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Even in Canada? 1 The Multiscalar Construction and Experience of Concentrated Immigrant Poverty in Gateway Cities

2008; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 98; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00045600802104509

1467-8306

Heather A. Smith, David Ley,

Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

Abstract This article examines the importance of place at multiple scales in the construction and experience of concentrated immigrant poverty and social exclusion in the Canadian metropolitan areas of Toronto and Vancouver. We emphasize four contributions: first, recognition that place has a profound effect on the shaping of immigrant lives; second, consideration of the multiple geographical scales implicated in the construction and experience of poverty; third, setting the immigrant experience in Canada in the broader comparative context of immigrant outcomes in the United States and western Europe; and fourth, complementing quantitative analyses of poverty effects with a qualitative methodology using focus groups to generate narratives that offer insight on the meaning of concentrated poverty in everyday life. The gateway cities of Toronto and Vancouver display an increasing spatial (and statistical) association between immigrant distributions and areas of concentrated poverty. Through focus groups with newcomers to Canada in nine poverty districts in Toronto and Vancouver we identify the role of the nation-state in shaping immigrant opportunities; sociospatial exclusion as it varies between city and suburban sites; and the penalties of living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, including the stigmatizing effects of neighborhood labeling by gatekeepers such as the media, police, and educators. At the same time, different sites display variable effects. We conclude by isolating neighborhood spaces of hope, where respondents offered more positive assessments. En este artículo se examina la importancia del lugar en múltiples escalas en el desarrollo y la experiencia de pobreza concentrada de los inmigrantes y su exclusión social en las áreas metropolitanas canadienses de Toronto y Vancouver. Ponemos énfasis en cuatro contribuciones: primero, el reconocimiento de que el lugar tiene un efecto profundo en la conformación de la vida de los inmigrantes; segundo, la consideración de múltiples escalas geográficas implicadas en el desarrollo y la experiencia de la pobreza; tercero, el establecimiento de la experiencia de los inmigrantes en Canadá en un contexto comparativo más amplio de la situación de los inmigrantes en Estados Unidos y la región occidental de Europa; y cuarto, la complementación de análisis cuantitativos de los efectos de la pobreza con una metodología cualitativa en la que se usan grupos de enfoque para generar narrativas que ofrecen una percepción del significado de la pobreza concentrada en la vida cotidiana. Toronto y Vancouver, ciudades de entrada, exhiben una asociación crecientemente espacial (y estadística) entre la distribución de los inmigrantes y las áreas de pobreza concentrada. Mediante grupos de apoyo con los recién llegados a Canadá de nueve distritos pobres de Toronto y Vancouver, identificamos el papel que desempeña el estado-nación en la conformación de las oportunidades para los inmigrantes; la exclusión socio-espacial según varía entre la ciudad y las áreas suburbanas; y las penalidades de vivir en vecindarios de pobreza concentrada, inclusive los efectos estigmatizadores del etiquetado de vecindarios por guardianes tales como los medios de publicidad, la policía y los educadores. Al mismo tiempo, áreas diferentes exhiben efectos variables. Concluimos aislando espacios vecinales de esperanza, en los que las personas que participaron ofrecieron evaluaciones más positivas. Key words: concentrated immigrant povertyeveryday lifeneighborhood effectssocial exclusionTorontoVancouver关键词: 集中的移民贫困性日常生活社区效应社会排斥多伦多温哥华Palabras claves: pobreza concentrada entre inmigrantesvida cotidianaefectos del vecindarioexclusión socialTorontoVancouver Acknowledgments We wish to acknowledge the invaluable partnership of AMSSA, OCASI, and the NGOs who lent their resources and expertise to the study; the focus group participants whose immigrant stories and courage inspire our work; Metropolis BC for their financial support and ongoing commitment to this research; Thomas Ludden of UNC Charlotte's Metropolitan Studies Group for his design and production of the maps; Virginia Wong, Sara Jackson, Luna Vives (UBC), and W. Scott Whitlock and Emily Livingstone (UNC Charlotte) for their dedication as research assistants over varying stages of the project. We also wish to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their careful and thorough assessment of earlier drafts and Annals editor Audrey Kobayashi for her sage guidance throughout the revision process. Notes 1. We are drawing here from the title of Allan Pred's (2000) innovative study of racism in Sweden. 2. The delegation of responsibilities to subnational levels of government can lead to distinctive regional immigrant outcomes as well, introducing an additional geographical scale to analysis. For example, CitationClark (1998) identified California's more generous welfare payments as a factor in directing immigration within the United States, whereas most immigration functions have been delegated to Quebec by the Canadian state, allowing the province to define its own selection policies and, in interculturalism, its own distinctive interpretation of Canadian multiculturalism. 3. The data were collected only a few months after Canada's worst recent terrorist incident, the arrest of eighteen alleged conspirators in the Toronto region, reputedly affiliated with al-Qaeda, who were apparently planning various attacks on public buildings and leaders in Ontario. The arrests precipitated some sensational media reactions critical of multiculturalism, and we would expect the timing of the survey to have depressed approval ratings for multiculturalism. Nonetheless they remain high. We are grateful to Jack Jedwab for access to these unpublished statistics. 4. The comparison groups in Schellenberg's study were men aged sixteen to sixty-four, employed full time and full year, with controls for age, education, and city of residence. 5. Average annual immigrant landings of around 125,000 in the 1980s rose to approximately 220,000 in the 1990s and just under 240,000 for 2000–2005 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2006). 6. Several participants declined to provide the study with their residential addresses and asked that we use the NGO address for all correspondence. Those requests are reflected on the maps. 7. Among the Greater Toronto neighborhoods evaluated by a United Way (2004) report on poverty distribution, Thorncliffe ranked twelfth with a poverty rate of 44 percent. Two of the neighborhood areas within Regent Park (also a focus within our study) ranked first and second, with poverty rates of 72.8 percent and 59.1 percent. 8. MOSAIC provided translation services for this study. 9. The identity of respondents is indicated first by T for Toronto or V for Vancouver, then the abbreviation for the specific agency where the focus group occurred, and finally a numerical code for the immigrant's name. 10. See Phillips (2006) for a well-focused response to this rhetoric in England. 11. Of the 246 tracts in Toronto and Vancouver, 156 were dominated by Chinese Canadians, eighty by residents with south Asian ethnic origins, and ten by Afro- and Afro-Caribbean Canadians. Only eight such districts were located in Montreal (CitationHou 2004). 12. The exposure index "calculates the [weighted] average percentage of a minority group in neighborhoods where at least one of its members lives" (CitationHou 2004, 9). 13. In the City of Toronto's Neighbourhood Profile, based on the 2001 Census, over 40 percent of Thorncliffe Park's 16,000 residents were of south Asian ethnicity, 30 percent had arrived in Canada in the previous five years, and 40 percent were below the poverty line. 14. The problems in the Jane-Finch district continue with new shootings and deaths of young men. As we concluded work on this article, an antigang police raid has led to ninety-five arrests and the seizure of guns, drugs, and cash (see CitationFriesen 2007).