins, as well as forms of economic integration.     

The invisible barrier: Neighbourhood poverty and integration of immigrants in Canada

The rise of poverty among industrial nations including Canada since the late 1980s has resulted in a higher number of neighbourhoods with a high poverty rate, which in turn has led to an increase in the occurrence of other social ills such as poor educational and health care services, high crime, and high unemployment rates. The combination of these social ills and the social isolation experienced by those in extremely poor neighbourhoods has given rise to a particular lifestyle and subculture, closely related to Lewis’ (1971) notion of the culture of poverty. An examination of 1996 census tract data in Canada shows that immigrants are more likely than non-immigrants to live in neighbourhoods with high rates of poverty. We argue that such an overrepresentation can have serious consequences for the process of integration of immigrants, as it acts as an invisible barrier to their economic success, and can hamper their children’s ambitions.     

A Canadian exceptionalism? Trust and diversity in Canadian cities

Canadian research is seriously scarce in the fast-growing literature on social trust—defined as the degree to which one can trust others whom one does not know personally. In this article, we have tried to address this issue by examining the levels of trust in various Canadian provinces and cities. The study shows that the level of trust in Canada rises as one moves away from the centre and toward both west and east coasts, and that the trust levels are alarmingly low for cities in the province of Quebec. We have also made an attempt to further our understanding of the dynamics of social trust, by looking at the determinants of trust at the city level. The factors examined are: the city’s population, the size of its immigrant population, average income of residents, the extent of income inequality, and the degree of its ethnic diversity. Out of these, the positive relationship found between ethnic diversity and social trust—that is, as the former rises, the latter increases as well—constitutes a uniquely Canadian trend, which is in contrast to what the existing literature on social trust suggests. Moreover, within Canada, Quebec appears as an anomaly, given the extremely low levels of trust in cities located in this province. Also, within Quebec, Montreal seems to be in a class by itself, showing the unusual combination of high diversity and low trust. Although some speculative hypotheses are proposed to explain some of these trends, the anomalies found warrant particular attention in future research.     

Religious Life Under Theocracy: The Case of Iran

The occurrence of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, followed by a large‐scale “Islamization” of society, resulted in some unique developments with regard to religious life in this country. Over the past two decades, there has been a lively debate among social scientists about the nature of such developments, and over their implications for other Middle Eastern and Islamic societies. Most of the contributions to this debate so far have been limited to the examination of different theoretical possibilities, without strong references to empirical evidence. In the present study, we attempt to address this shortcoming in the existing literature on religious developments in Iran by relying on a rich set of empirical data recently gathered through a large‐scale national survey of values and attitudes in Iran. Through a composite index of religious sentiments, we explored the magnitude and the nature of religious sentiments among groups of different age and gender. Also, we examined changes with regard to religiosity in the period between 1975 and 2001. The outstanding finding is that the establishment of a theocratic regime in Iran has led to the transformation of the nature of faith, marked by a noticeable shift from “organized” to a more “personalized” religion, in which the emphasis is placed on beliefs rather than on practices. Also, among both beliefs and practices, more emphasis is placed on those with a purely individual nature, or with a social nature but organized through civic and nongovernmental bodies, as opposed to those commanded by the government. The article ends with a brief discussion of the implications of such developments for the existing debate among sociologists of religion on secularization and “de‐secularization.” Our findings indicate that any linear perspective on the demise or survival of religion in society will unreasonably brush aside the fact that religion is not merely a social institution, but also a “cultural resource” that individuals may draw upon, depending on their surrounding sociopolitical circumstances and their reading of those circumstances.