Ethnic Boundaries and Minority Earnings: The Effects of Neighborhood, Workplace, and Industry

Feng Hou, Statistics Canada

Ethnic boundaries have become a major concern in understanding the incorporation of racial and ethnic minorities into the mainstream economy. This paper moved the discussion of ethnic boundaries from the approach of self-identification to the approach of situating the discussion in specific spatial locations and activities. In particular, we focus on the effect of ethnic boundaries in neighborhood, workplace and industry on the economic well being of minority groups. We compare the relative effects of three co-ethnic contexts and provide an integrated framework to address simultaneously the effects of ethnic enclosure in the three different contexts on the economic achievements of minorities. Our analysis focuses on the income attainment of four recent immigrant minority groups in Canada. Based on the 2006 Canadian census, we test the hypothesis developed in the discussion of six minority groups in eight major Canadian metropolitan areas.