Patterns and determinants of immigrants’ sense of belonging to Canada and their source country, and relationships with their well-being

On 24 November John Berry (Chief Researcher Fellow of our laboratory, Professor of Queens University, Canada) took part in the «Culture matters» research seminar with the report on "Patterns and determinants of immigrants' sense of belonging to Canada and their source country, and relationships with their well-being".

At the seminar John Berry spoke about the results of the research in Canada in which a representative sample of 7,000 immigrants from more than 100 countries was studied.

For data analysis, the immigrants were divided by the acculturation profiles depending on their identification with the host country and the country of origin. Immigrants with a strong sense of belonging to Canada and the country of origin belonged to an integration profile, immigrants with a strong sense of belonging to Canada only – to assimilation one, with a strong sense of belonging only to the country of origin – to separation one, and those immigrants that had a weak identification with the host country and with the country of origin, were referred to marginalization profile.

Further, these acculturation profiles were compared with various economic, social and psychological characteristics of immigrants, such as language skills, social capital, length of stay in the host country, well-being, etc. It was identified, for example, that immigrants with an integration profile had the highest indicator of well-being, the long duration of stay was primarily associated with the assimilation profile, and immigrants with marginalization profile had the lowest results on many of the indicators.

The report aroused a great interest among the participants of the seminar. John Berry was asked a number of questions. Topics raised in the discussion covered a broad range of problems — from arranging similar large survey of migrants in Russia to the actual problem of terrorism nowadays.