International Migration Review
Institutional structure and immigrant integration: A comparative study of immigrants\' labor market attainment in Canada and Israel

International Migration Review, The, Summer 2003 by Lewin-Epstein, Noah, Semyonov, Moshe, Kogan, Irena, Wanner, Richard A



The present study focuses on the incorporation of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in two receiving societies, Israel and Canada, during the first half of the 1990s. Both countries conducted national censuses in 1995 (Israel) and 1996 (Canada), making it possible to identify a large enough sample of immigrants and provide information on their demographic characteristics and their labor market activity. While both Canada and Israel are immigrant societies, their institutional contexts of immigrant reception differ considerably. Israel maintains no economic selection of the Jewish immigrants and provides substantial support for newcomers, who are viewed as a returning Diaspora. Canada employs multiple criteria for selecting immigrants, and the immigrants\' social and economic incorporation is patterned primarily by market forces. The analysis first examines the characteristics of immigrants who arrived in the two countries and evaluates the extent of selectivity. Consistent with our hypotheses, Russian immigrants to Canada were more immediately suitable for the labor market, but experienced greater difficulty finding and maintaining employment. Nevertheless, immigrants to Canada attained higher-status occupations and higher earnings than their com-patriots in Israel did, although the Israeli labor market was more likely to reward their investments in education.



Sociological theory and research on international migration has focused primarily on the social and economic incorporation of immigrants into the host society. Over the years several theoretical models of incorporation have been proposed, including \"succession,\" \"queuing,\" \"segmented labor markets\" and \"ethnic group specific\" models (see Lieberson, 1980; Reitz, 1998; Poston, 1994; Carliner, 1980; Massey et al., 1993). In line with these models, most empirical research in this area examined the labor market attainment of immigrants in comparison with the native-born population. The central conclusions of this body of research can be summarized as follows: 1) immigrants are regularly at a disadvantage upon arrival in the host society (Chiswick, 1979; Semyonov, 1997); 2) human capital resources and period of migration affect immigrants\' rate of economic assimilation (Bloom and Gunderson, 1990; Borjas, 1993a); 3) immigrants who are more similar to the majority in the host society tend to assimilate economically more rapidly than those who are less similar (Wanner, 1998); 4) with few exceptions, the socioeconomic position of immigrants steadily improves with the passage of time in the host society and, as a rule, reaches the levels of similarly endowed native born after fifteen to twenty years in the host society (Chiswick, 1979; Semyonov, 1997).



Many studies on immigrant assimilation have compared the economic attainment of different immigrant groups in the same receiving society. Relatively few studies, however, have undertaken a comparative analysis of immigrants from a single point of origin who reached various destinations (for some notable exceptions see Model and Ladipo, 1996; Model et al., 1999; Inbar and Adler, 1977). The advantage of such studies is that by focusing on one relatively homogeneous group of immigrants, they permit a systematic examination of those structural and institutional characteristics of receiving societies that affect the attainment of immigrants. The present study aims to contribute to this important body of research by examining the socioeconomic attainment of recent immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in two receiving societies.



Recent immigration from the FSU is interesting for both substantive and analytical reasons. Throughout most of the communist period, emigration from the USSR was restricted, and, except in certain unusual circumstances, Soviet citizens were not permitted to leave. The dramatic political changes in the late 1980s affected emigration as well as many other spheres of life; well over 2 million persons have left the FSU since 1989. The overwhelming majority of these emigrants settled in one of four destinations: Israel, the United States, Germany and Canada. These migration patterns provide an opportunity to study both systemic and individual attributes associated with the incorporation of immigrants and their socioeconomic attainment. The empirical analysis focuses on two receiving societies, Canada and Israel.



Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3668/is_200307/ai_n9260151