DISCIPLINARY DIFFERENCES IN THE IMPACT OF DEGREE LOCATION ON IMMIGRANT EARNINGS IN CANADA

Abstract

This study uses 2016 Canadian Census data to examine the impact of the location of education on immigrant income in ten academic disciplines. Although past studies have touched on the penalties that foreign-educated immigrants encounter, the value and portability of foreign educational credentials is seldom empirically tested by discipline. Immigrants may be intrinsically more likely to experience the “social closure” or “opportunity hoarding” imposed by the existing social groups in the host country, and with the addition of the context of “credentialism” and “global stratification in higher education”, immigrants with educational credentials from the low-income developing countries may face greater barriers in integrating and achieving socioeconomic mobility in the Canadian labour force. Findings indicate that more severe earnings penalties are imposed on foreign degrees in the fields of business and law. Immigrant wage gaps in the arts and humanities and in social sciences are unremarkable, where immigrant earnings are often concentrated in lower figures regardless of where one’s degree was obtained. Although there is no consistency regarding which global region’s educational degrees are always valued most, overall, North American educational degrees are more economically competitive in the Canadian labour force, and in a select few disciplines immigrants with U.S. degrees can even exceed the earnings of immigrants with Canadian degrees.