Modelling Migration Flows of Immigrant Groups in Canada

Abstract

The role of immigration in national development has returned to the forefront of domestic policy debates in many developed countries. Two common aspects of the domestic policy debate are focused on the consequences of the concentration of immigrant groups within a small number of the largest cities within any national system of cities and the movement of immigrants from smaller urban places and nonurban places to the largest cities over time. Two challenges emerge. The first is to identify the impact of postarrival migration. The second is to understand the processes underlying this redistribution, particularly if public interventions are planned which seek to influence these internal distributions. In this paper, the authors briefly review the findings of an earlier study on the patterns of both regional and metropolitan redistribution of immigrant groups in Canada. Against this back-drop, a hierarchical model of migration for immigrant groups for the period 1981–86 is developed and estimated. The internal redistribution of immigrants through postarrival migration has continued to be focused on metropolitan areas in general and on Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal in particular. The distribution of previous immigrants plays a significant role over and above that of economic circumstances both in retaining immigrants in a particular city and in attracting members of immigrant groups from other cities.