Abstract
This chapter first provides an overview of the level and characteristics of post-Soviet immigration to Canada. It further examines the labor market outcomes of post-Soviet immigrants relative to other immigrants and the Canadian-born. About 179,000 post-Soviet immigrants came to Canada between 1992 and 2009, and another 55,000 came in the early 2010s. Post-Soviet immigrants were admitted primarily as economic immigrants. The majority of them arrived at prime working ages and were able to speak one of Canada’s official languages. They had a very large advantage in educational attainment over the Canadian-born and other immigrant populations. Compared with other immigrants, post-Soviet immigrants achieved a higher employment rate and a higher share working in highly skilled occupations, although their economic outcomes were not as good as the Canadian-born with the same educational level. Employed post-Soviet immigrants earned significantly less than the Canadian-born with similar sociodemographic characteristics.
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Notes
- 1.
The statistics in this paragraph were derived by the authors from the 1991 census micro data file.
- 2.
Immigrants from the FSU are defined as individuals who were born in USSR before its breakup or in one of the former republics after the breakup and were legal permanent residents in Canada. They refer to immigrants who arrived in Canada from 1980 to 2015 in this study. Post-Soviet immigrants refer to individuals who arrived in Canada from 1992 to 2015.
- 3.
We are indebted to the members of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society, particularly Mike Molloy, Gerry Maffre, and Holly Edwards, for sharing their knowledge on immigration from Eastern Europe. Most materials in this paragraph and related to the Self-Exiled Persons Designated Class were provided by CIHS members through personal communications.
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Hou, F., Yan, X. (2020). Immigrants from Post-Soviet States: Socioeconomic Characteristics and Integration Outcomes in Canada. In: Denisenko, M., Strozza, S., Light, M. (eds) Migration from the Newly Independent States. Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36075-7_17
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