If the spatial separation of home and work in nineteenth century cities was the empirical change on which analysis of urban spatial form hinged, two further developments have been of major concern for studies of the twentieth century: the growth of the suburbs and the globalisation of urban economies.
In the early decades of the twentieth century Canada became an urbanised society. Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs)1 have grown continually since 1901, when only 24.9% of Canadians were living in metropolitan areas (37.5% in all urban areas). By 1951, this figure had risen to 42.5% (56.7% in all urban areas) and by 1991, 61.0% (76.6% in all urban areas) (Isin 1996). From the 1920s, the spatial characteristics of urban settlements established in the nineteenth century began to alter radically. From 1941 onwards, the centre of gravity in the metropolis began to shift from the core city to the periphery; "This trend is most pronounced in Toronto, Victoria, Quebec, Vancouver, and Montreal metropolitan areas, with these core cities declining to less than a third or a quarter of the metropolitan population between 1941 and 1991" (Isin 1996, p.102). The rate of decline was most marked during the decade 1971-81, when there was also a decline in the overall metropolitan growth rate. This decline was not indicative of a trend towards de-urbanisation but due to the fact that much 'metropolitan' growth was taking place in areas contiguous to metropolitan areas not yet defined as metropolitan. As Isin (1996 p.103) claims, "...as the trend towards the concentration of population in the metropolis was continuing, another trend, towards decentralisation in the metropolis, is clearly visible". A new urban form was emerging as the metropolis became a polycentric urban region. The extent and rate of this change have varied from city to city:
In Toronto, for example, while 73.4% of the metropolitan population lived in the City of Toronto in 1941, it had declined to 16.3% by 1991...Similarly, in 1941 the City of Montreal constituted 78.9% of the entire metropolis. In 1991, despite the fact that the City of Montreal is the largest city in Canada with a population of more than a million people, it constitutes a mere 32.5% of the entire metropolis. In metropolises such as Winnipeg, Calgary and Regina, where core cities still constitute the majority of the metropolitan population, core areas still lost their dominance, and the CMAs grew by annexation. (p.103)
With the decentralisation of the population, growth in both population and (office and industrial) employment, has tended to occur in several nodes around the periphery of the metropolis. This spatial pattern is characteristic, moreover, of global cities. There exists a long established literature on the impact of globalisation on urban economies beginning with the work of Friedmann over a decade ago (Friedmann 1986, 1995: Friedmann and Wolff 1982; Knox and Taylor 1995; Sassen 1984, 1988, 1991). Friedmann's research agenda was based on the premise that commonalities among particular urban regions which contained the most active economies in the world could be known as global (or world) cities. Not incidentally, these cities are among the highest receptors of immigrant populations in. Both Toronto (see Gad 1991a, 1991b; Todd 1995, 1996) and more recently Vancouver (see Ley 1996) have been identified as second tier global cities (the first tier comprising London, New York and Tokyo). In these studies discussions of immigration focus on patterns of settlement and recomposition of the labour force, although in many instances discussions about immigrants are conflated with those on minorities or low wage labour markets. Three tendencies in global cities have been suggested which raise important research questions for immigrants in Canadian cities. These are:
the tendency for the polarisation of the labour force into high end and low end service jobs;
the tendency for heightened speculation in real estate markets leading to a reduction in or deterioration in the quality of low rent housing. Murdie (1994) claims that in Toronto there has been an increased social polarisation between Metro Toronto Housing Authority projects and the rest of the Metropolitan area as a result of economic restructuring, shifts in immigration policy, low rental vacancy rates in the private sector and reductions in public expenditures for low-cost social housing;
the tendency for immigration to increase the significance of cultural politics and political action linked to various identities. As Keil (1996, p.41) states, "Without a constant negotiation of boundaries, the diverse world city communities that live in close proximity to one another would not be sustainable even for a short time...A central concern of this political arena is racism."
The outcome of these processes, claims Caulfield (1996, p.10/11), is that:
[The Canadian] urban system [is] on the verge of crisis. Large segments of Canada's metropolitan population are now marginal workers employed part-time in low-paid service labour or on unstable short-term contracts (when they can find jobs at all), a very different situation from forty or fifty years ago when many working people were frequently at least able to find steady, full-time and - with union contracts - reasonably well-paid work. The state's apparent lack of control of Canada's economic future and its strategy, both federally and provincially, for addressing this dilemma, by sharply cutting its investment in such resources as health care, social services, education and urban infrastructure, bode singularly ill for the future of Canadian cities. Urban governments, meanwhile, gut their planning and environment al codes in competitive pursuit of economic development, often falling back on tourism-oriented investments in spectacle. It is neither too soon nor overwrought to imagine a future in which the social morphology of Canadian urbanism is composed of fragile enclaves of privilege amid an increasingly disadvantaged majority. This is not a scenario which will foster enlightened social and urban policies, political civility, or cultural and racial harmony.
Within this context, we have attempted to provide an overview of these issues in relation to the impact they have upon immigration and immigrants as well as investigating the impact of immigrants on the social, economic, political and cultural fabric of Canadian cities. We identify the following themes as those which have received the most attention; changes in the ethnic/demographic composition of cities; residential segregation; labour markets; immigrant women in urban labour markets; housing ; services; cultural imprints of immigrants in cities; and racism against immigrants of colour.
Changes in the Ethnic/Demographic Composition of Cities
The majority of studies of the demographic characteristics of immigrants have been at a federal level (see, for example, Driedger 1990; Kalbach, 1970; Beaujot 1991; Chiswick, 1992) and they are limited to studying the effects of immigration on population growth. Studies by social scientists of individual immigrant groups are uneven, and tend to have a particular analytical focus, (see, for example, Richmond's (1989) study of Caribbean immigrants, Kobayashi's (1989) study of Japanese Canadians (including Japanese immigrants), or Neuwirth's (1985) study of Southeast Asian refugees). A study by the sociologist Ramcharan (1982) focuses on the role and status of non-white immigrant groups in Canada of Caribbean, Chinese, Japanese, South and Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern origin. While he addresses the conditions of these groups in certain cities, there is no systematic treatment of their urban locations in relation to patterns of assimilation, labour market participation, cultural organisation or racial discrimination.
Immigration has played a more crucial part in the social and economic geography of Canadian cities than the scholarly attention to immigration would indicate. The country's three largest cities are no longer bastions of the white Anglo-Saxon population; they are the most popular destinations for immigrants. The vast majority of non-white immigrants are found in the urban centres of Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton and Winnipeg: these cities accounted for 70% of all non-white immigrants in Canada during the 1970s (Ramcharan 1982; Logan 1991). The following figures, which highlight the characteristics of immigrants in Canadian cities, are derived from the landed immigrant data system maintained by Employment and Immigration Canada, and the data for 1988 are preliminary (Canada 1989; Statistics Canada 1994):1
The destination of immigrants is overwhelmingly metropolitan. In 1988, approximately 60% of immigrants were destined for three urban centres: Toronto (35%), Montreal (14%), and Vancouver (11%), while the balance were distributed among Winnipeg, (3%), Calgary (4%), Edmonton (4%), Ottawa-Hull (3%), Others (26%) of a total of 160,768. These figures represent a significant increase only for Toronto since 1980: Toronto (21%), Montreal (14%), Vancouver (11%), Calgary and Edmonton (6% each). Of those immigrants coming to Toronto in this time period 45% were Asian, 26% European and 21% from the Caribbean and Central and South America.
At the time of the 1981 Census, immigrant women outnumbered immigrant men for the first time. Although historically more men than women have migrated to Canada, the ratio of male to females is narrowing. The distribution of women immigrants varies across immigrant categories: in 1988 they were 59% of all Family Class members, 41% of all Refugees and Designated Class and 49% of all Independent immigrants.
In 1991, the immigrant population was 16% of Canada's population i.e., 4.3 million. The proportion has remained relatively stable since World War II ( in 1951 it was 15%) but the cultural and socio-demographic profiles of immigrants have changed.
Of the 1991 immigrant population 48% arrived before 1971; 24% between 1971-1980; and 28% between 1981-1991.
Three-quarters of immigrants in 1991 were of non-British or non-French origins, compared with one quarter of persons born in Canada. Thirty percent had British or French origins, 38% were (other) Europeans, 22% were Asians, 4% were West Asian or Arab, 3% were of African ancestry, 1.5% were Caribbean and 1.4% were Latin American.
Immigrants are now more likely than the Canadian-born population to live in large urban areas. In 1991, over half (57%) of immigrants lived in the CMAs of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver; just over one quarter of the Canadian born population lived in these CMAs.
Other metropolitan areas in some parts of the country also have attracted large numbers of immigrants. In 1991, the proportion of immigrants in other major Ontario cities was Hamilton (24%) Kitchener (22%), Windsor (21%), London (19%) and St. Catherines-Niagara (19%). In Western Canada, Calgary and Victoria had the highest proportions of immigrants after Vancouver, with 20% each. Immigrants made up smaller proportions of the populations of major urban areas in Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces. Apart from Montreal, only Halifax (at 7%) had an immigrant population greater than 5%.
In Quebec, 88% of the province's immigrants lived in Montreal, which had just 45% of the total provincial population. Similarly, in Ontario, 62% of the immigrant population lived in the Toronto CMA, compared with 39% of all provincial residents".
Recent immigrants were even more likely to live in one of Canada's three largest metropolitan areas than were earlier immigrants. In 1991, two-thirds (66%) of those who had come to Canada between 1981 and 1991 were living in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, while 43% of immigrants who arrived before 1961 resided in these urban areas. In terms of recent immigrants Toronto had attracted 39%, and a further 14% had settled in Montreal and 13% in Vancouver.
Immigrants from Asia and the Middle East - the most numerous of recent immigrants - were even more likely to settle in these metropolitan areas. In 1991, nearly three-quarters (73%) of recent immigrants from Asia and the Middle East lived in either Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, and accounted for 70% of all recent arrivals residing in Vancouver, 50% of those in Toronto and 44% of those in Montreal.
Only a little work has been done on subsequent migration of immigrants, by Moore, Ray and Rosenberg (1988; 1990, 1995) (although there is a wider body of research that investigates ethnicity and geographic mobility. See, for example, Trovato and Halli 1990). Moore et al., found that approximately 10% of immigrants undertook intermetropolitan moves in the period 1981-1986, and that Toronto dominated as the destination of secondary intermetropolitan moves. Nogle's (1994) longitudinal study of immigrants who entered Canada in 1969-71 found that internal migration is initially strongly affected by admission status, destination at arrival, the reason for immigration and area of origin, but that the impact of these characteristics diminishes with length of residence. Qualitative studies in this field, although few and far between, add to our understanding of the migration of immigrants at a personal level. A study by Chimbos and Agocs (1983), for example, on Greek immigrants in London, Ontario found that kin and hometown networks were of vital importance in determining patterns of ocupational specialisation and residential clustering.
While Canada's population was founded on immigration, the shift from a population of predominantly European background has occurred only in the last generation (Mercer 1995). The 1961 census showed that less than 6% of the population were described as non-Europeans. At this time the social geography of ethnocultural communities was distinct and largely concentrated in the inner city. During the 1960s this pattern remained distinct although the number of non-European residents doubled. With the 1967 change in immigration policy (from a 'preferred' and 'non-preferred' categorisation to one based on points) the number of immigrants, their economic impact and their political significance changed.
Nowhere has the internationalisation of Canadian immigration been more pronounced than in Vancouver, where policy coincided with a period of rapid growth of the economies of BC and Vancouver. As a result, since 1971, Vancouver has attracted growing numbers of non-European immigrants. Between 1971 and 1986 there was a 422% increase in Metropolitan Vancouver's non-European population (cf. an overall growth rate of 28%). This growth has had a significant impact on the city's social geography: "The traditional distinction between deprived inner-city and affluent suburban neighbourhoods has been broken down, and the geography of ethnic groups in the region has become more complex" (Ley et al., 1992, p.252).
Residential Segregation
Residential segregation by ethnicity is probably the most pronounced form of segregation in Canadian cities. Many ethnic areas had their origins in small downtown enclaves in which the original (usually low income) immigrants located (Harney 1981; Kobayashi 1992; Lai 1988). As cities can often be perceived as 'dangerous' places, the notion of neighbourhoods as enclaves against unknown, socially dissimilar and potentially threatening groups of people may attract many immigrants to the idea of living among members of their own immigrant group. A number of reasons have been put forward to explain the prevalence of enclaves: defence, avoidance, preservation, resistance or attack. Ethnic segregation appears now, however, to be an almost inevitable result of immigration; while some groups show little or no segregation, others show diverse patterns with populations divided between concentrated and dispersed residential patterns.
While sociologists view the study of ethnic and racial residential patterns as a largely separate field of study from urban ethnic and racial relations (see Darroch and Marston 1987), for geographers this has been an integral field of the sub-discipline of urban geography. In sociology such studies have focused on notions of assimilation and pluralism but in geography the emphasis has been on the notion of the inter-relations between place and social groups. According to Darroch and Marston (1987 pp.115-16), "...residential segregation has been treated as an indicator of pluralism...or as a contingent condition mirroring more fundamental social processes....This peripheral position of residential patterns in the larger analysis of ethnicity is evident in the fact that most textbooks on race and ethnic relations give only passing, if any, attention to ethnic residential patterns" (See Driedger 1991 for a comprehensive review).
Indeed, the strength of ethnic residential segregation patterns is clear and visible when mapped (Bourne et al., 1986). In a study based on 1981 census data, Balakrishnan and Selvanathan (1990) find the following:
Larger cities seem to have higher ethnic segregation and cities in the West lower levels. Overall ethnic diversity of a city appears to have little effect on the extent of segregation within the city. It may well be that the larger cities also have larger ethnic populations which facilitate the creation of ethnic neighbourhoods which result in greater spatial segregation patterns...There is considerable support for the social distance hypothesis. Western and Northern European groups are least segregated, Eastern Europeans more segregated, and Italians and Natives most segregated. The lack of data on the Portuguese, Greek, Jewish, Asiatic, Black and other Third World ethnic groups for all the [14] metropolitan areas is a serious limitation of this paper as it is exactly these groups who are making the greatest impact on the Canadian urban scene in terms of residential patterns. (p.411-12).
Moghaddam (1994) and Netting (1991) also argue that most writers would agree that ethnic segregation is increasing and persistent in Canadian cities, particularly Montreal and Toronto, and that segregation is related to social distance from the majority group. (For studies relating to Montreal see, for example, Beaulieu 1983; Bredimas-Assimopoulos 1983; Dorais 1990; Germain et al., 1983; Mongeau and Seguin 1993). An earlier study by Balakrishnan (1987) also found 'race' to be the most important factor influencing residential segregation and Moghaddam and Taylor (1989) and Moghaddam (1994) find that segregation occurs despite the fact that immigrants do not want to live in segregated areas. Ramcharan (1982) agrees, but states:
While we cannot speak of any area of nonwhite residential concentration as being a ghetto, in many instances faced by de facto segregation and inability to afford decent housing, the early nonwhite immigrants to Canada developed highly concentrated enclaves within the city. These grew in size as more immigrants entered and preferred to reside in an area where friendships, kinship and cultural patterns could be fostered. Incidents of racial discrimination in housing, while not uncommon, have been sufficiently unimportant to prevent the growth of residential segregation along racial lines as has occurred in Britain and the United States. (Ramcharan 1982, p. 34)
If residential segregation is more subtle in Canadian cities than in other countries, it is nonetheless quite striking. The effects of segregation are explored in a foundation piece by Warren Kalbach (1981), which uses data from the 1971 census to show that there is a wide range of segregation patterns among the 18 groups studied, and that variation can be accounted for by the level of 'ethnic-connectedness' in segregated neighbourhoods (that is, neighbourhoods with high indices of concentration, and high indices of dissimilarity with the dominant groups). Immigrants are more strongly segregated than the Canadian-born in general, but there is significant variation among the groups, tied to the degree to which neighbourhoods have been able to achieve an 'ethnic character'. The study concludes that the segregation index should be accepted as more valid than personal perception as an indicator of assimilation.
This study is a tremendously valuable foundation for our descriptive understanding of ethnic segregation, and ultimately of the experience of immigrants as they seek homes within their chosen cities. It is unfortunate that comparative studies to expand and update Kalbach's findings have not been conducted for other cities, and for the period since 1971 (several studies of Montreal were conducted during the 1980s, but they do not provide the same level of detail). Nonetheless, Kalbach's study suffers the weakness of all strictly quantitative analysis: it indicates pattern but not process and is expository rather than explanatory. We still await, therefore, up-to-date studies that will provide insight into how the social geography of immigrants in Canadian cities is produced and negotiated.
Labour markets also play a role in residential segregation, although in this area too findings are more speculative than conclusive. The concentration of particular groups in selected occupations can help explain the propensity of certain groups to locate in different areas of the city. For example, "The agricultural orientation of South Asians [in Vancouver] helps explain their propensity to live in suburban areas, since large numbers of these men and women are hired in berry farms and truck-gardens on the fringe of the urban area. A growing number of South Asians are purchasing agricultural land and establishing related businesses; in the process, a South Asian ethnic enclave economy is emerging, complete with its own entrepreneurial class and labour force" (Ley et al. 1992, p. 254).
Among groups undergoing deconcentration of residential patterns, there may still be a very strong symbolic significance of the original central city location for the dominant population. Li (1988 p.98) in his study of Vancouver's Chinatown notes: "The geographic boundaries of Chinatowns began to change as more immigrants settled in suburbs. Formerly serving mainly as community centres for the Chinese, Chinatowns now became more commercial areas with high land values". Moreover, they are not even areas of Chinese commerce. Li's study of Vancouver's Chinatown found that only 20% of Chinese-owned firms were located in the neighbourhood. However, the public image of Chinatowns is still that they are the main centres of Chinese communities. The recent (1980s) influx of middle-class Chinese has chosen the suburbs as the place to live, although they still live in areas with a relatively high concentration of members of the Chinese community. Li reveals that Chinatown as a commercial area appeals to Chinese entrepreneurs who sell ethnic food and other products and who can benefit from the tourist image of Chinatown as an ethnic enclave.
Lai's (1988) extensive study of Chinatowns in Canada captures the full complexity of the relationship between urban enclaves and immigration. While he does not deny the effect of racism in pushing immigrants into specific parts of the city (see Anderson 1991), he depicts the growth of Chinatowns as a result of both socio-economic variations in immigrant circumstances across time, and decisions made by city officials to alter the planning perspective of the city. As Chinatowns increase their role as symbolic centres for tourism purposes, the relationship between immigrants -- in particular, merchants -- and city officials becomes stronger. The political implications of this situation are taken up further in following sections.
Labour Markets
In no field are questions of race and class as they relate to immigrants more important than in the field of labour markets. The importance of immigrants to the labour force as a whole and to particular sectors of the labour market, although understood, has been infrequently researched from a specific urban studies or geographical perspective. Studies are much more common at the national level (see Avery 1996; Greneir 1995). The need for research in this field is emphasised by the following figures on the role of immigrants in Metro Toronto's labour force, published in the Toronto Star (21st September 1991, p. A1, A8):
"...Greater Toronto's auto industry would sputter and stall if not for immigrants who make up 63 percent of the sector's 8,055 workers, according to the 1986 census.
"...About two-thirds of some 12,395 tool and die makers and machinists were born abroad.
"...Immigrant workers led the way in almost every category.....two-thirds of orderlies and nursing attendants and more than half of registered nursing assistants are immigrants.
"...And they're the backbone of the dry cleaning industry, which depends on foreign labour for almost three-quarters of its 2,595 workers.
"...There probably wouldn't be a clean hotel or office in the city without them: 60 percent of greater Toronto's 34,415 cleaners are immigrants.
"...And the restaurant business would crumble without immigrants: 57 percent of some 22,000 chefs and cooks were born outside Canada.
"...A staggering 94 percent of the Metro area's 16,535 sewing machine operators were born in foreign countries.
"...However, in better-paying occupations such as management positions, sales occupations and transportation jobs there are very low numbers of immigrants. In 1986 the most common occupations of newly landed immigrants in Ontario were: clerical (14 percent); managerial and administrative (11 percent); factory work (10 percent); and natural science, engineering and mathematics positions (8 percent)."
At the same time, the following statement from the same source offers a generalisation that belies the specificity of the aforementioned figures: "Immigrants tend to suffer a higher unemployment rate and lower incomes than native-born workers for a time after their arrival....But immigrants end up with a lower unemployment rate and higher average incomes than people born here." (Toronto Star, 21st September, 1991, p.A8).1
Startling as these claims are, and steeped as they are in the language of journalism with an axe to grind, they hardly begin to capture the difficulties and drama of life in metropolitan Canada for most immigrants, who work in the lowest-paid jobs, under the most severe of conditions, and who are subject to the constant vagaries of the international economy. Not surprisingly some immigrants turn to self-employment. Langois and Razin's (1989) study of immigrant groups in Toronto and Montreal reveals that immigrant groups that show a strong tendency to engage in self-employment are those whose self-employed members earn more than salaried employees; those born in Canada and of British and French ethnic origins had lower rates of self-employment. (See also Olson 1991 on employment sectors historically favoured by immigrants in Montreal). Nor would an analysis of that economy explain the many cultural factors that account for the immigrant's journey to particular places of work, the associations that are formed in that place, and the compulsions and pressures that take the fruits of that work and result in a place in the community, a particular house on a particular street with particular neighbours.
Urban scholars have recently begun to make a significant contribution to the larger picture of the immigrant role within the urban economy, especially by addressing processes of economic restructuring. Economic restructuring refers to de-industrialisation and to the expansion of low skill, low wage service jobs. It also refers to the restructuring of employment within industries. Boyd (1992) argues that Canadian studies have shown that it is this inter-firm restructuring within industries, rather than inter-industry shifts in employment that is more responsible for job loss and for the polarisation of earnings. At the other end of the scale, preliminary work by Dan Hiebert in Vancouver (1995; 1996) shows that "flexibility has a face" (Hiebert 1995, p.15) and that responses to economic restructuring occur in very specific ways at an intra-urban scale, where economic conditions are moulded by cultural practices as specific immigrant groups establish themselves in occupational niches.
Economic restructuring has transformed the economies of especially large cities from a manufacturing to a service base. In the early 1980s, Toronto, for example, lost approximately 40% of its manufacturing employment but overall gained employment because of rapid growth in services, especially consumer, business and financial services (Norcliffe et al., 1986). The growth of the service economy produced an increase in well paid professional jobs but an even greater increase in low-paid clerical and service jobs with little security. The loss of manufacturing employment was in low value-added industrial sectors such as the garment industry and food and beverage processing, in which immigrant women have historically been concentrated. Immigrant women, therefore, have been particularly badly affected by the restructuring of the labour process through de-skilling, the routinisation of some tasks and the automation of others, the growth in non-union as well as part time work and subcontracting and informal sector work "... and in the use of gender, race and nativity divisions as sources of cheap labour and as mechanisms of labour control" (Boyd 1992, p.7).
Research done during the early 1980s at the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, provided an early assessment of the importance of ethnicity in control over job allocation. Jeffrey Reitz (1982) conducted a study of eight groups defined as ethnic groups (he did not, unfortunately, distinguish immigrants within the ethnic groups) to find that job status, although not necessarily income, is significantly tied to ethnicity for some groups. He found that although a non-Anglo-Saxon accent generally decreased job status, Torontonians of Jewish, German, Ukrainian and Chinese background generally have job status on a par with Anglo-Saxons, while those of Italian, Portuguese and Caribbean background rank considerably lower. Immigrant women from all groups had lowest levels of control and job status. Greatest control over job status occurs where an ethnic group gains significant economic control within an industry; therefore, it is the opportunities of the group rather than of the individual that are most important in determining the income attainment of the community:
Whereas some minority ethnic groups can achieve high levels of reward within a structure controlled by a dominant ethnic group, minority groups with low status in the eyes of the dominant group may be able to do so more effectively by establishing control over occupational spheres within which significant rewards can be distributed within the group. In Toronto, this has occurred principally in the structure of control over financial rewards. (Reitz 1982, p. 33)
A subsequent study by Calzavara (1983) shows that a significant aspect of establishing ethnic group control is the creation of personal contacts, established through networks organised among ethnic groups. It stands to reason, therefore, that the most recent immigrant groups, as well as those groups with the largest numbers of recent immigrants, have the most difficulty gaining a foothold in the labour force through these means. Consequently, their access to housing as well as other social goods is limited.1
These studies build upon earlier work on ethnic residential segregation (Kalbach 1981, cited above), to show that there is a variety of circumstances that influence the ability of immigrants to enter the labour market successfully, although the attitude of the dominant groups towards particular immigrants groups is of paramount importance. The studies also indicate the need to link economic issues to the broader question of racism and gender, and to place an understanding of the cultural practices of individual groups within a larger context in which cultural politics are played out.
Immigrant Women in Urban Labour Markets
Race and gender divisions are used to divide workers. The particular representation of immigrant women as docile and readily disposable lends to them being viewed as appropriate sources of labour in jobs which are becoming increasingly marginalised. The picture is further reinforced by the fact that they are viewed primarily as housewives, given the language barriers that many immigrant women face and their dependent status. Most enter as spouses or dependents of male migrants - 53% between 1980-1986 (Oncu 1992). They have not been viewed as employees but the figures relating to their labour force participation eschew this interpretation: with a labour force participation rate (in 1986) of 58% immigrant women constituted 19% of the female labour force (Seward and Tremblay 1989).
Not all immigrant women in Canada are destined to low paid manufacturing jobs but they are disproportionately found in manufacturing, especially clothing and electronics as well as in low wage consumer services (for general overviews see Bakan 1987; Boyd 1975, 1992; Boy et al., 1986; Gannage 1986; Johnson and Johnson 1982; Seward 1990; Basavarajappa and Verma 1990; Ng and Estable 1987. For studies of specific groups see Das Gupta 1994 on South Asian women in Toronto and Vancouver and Ralston 1991 on South Asian women in Halifax). They face systemic discrimination both in access to the labour market (Henry and Ginzberg 1985) and in earnings (Burke 1984). A major study by Seward and Tremblay (1989) on the role of immigrants in the Canadian labour market, particularly their role in structural change, confirms the precarious place of immigrant women. (Their model assumes that immigrants respond to the need for labour in the expanding parts of the economy, thereby facilitating structural change). They found that:
Immigrant women are not responding as effectively to changing labour markets as non-immigrant women, possibly because of the barriers they face, such as language problems, discrimination and difficulties getting their credentials recognised. However, because of women's concentration in the service sector and the growth of this sector women are responding to structural change more than men;
The place of origin of immigrant women affects the extent to which they facilitate structural change. Women from traditional sources, that is, Europe and North America, support the model whereas women from more recent sources, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, do not support the model. This difference is partially explained by the lower levels of education of more recent arrivals and their lack of fluency in English or French.
There is more support for the structural change model from male immigrants. This is especially true for male immigrants from non-traditional sources and is explained by their high educational levels.
One of the few studies to go beyond large scale description is that of Giles and Preston (1991). Using data from the Public Use Sample Tape for 1981 and the Public Use Microdata Files for 1986, they conducted a survey of first generation immigrant women in the Toronto labour force, examining differences based on gender, class and ethnicity in order to examine how labour force changes have affected immigrant women. They establish the extent to which immigrant women are marginalised in the Toronto labour market by comparing the employment patterns of four groups (in 1986): immigrant women and men and Canadian-born men and women. They claim the marginality of immigrant women is a function of their location in the market economy and the influence of the state (the state defines which 'countries of origin', an immigration category, are more favoured than others). Their data confirm that in terms of the type of wage labour performed, immigrant women are usually closer to the female population as a whole than to immigrant men. This pattern contributes to class differences between and among immigrant groups. Secondly, they document ethnic differences among immigrant women's employment. They discover that despite the predominance of manufacturing jobs there are significant differences among the industries in which immigrant women are employed: "There are only two ethnic groups in which the largest proportion of women is employed in an industry other than manufacturing. For Jewish women, education is the largest employer, while black women are concentrated in health and social services" (Giles and Preston 1991, p.16). They identify three categories of ethnic groups: "well established and well educated immigrant groups exemplified by Jewish and British women; large and established immigrant groups from Eastern and Southern Europe, for example, the Portuguese, Greeks, Italians and Slavs; and recent non European immigrants, the Chinese, Other Asians and Blacks" (Giles and Preston 1991, p.18). Finally, they explore the extent to which the employment patterns of immigrant women have changed between 1981 and 1986, taking into account the restructuring of the Toronto economy and of new immigration legislation.
Their study is important for five reasons. First, they make an attempt to differentiate among immigrant women on the basis of ethnicity. In doing so, they attempt to unpack the category of immigrant women and show it to be highly differentiated and dynamic. Second, studies of ethnicity that take gender into account have mostly concentrated on women's reproductive roles, especially their access to services such as housing, child care and care of the elderly. This study examines these reproductive roles in relation to their roles in production to explore how their ethnicity is also constructed through their employment. (n.b.. As Ng (1988 p.15) asserts: "Women who are considered to be immigrants in Canada have not always been so considered. They become immigrant women when they immigrate to Canada and enter certain positions in the labour market"). Third, they take into account the spatial restructuring of the Toronto economy and the extent to which the combined effects of spatial and sectoral restructuring have reduced job opportunities for immigrant women. For example, job losses were concentrated in light manufacturing plants in the City of Toronto. Other high-value added manufacturing also left the downtown area to go to the fringe of the Greater Toronto Area where land and labour costs are lower. Although a number of service sector jobs were created in the city centre, they have linguistic and educational requirements that put them beyond the reach of immigrant women. Because immigrant women are concentrated in specific sectors (especially manufacturing) and occupations they are particularly vulnerable to changes in its location and closure.
Fourth, they provide preliminary evidence that the shift to immigration policies that favour highly skilled, well educated immigrants as opposed to family sponsored immigrants is already affecting the employment profile of the immigrant community in Toronto: "By 1986, the proportion of working immigrant women employed as professionals was higher than that of immigrant and Canadian-born men" (Giles and Preston 1991 p.15). Finally, their results reveal that when considering immigrant women as a whole certain trends that may appear in the data will not apply to women from different ethnic groups. They claim that to understand fully the changes in immigrant women's employment it is necessary to consider each ethnic group separately. Villefranche (1991) reaches similar conclusions in a study of immigrant women in Montreal. Between 1985-1990, 120,000 immigrants arrived in Quebec: 48% were women and 42% did not speak French or English. These immigrant women are usually poor and exist on very low incomes. In efforts to increase their incomes they work very long hours in marginal occupations. They have a higher labour force participation rate than that of women originally from Quebec, but their salaries are much lower than the average, especially for Back and Latin American women).
The economic insecurity faced by immigrant women is compounded by a number of factors:
Low educational levels. 25 per cent of immigrant women in Quebec do not have an elementary school education and one out of three is illiterate. Many speak little or no French but language, reading and writing courses are not included in training programs which provide full living allowances. Also, vocational training programmes require a minimum prerequisite of three years of secondary school in French and mathematics. Boyd (1992) claims that the language training program, although revised in 1992, is not comprehensive in coverage and potentially ignores long term resident migrants.
Institutionalised racism. The standard of living of black immigrant women who have been in Canada for over twenty years has not improved significantly. There is surprisingly little research to document or investigate this situation, but it is clear that significant discrimination occurs in hiring (Henry 1988), and that considerable work need to be done to understand the role of the state in structuring the conditions of inequality (Carty and Brand 1993; Calliste 1991).
Emotional insecurity that arises from a lack of understanding of how their adopted society works. In addition, in Quebec the rate of divorced or separated immigrant women has doubled in the 1980s, leaving many women to support their families alone (Villefranche 1991).
The globalisation of the economy. Many industries that employ immigrants are those being negatively affected by economic restructuring. For example, the Canadian garment industry has declined significantly as a result of international competition and the Free Trade Agreement. In Toronto, the industry laid off one-third of its workers between 1988 and mid-1990, cutting the labour force from 12,500 to 8,500. Immigrant women's work in Montreal is concentrated in the textile, hosiery and clothing sectors, which employed over 50% of immigrant women during the 1980s. Furthermore, this figure is an underestimation because it does not include the 30,000 women who were paid "under the table" (Villefranche 1991).
Non-francophone and non-Anglophone, poorly educated immigrant women are at a severe disadvantage in the labour force. Increasingly, employers are requiring highly educated, skilled and technologically proficient employees. The options open to these women are in low paid, non-regulated employment which is insecure and provides few if any workers' rights. In her study of female migrants to North America Boyd (1992) reveals that women who are recent arrivals and/or from areas other than Europe are most likely to be employed in occupations or sectors characterised as low wage, low skilled and vulnerable to disappearance. Furthermore, they are often unable to acquire profiency in the official languages because many women enter Canada under immigration categories that exclude them from training or from income maintenance allowances during training (Estable 1986).
As a result, many immigrant women turn to the informal sector. An M.A. thesis by Oncu (1992) on the participation of immigrant women in the informal economy in Alberta, based on in-depth interviews with 20 women, reveals that most immigrant women find their jobs through friends, relatives and acquaintances. Yet the majority of studies of the labour force participation of immigrant women focus on formal sector employment. Although some studies acknowledge that immigrant women work in the informal sector (see, for example, Ng and Estable 1987) there are (probably) only two Canadian studies that specifically investigate the reasons underlying immigrant women's participation in this sector (Johnson and Johnson 1982; Oncu 1992) The jobs in the informal sector held by immigrant women mirror those held in the lower echelons of the formal sector, implying that the two sectors complement one another, in that there are different degrees of formality and informality within each occupation.
Given the restructuring of the economy and the integral nature of the links between the formal and informal sectors, it is commonly assumed that the informal sector will increasingly be a major source of employment for immigrants. Labour market segmentation and the informal social networks within which immigrants acquire information about job opportunities have already locked substantial numbers of them into this sector. This trend is further increased by the lack of support services for immigrant women wishing to enter the formal economy. A recently published study by Roxanna Ng (1996) finds that employment agencies are directly managed by the state, through instructions on how to handle records and enquiries, and that this intervention has significant consequences for immigrant women. The job search becomes a means of socialising women into the labour process, and of defining them according to class terms.
The lack of low-cost child care facilities in major Canadian cities is another factor that limits immigrant women's participation in the workforce or in education. While all women, espcially those on limited incomes and single mothers, experience problems of physical and economic access, child care problems are exacerbated for many immigrant by the fact that they may be away from the support of the traditional extended family, that they are unused to the cultural practices surrounding both social activities and interactions with officials, or that they work hours that make it difficult to take advantage of the few services available (Estable and Holmes 1985, p.30; Estable 1986).
Taken as a whole, the work to date on immigrant women in the labour market is uneven, and much of it remains speculative (there is, however, a fairly substantive body of literature on immigrant women domestic workers. See Bakan and Stasiulis 1994; Macklin 1994; Calliste 1991; Cohen 1991). Work to date does make clear, however, that immigrant women, and especially immigrant women of colour, are severely disadvantaged within the Canadian economy, and that unless structural changes occur to affect their circumstances, further immigration will only heighten the disparity between these women and other Canadians. Structural barriers to the labour market affect every other aspect of their lives, from their ability to care effectively for children to their conditions of housing, to their ability to participate in their communities. Clearly, this is a field in which there is tremendous need for further study.
Services and the Voluntary Sector
Although there is a well established literature in urban studies on service provision in cities, very few studies have concerned themselves directly with service provision for immigrants.Yet, owing to their spatial concentrations, immigrants can have a large impact upon urban services such as education and health care. For example, large numbers of children who do not speak English or French create administrative and fiscal challenges for some school districts and health care providers can be faced with a new variety of patient beliefs about illness and medicine (Mercer 1995). Furthermore, the need for access to specific services is often a factor affecting residential choices of various groups, including immigrants.
Those studies that have addressed services in relation to immigrants have been concerned primarily with modes of delivery. Adelman et al., (1990) review settlement services as well as longer-range integration services that are provided by federal, provincial and municipal governments and non-governmental organisations. They recognise a tension that has arisen out of this interdependence of levels and a concomitant problem with co-ordination. The extent to which local and provincial governments recognise the needs of specific immigrant groups is widely variable (see, for example, Abdulrazak 1991; City of Scarborough 1988; Doyle and Visano 1987; Ferreira 1988; Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto 1992; Nguyen 1991; Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto 1987).
A variety of modes of immigrant service delivery exists (Matsuoka and Sorenson 1991). These include generic services delivered by mainstream agencies; services provided by ethnic organisations to their own communities; multicultural services addressing the needs of broad ethnic categories eg., African immigrants; and bridging programmes in which mainstream agencies hire workers from different ethno-cultural backgrounds to serve clients from similar backgrounds. The degree of 'institutional completeness' of an immigrant group, i.e., the extent to which it can provide services for its members, depends upon a number of factors such as whether the immigrant's mother tongue is not English or French, the size of the group, the length of time from their first entry into Canada, and the proportion who are in manual occupations (see Rosenberg et al., 1992 for an understanding of whether these parallel institutions either inhibit or serve as alternatives to participation in the broader society). The immigrant groups that are most established have networks which have enabled them to document their own service needs (see, for example, Portuguese Interagency Network 1982). More recent arrivals often lack the 'cultural capital' to organise their own services. Rose (1996 p.159) argues that we "... know particularly little about what happens in the case of multi-ethnic neighbourhoods where differential access to cultural capital by professionals from the dominant culture and immigrants and ethnic minorities may result in the former 'making over' services to meet their own needs while (perhaps inadvertently) excluding others ".
It is well documented (see Ng 1988, 1996) that it is often women in immigrant communities who organise to provide services for their members: "Throughout urban neighbourhoods, women undertake community-based political activities to protect their communities and to improve local services such as hospitals, housing or education. Women have also been responsible for the development of parallel social service networks that are gendered and also respond to diversity" (Wekerle and Peake 1996, pp.272-73). Agnew (1996) argues that in the mid-1970s, middle-class, urban immigrant women's groups of Asian, African and Caribbean women began to organise to gain access to social services for women from their ethnic and racial groups. In the 1980s, many more groups emerged to organise to address the needs of working-class immigrant women. A number of broad-based, national level umbrella groups also exist, such as the Congress of Black Women, but it is at the community level that there has been a proliferation of groups, some organising services to women in their own communities, for example, in Toronto the Filipino Community Centre, the Somalian Women's Group, and some based on advocacy, for example, Women Working with Immigrant Women and INTERCEDE (the Toronto Organisation for Domestic Workers' Rights) and in Vancouver the B.C. Immigrant and Visible Minority Women group. A smattering of specific studies on the role of immigrant women and service provision exists. For example, see Jacob and Lévy on integration of Maya and Bulgarian women,Chan (1983) on aging; Dyck (1992) on health care services for immigrant women in Vancouver; Rose (1990, 1992) on child care services for immigrant women in Montreal and Anderson et al., (1993) on the management of chronic illness among Chinese immigrant women and Euro-Canadian women.
Housing
Housing is probably the service that has attracted most attention in relation to immigrants. The social geography of immigrant groups partly reflects the operation of cities' housing markets. Land prices in downtown neighbourhoods often prohibit entry of those groups with limited financial resources and those with large space preferences. The residential distribution of immigrant groups in cities is partly a function of housing markets, therefore, although relatively little research has been done in Canada on immigrants and housing (for a review, see Ray 1992, pp. 257-59). A study in Montreal (Berneche 1990) suggests that racism is a factor is pushing immigrants into specific parts of cities, and thus a factor in the creation of residential enclaves. Brian Ray's (1992) extensive study contrasts the housing conditions of Italian and Caribbean immigrants in Toronto, to find that Italian immigrants are highly concentrated, and live in single-family housing, while Caribbean immigrants show little concentration and live in high-rise apartment buildings, found both in the inner city and in the suburbs. He concludes that: 1) social and class diversity within immigrant populations is played out in the Canadian urban landscape; 2) spatial segregation is only one aspect of social segregation; 3) the quality of housing stock, not only the qualities of the immigrants themselves, is an important factor determining residential patterns of new immigrants; 4) residential location is strong influenced by racist attitudes on the part of the dominant population.
Ray's study notwithstanding, there is still a limited scholarship that provides an accurate picture of the housing conditions of immigrants in Canadian cities (but see Teixeira 1995; Miron 1993; Murdie 1994). A social report produced nearly a decade ago by the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto (1988) describes the general concentrations of ethnic groups across the metropolitan area, and also provides information on housing, from which it would be possible to infer a broad correlation between housing quality and ethnicity, but this is an extremely blunt measurement, which says almost nothing about the particular circumstances of immigrants. Most of the information we have is anecdotal, based on journalistic responses to incidents in housing developments, or to publicised issues surrounding the provision of education, health and other services. Immigrant service groups and social workers who work in Canadian cities probably have a much better knowledge than do academics of the circumstances, although such knowledge is of course affected by the fact that they deal only with the most needy sub-groups .
There is also recognition in the literature, although as yet it is very tentative, that immigrants do not simply adapt to, but also change, property markets, "The degree to which immigrants contribute to the inflation of property markets is the subject of much debate in Vancouver" (Ley et al., 1992, p.256). Popular perception is that Asian entrepreneurs and investors have been responsible for an escalation of values not only on the west side of the city but also have caused a trickle-up effect of prices in the housing market as a whole. Research is insufficient to determine whether such is the case or whether the perception of changes in property values is a racist backlash on the part of established white citizens. Real estate interests are concerned that these perceptions will lead to a racist backlash against Asian immigrants and a concomitant restraining of interest in the real estate market. Ley et al., (1992) report that as a result real estate interests have established the Laurier Institute, a privately funded research centre, "...'committed to fostering Canada's understanding of the benefits of cultural diversity'"(Ley et al., 1992, p.257). Its first two reports investigated the housing market to find that immigrants have had very limited impact on house prices. David Ley paints a more negative picture of 'unwanted newcomers' and their cultural practices (eg., the feng shui of Chinese residents) which are altering residential urban landscapes. He links the introduction of 'entrepreneurial immigrants' in 1978 and 'investor immigrants' in 1988 with the phenomenon of what are pejoratively called 'Monster Homes': "The term 'Monster Houses' began to appear in the late 1980s; it satirised both the scale and the aesthetic qualities of the new buildings. [They] are typically palatial (often containing over 5,000 square feet of living space) and virtually antithetic to the picturesque tradition. Most are clad in brightly coloured brick, and their design emphasises large window areas and ostentatious entrance ways" (Ley et al., 1992, p.257). Ley's work was based in Kerrisdale, originally a British, upper middle-class suburb of Vancouver, from where the City Hall has received thousands of letters complaining about changes taking place in the neighbourhood. There is very little research on this topic (but see il 1994; Smart and Smart 1996) hence it is difficult to ascertain whether there is a direct connection between immigrants and landscape change.
One MA study from UBC Geography Department, Niall Majury (1994), has carried this issue further, tying housing aesthetics and style in the Kerrisdale landscape to cultural conflict. He examines the cultural encoding of architectural types in 'monster houses', to show that while such houses are often purchased or built by immigrants from Hong Kong (although it is not altogether clear in his work that all those of Chinese ancestry living in such houses are immigrants), for the earlier residents of the Kerrisdale neighbourhood in which they occur, "the loss of their economic, political, and cultural dominance" looms much larger than simple questions of taste. But,
...for the new residents, yet another set of expressive and instrumental values is embodied in the emerging landscape: a new synthesis of landscape aesthetics and privilege. Intolerance over new landscape tastes would seem to articulate a struggle over social identity and place which reveals the unstable terrain upon which Canadian multiculturalism rests. (Majury 1994, p. 269).
Such work begins to address the complexity of the immigration process, recognizing not only that the issue of housing is multifaceted and goes far beyond the standard treatments of market availability and land pricing, but also that immigrants enter, participate in and transform a complex set of social, cultural, political relations which operate across the contested space of the city.
These points are well illustrated in a very recent unpublished study by Ray and Halseth (1996), which examines changes in Richmond, British Columbia, a middle-class suburb that has recently received large number of immigrants from Hong Kong and China. Based on an examination of contested images of place in this residential neighbourhood, they show that this recent settlement represents a significant break from the past, both because of the concentration of Chinese immigrants, and because there has been an increase in the socio-economic diversity of the inhabitants. The income levels, household status and housing types of the new immigrants are the antithesis of patterns established in traditional inner city Chinatowns, and despite high relative concentrations, it is impossible to find a spatially circumscribed area which has taken on a universal 'Chinese' character; rather, the Chinese immigrants are 'archetypical suburbanites'. Nonetheless, they find a strong cleavage between the new residents and the more established white residents, a cleavage that is exacerbated by media accounts that hype stereotypical descriptions. As a result, "the presence of Chinese residents in Richmond remains controversial, and the socially constructed images of the suburban Chinese, and the discourse that flows from these images, sustains a long tradition of (re)creating the Chinese as 'others' within Canadian cities" (1996, p.31-32).
Cultural Imprints of Immigrants on Canadian Cities
Cultural geographers have long been interested in the imprints of immigrant groups on the landscape of the city. More traditional work in cultural geography has focussed on the ethnic groups themselves, emphasizing the internal structure of communities, group accomplishments, and the social life of ethnocultural enclaves (eg. Lai 1988). In contrast, the 'new cultural geography' (Duncan and Ley 1993) emphasises cultural politics (Jackson 1989; Jackson and Penrose 1993), the contested nature of urban space, and the effects of racism in dictating urban change.
The emphasis on cultural politics has been especially strong in British Columbia, where geographers (and others, for example, Johnston 1988; Il 1994; Woon 1985) have considered the ways in which the general interest in the Asian presence in the city is seen through transformations in its physical fabric: "This is especially evident in the growing popularity of Japanese sushi and other Asian food as well as in the range and quality of the city's Japanese and Chinese restaurants....There have also been changes in the range of Chinese food available: 'supermarket' restaurants have been established outside Chinatown; and there has been a proliferation of Asian restaurants offering cuisines from Vietnam, India, Thailand and elsewhere" (Barnes et al., 1992, p.195). In western cities there is also a growth of trans-Pacific real estate operations and educational institutions specialising in the teaching of English as a second language.
Kay Anderson's (1991) work on Vancouver's Chinatown is an in-depth study of the effects of racism upon the internal structure of the city. She shows how the idea of 'race' has been transposed upon the Vancouver landscape to produce not only a subordinate social group, but also a subordinate place within the urban hierarchy. Her study does not address the construction of the community by its inhabitants, however, so that the residents of Chinatown come across as rather passive pawns in the project of white racism.
Ley's more recent work addresses controversy over two 100-year-old sequoias which were cut down by a recent immigrant to Kerrisdale. His paper explores cultural and political conflict over property rights, communal values, and the rhetoric racism, in the emergence of community identity. The missing sequoias, he claims, are "also markers of a grander divisiveness across the Canadian nation, as people from their own subject positions, inflected by language, ethnicity, class, gender, region, colonial status, and interest group, all employing the rhetoric of rights, make the practice of citizenship a jostling, competitive fracas" (Ley 1995, p.204).
Peter Jackson's (1993) work on the cultural politics of Caribana, a summer carnival in Toronto draws on the literature on racialisation (Miles 1989) as well as the politics of identity and difference to address the discourse surrounding the staging of this event. He argues that the Toronto police use controversy over Caribana to create a place-based image of crime and 'blackness' in which conflicts over the moral definition of community have led to deep divisions between residents and the police. The police, he argues, supported by the press, buy into "a homogeneous white identity [which] is a worrying trend for urban Canada, signalling a rejection of the multicultural ideal by those who can afford to live in 'exclusive' White suburbs" (Jackson 1993, p.196).
There has been considerable popular reaction in Canada in recent years to the existence of juvenile gangs populated by immigrant youths, or the first-generation children of immigrants. This is one more area in which Canadian studies are not as extensive as those in other countries, particularly Britain and the United States, but Ley et al.,(1992) have explored the spatial traversing of these gangs in Vancouver from city centre to suburban areas such as Richmond, Surrey and North Vancouver. They attribute their growth to three factors: "the illegal entry of a small number of professional criminals as immigrants or bogus refugees; the lack of community organisation among some groups, such as the Vietnamese, who are relative newcomers to Vancouver; and the paucity of social services for non-English-speaking immigrants" (p.249). The growth of adolescent gangs is just one manifestation of the relation between ethnic and economic stress and ethnic and political stress.
This limited work suggests a need for much strong theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of cultural politics in Canadian cities. On one hand, we need to link cultural politics to larger processes of globalisation, industrial restructuring and major shifts in modes of communication. On the other, we need to recognize the local realities of groups which, as a result of the shifting demographic patterns that immigration creates, transform urban spaces in ways that challenge established norms and political allegiances and re-define public space. The contemporary city is a place of cultural negotiation where differences gather (Jacobs 1996, p.41) and where human relations often consist of ethnoculturally constructed "incremental change[s] and gentle antagonisms" (p. 83). As Sharon Zukin (1995, Chap 1) suggests: "Whose culture? Whose City?"
Racism against Immigrants of Colour
It has been clear throughout this review that racism is a major factor in the experience of immigrants to Canadian cities (also see Elliott and Fleras 1992 for an overview; Naidoo and Edwards 1991; Satzewich and Li 1987). It is beyond the scope of the review to address the vast and rapidly growing literature on racism, except to say that seldom is racism treated by scholars as a phenomenon that is placed, or sited, within particular cities and neighbourhoods. The work of David Ley and his colleagues and students in Vancouver indicates the need for research that does so, although to date their studies have focussed on the political nature of conflict, rather than on an analysis of racism or racialisation (but see Smart and Smart's (1996) work on 'monster homes' which investigates Hong Kong immigration to Vancouver, urban conflicts and contested representations of space). These issues are taken up in a more general way by Kobayashi's (1993) discussion of multiculturalism. She claims that the contradictory results of the official policy are less the result of the policy itself (although there has certainly been less than enthusiastic dedication to the policy by federal politicians and bureaucrats) than to the racist nature of Canadian society. Canadian racism is rooted in a sense of nation that does not as yet admit people of colour as full participants (see also Abu-Luban and Stasiulis 1992).
Following in the tradition of cultural politics, Brian Ray's recent work (Ray 1996) addresses the racialisation of immigrants and place in Toronto since World War II. He shows that Caribbean immigration has occurred under a policy of control that extends from control over the conditions under which Caribbean immigrants have entered Canada to control of their activities in particular places on the Toronto landscape. Regulations have thus affected who actually appears on the streets, and subsequently what they do there. Both government officials and the news media participated in the creation of stereotypes about urban ghettoes, so that there are huge differences in the quality of Caribbean neighbourhoods and the conditions that are perceived to occur there. This difference exacerbates racist actions, and makes it more and more difficult to achieve physical improvements in those areas in need of upgrading. Space and place, Ray claims (p. 33) "have emerged as central metaphors in the altered connotations of difference and 'race' in post-war Toronto; metaphors whose meanings and values have become embedded in everyday life and racist culture."
Sharma et al. (1991) provides a preliminary sense of the importance of activities at the scale of the urban neighbourhood of the Vancouver-based B.C. Organisation to Fight Racism (BCOFR). This grass-roots group emerged in 1980 largely out of the Indo-Canadian community, but crossing ethnic and class lines. By 1990, it was a spent force, but at its peak (1980-1983) it had nearly 1,500 dues-paying members. Its main objective was to deal with cases of racism. In neighbourhoods where overt forms of racism were prevalent it established Neighbourhood Support Committees:
By 1983, the racial situation in Vancouver was notably improved. The KKK never succeeded in becoming a social force: overt and violent assaults dissipated. BCOFR's presence undoubtedly made a contribution in this, in as much as it crystallised the democratic values of the people and gave them an organisational vehicle, and in as much as its agitations forced many of the political and cultural institutions of the society to be more sensitive to the threats organizations like KKK were likely to pose. (Sharma et al., 1991, p.128)
Most studies that directly concern themselves with racism appear to have been conducted by, or on the behalf of, immigrant groups and organisations (but see Ruddick 1996; Stasiulis 1989; Satzewich 1992). Kasozi's (1988) study of the African-Canadian population of Metro Toronto, sponsored by the Canadian African Newcomer Aid Centre of Toronto, is based on a representative sample of African immigrants. A questionnaire survey was conducted but the response rate was only 27 per cent, therefore care should be taken in drawing any substantive conclusions from the study. Kasozi found racism to be a significant factor affecting the daily lives of Africans. For example, of the total (n=237) only 57 per cent were in employment and the incidence of job loss among those who had ever worked was very high. Significantly, of those who had lost jobs, 90 had been laid off or fired but 84 had left voluntarily. When asked why they had left or lost their jobs the dominant reasons given were language difficulties and racial insults. Although the data do not distinguish how many of those who cited racial insults were laid off or left voluntarily it can be assumed that racism is operating as a mechanism for disposing of workers by both employers and employees. Racism not only affected Africans' ability to compete effectively in the job market. When asked whether they had been mistreated due to their race 60 per cent indicated they had and of these the most common area in which they had experienced racism was in their search for housing.
