Changes in the Initial Destinations and Redistribution of Canada's Major Immigrant Groups: Reexamining the Role of Group Affinity

Abstract

This study examines to what extent Canada's recent immigrants have altered their geographic concentration over time, with a view of determining the role of preexisting immigrant communities in immigrants' locational choices, looking specifically at community size. The results show a large increase in concentration levels at the initial destination among major immigrant groups throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and a much smaller increase in the following decade. However, redistribution after immigration was generally small-scale and had inconsistent effects on changing concentration at initial destinations among immigrant groups and across arrival cohorts within an immigrant group. Finally, this study finds that the size of the preexisting immigrant community is not a significant factor in immigrant locational choice when location fixed effects are accounted for.