The "Negative" Assimilation of Immigrants: A Counter-Example from the Canadian Labour Market

Abstract

With 2006 Canadian Census data, this paper investigates the effects of the number of years since migration (YSM) and the location of study on the economic performance of English-speaking immigrants from the U.S. and the U.K. in Canada. The aim is to test whether the “negative assimilation” hypothesis proposed by Chiswick and Miller (2011) is a universal finding for immigrants from countries with similar economic standing and skill transferability to those of the destination country. Geographical, demographic, language, immigration and educational characteristics are taken into account in the models. The regressions are done for both males and females. This study finds that the negative assimilation hypothesis does NOT hold for the Canadian labour market. Specifically, the assimilation rate is close to zero for U.K. immigrants and strictly positive for U.S. immigrants (although lower than that of a comparison group of Chinese immigrants). Furthermore, the U.S. immigrants who hold a degree from the U.S. earn lower wages than those who studied in Canada, while this relationship is not significant for the U.K. immigrants.