Immigrants’ Experiences of Everyday Discrimination in Canada: Unpacking the Contributions of Assimilation,Race,and Early Socialization

Abstract

We examined perceptions of everyday discrimination among immigrants in Canada and in comparison to native-born Canadians using data from the 2013 Canadian Community Health Survey. We find that recent immigrants report less discrimination than native-born Canadians, ceteris paribus. Recent immigrants also report less discrimination than their fellow immigrants who had been residing in Canada for much longer durations. There were trivial differences in perceptions of everyday discrimination between native-born Canadians and midway and established immigrants, all else being equal. Additional analysis suggests that differences in age at arrival and associated early socialization experiences might explain variations in immigrants’ perceived discrimination.

Background

Discrimination is the unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on social markers such as race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and age (Pettigrew and Taylor 2000). Discrimination can occur with or without the presence of prejudice (i.e., animosity or intolerance toward outgroup members) and manifests at both the interpersonal and institutional levels (Quillian 2006). The degree of discrimination experienced by immigrants — newcomers to the receiving country who may differ from the native-born dominant group in terms of race/ethnicity, culture, language, and other characteristics — regardless of whether the discrimination is subjective or real, reflects broader intergroup dynamics in society and provides important insight into immigrants’ social integration (Reitz and Banerjee 2007).

One common strategy that social scientists have used to gauge the degree of discrimination experienced by different social groups is to ask people about their perceptions of unequal treatment (i.e., perceived discrimination). Perceptions of discrimination differ from arguably more “objective” assessments of discrimination (e.g., audit and correspondence studies) that measure the prevalence of unequal treatment in a given sector, such as employment (Pager 2007; Eid 2012) or housing (Massey and Denton 1993; Yinger 1995). Nonetheless, subjective assessments of discrimination have been shown to be reliable and a good predictor of individual outcomes as varied as health status and morbidity (Krieger 1999; Williams, Neighbors, and Jackson 2003; Paradies 2006), job satisfaction (Ensher, Grant-Vallone, and Donaldson 2001), self-esteem (Oxman-Martinez et al. 2012), and sense of belonging (Reitz and Banerjee 2007; Jayaweera and Choudhury 2008).

In this study, we examine perceptions of everyday discrimination among immigrants in Canada who differ by duration of stay in the host country and age at arrival. We summarize two existing theories (straight-line and segmented assimilation) and develop a third framework of early socialization for understanding immigrants’ perceived discrimination. We use nationally representative data to test hypotheses derived from these theories. The paper concludes with a discussion of future theoretical and empirical development on perceived discrimination as a measure of immigrants’ social integration.

Intergroup Relations and Immigrant Integration Philosophy in Canada and the United States

Canada and the United States are settler societies that have shared histories of colonialism, intergroup conflicts, and migration-driven racial/ethnic diversity (Thomas 2000). Yet the two countries also differ in terms of their approaches to nation-building and management of their diverse populations (Banting, Courchene, and Seidle 2007; Fitzgerald and Cook-Martin 2014). In this section, we provide a brief overview of intergroup relations and immigrant integration philosophies in Canada and the United States to help contextualize immigrants’ experiences of everyday discrimination in Canada.¹

Intergroup relations in the United States have historically been framed along racial boundaries with a prominent black/white divide (Lee and Bean 2007). In their efforts to become accepted and attain socioeconomic mobility in American society, immigrants in the United States learned to distance themselves, socially and spatially, from African Americans (Barrett and Roediger 1997; Waters 1999; Foner and Fredrickson 2004). Even as race relations boundaries have become more complex over time, with alternative black/nonblack, white/nonwhite, and triracial color lines emerging (Bean and Lee 2009; Xu and Lee 2013), race remains a central lens through which immigrants’ experiences are understood. Unlike the United States, intergroup relations in Canada are not as strongly polarized along a black-white divide. Rather, discourses of intergroup relations in Canada are differentiated along three axes — Aboriginal versus non-Aboriginal, Francophone versus Anglophone, and immigrants and their descendants versus the rest of society (Kymlicka 2007). Intergroup relations in Canada are therefore fragmented, and group dynamics are typically framed in terms of ethnicity rather than race per se.²

The ideologies governing how immigrants should be incorporated in the two countries also differ. Mosaic and melting pot metaphors are often used to characterize Canada’s multiculturalism and the United States’s assimilationist approaches to immigrant integration, respectively (Bloemraad 2011). The expectation that immigrants shed their ethnic distinctiveness in order to become bone fide Americans has been central to US assimilation ideology. In contrast, multiculturalism ideology in Canada is based on the notion that cultural diversity should not only be tolerated but also welcomed. Indeed, multiculturalism discourse champions the idea that societal social cohesion is not undermined by cultural differences (Kymlicka 2007; Banting and Soroka 2012). This philosophy is enshrined in law through the 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act, which provides institutional recognition of cultural diversity and allows for some accommodation of minority cultural practices (Department of Canadian Heritage 2001). Although not originally intended as an integration policy for immigrants, multiculturalism has in fact become the key integration blueprint for immigrants (Bloemraad 2006) and is the framework within which immigration and social integration debates are resolved (Soroka and Roberton 2010).

Theoretical Frameworks

According to Gordon’s (1964) seminal work, behavioral receptional assimilation, or the lack of discrimination between immigrants and the native-born dominant group, is one of the expected end stages of the assimilation process. Under this straight-line assimilation framework, acculturation, social mobility, and structural assimilation (i.e., formation of primary group relations between immigrants and dominant group members) are the key mechanisms underlying the behavioral acceptance of immigrants. Thus, as immigrants adopt the cultural norms, values, and behaviors of the host society (cultural assimilation); improve their educational and occupational attainment and increase their earnings (social mobility); and develop friendships with native-born persons (structural assimilation), it is expected that unequal treatment against immigrants will diminish. Importantly, this process is supposed to unfold for all immigrants, regardless of race/ethnicity or national origin.

The segmented assimilation hypothesis presents an alternative perspective on whether and how immigration processes and social group membership such as race influence discrimination between immigrants and natives. The segmented assimilation thesis argues that not all immigrants will reach assimilation’s end stages, including behavioral receptional assimilation, as posited by Gordon (1964). Instead, different immigrant groups may experience different assimilation trajectories and outcomes depending on their modes of incorporation, sociodemographic characteristics, and ethnic communities (Portes and Zhou 1993). Of particular significance here is the proposition that the nonwhite racial composition of contemporary immigrant communities poses substantial barriers to full acceptance in many Western immigrant-receiving countries, such as the United States and Canada, where whites hold the lion’s share of wealth and political power (Oliver and Shapiro 2006; Andrew et al. 2009; Block and Galabuzi 2011; Griffin 2014). Whiteness, and associated policing of racial boundaries, may help reinforce whites’ group position and contribute to discrimination against nonwhite immigrants (Fine et al. 1997; Ware and Back 2002; Wale 2010). Under the segmented assimilation framework, then, race is expected to shape and constrain immigrants’ assimilation outcomes.

These two theories assume different associations between immigrants’ duration of residence in Canada and discrimination. On the one hand, straight-line assimilation theory would predict that the longer immigrants reside in a country, the less likely they will experience discrimination. This is premised on the assumption that with increased duration of residence, immigrants become more acculturated and acquire the socioeconomic mobility necessary to make them socially acceptable to the native-born dominant group, as reflected in the absence of discrimination. On the other hand, the segmented assimilation thesis predicts that the association between duration of residence and discrimination would differ, depending on immigrants’ racial background. Longer residence in Canada would not be expected to lessen discrimination for nonwhite immigrants. Duration of residence, however, may diminish discrimination for white immigrants.

We present a third perspective for understanding immigrants’ experiences of discrimination. Straight-line and segmented assimilation theories do not distinguish between actual and perceived discrimination. This third perspective may be especially applicable to perceived discrimination because of its emphasis on early socialization experiences and resultant worldviews or perceptions. According to Rumbaut (2004), immigrant generational cohort provides important information about the socialization, outlook, and adaptation of immigrants and their children. Among the foreign-born or first generation, age at arrival is not a mere proxy for duration of stay in the host country and associated acculturation but rather an “indicator of qualitatively different life stages and sociodevelopmental contexts at the time of immigration” (ibid, 1163). Rumbaut’s typology of “decimal generations” (1167) outlines distinctive life course stages and childhood socialization experiences among the foreign-born. Immigrants who arrived as preschool-age (1.75 generation) children are expected to be like the second generation in outlook and cultural exposure since they are educated entirely in the receiving country. Preadolescent, primary school–age (1.5 generation) immigrants have had some schooling and cultural exposure in the sending country, but their education is mostly completed in the receiving country. Finally, migrants who uprooted as adolescents (1.25 generation) may attend secondary school in the receiving country, but their formative years were shaped by the educational institutions and cultural milieu of the sending country. Rumbaut’s typology leads us to raise the question: What early socialization experiences matter for immigrants’ perceptions of discrimination? In other words, what is learned, and why does that learning increase attributions of differential treatment to discrimination? We propose that expectations of inclusion in the host society, learned through early socialization in host country educational institutions, influence immigrants’ perceptions of discrimination.

Schooling, including the location where immigrant children’s education occurs (whether in the sending or receiving country), looms large in Rumbaut’s (2004) conceptual delineation of decimal generations. Rumbaut suggests that schooling matters because it exposes immigrant children to the language and culture of the sending and/or host country during their formative developmental years. Schools help prepare children for the transition to adulthood through the acquisition and mastery of knowledge and skills (Lesch 2009). Schools also function as a powerful agent of socialization where children learn about society, its norms, and behavioral expectations through educational curriculum and interactions with teachers and peers (Havinghurst and Davis 1943; Morrison and McIntyre 1971). We posit that another important socialization function of schools is to inculcate children with notions of meritocracy and familiarize them with national narratives. In Canada, for instance, “multicultural education” policies in K–12 school curriculum not only integrate material on minority languages and cultures (Ashworth 1975) but also instruct students about Canadian multiculturalism ideology. Multicultural education teaches children that they “have a right to equal and meaningful roles in Canadian society” (Government of Manitoba 2017). Learning about multiculturalism in school familiarizes immigrant children with a “rights” vocabulary and discourse. A belief that society is fair and rewards hard work combined with national narratives of tolerance and diversity may instill expectations of societal inclusion in immigrant children even if they are technically foreigners. This perspective predicts that immigrants who arrived as children may be more sensitive to instances of unequal treatment and thus more likely to attribute such treatment to discrimination because of their learned expectations.

Perceived Discrimination in Canada

In Canada, nationally representative data on perceived discrimination come primarily from the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey and the 2009 and 2013 General Social Surveys. Analyses based on these surveys have produced different results. Analysis of the Ethnic Diversity Survey has shown significantly lower odds of perceived racial discrimination among immigrants than native-born Canadians in Toronto and Vancouver net of race/ethnicity, sociodemographic characteristics, and indicators of social capital (e.g., trust and membership in voluntary organizations) (Ray and Preston 2009). This same study showed that immigrants in Montreal also reported less racial discrimination than native-born Canadians, but the differences were not statistically significant. Ray and Preston (2015), again using the Ethnic Diversity Survey, found that perceived workplace discrimination was significantly higher for immigrants than native-born Canadians in Toronto but that overall perceived discrimination did not differ by nativity status, ceteris paribus. More recent analysis using the 2009 General Social Survey revealed, however, that perceived discrimination was reported by one in five landed immigrants (Nangia 2013). Additionally, the probability of reporting discrimination was significantly higher for immigrants than comparable native-born Canadians. Race, ethnicity, and language were the common reasons underlying landed immigrants’ reports of discrimination.

Complicating the inconsistent findings about immigrants’ perceived discrimination in Canada, research shows that there is a “racial gap in perception of discrimination” in Canada as well. Reitz and Banerjee (2007) compared rates of perceived discrimination by generation status and migration cohort (recent versus earlier waves) for whites and visible minorities in Canada using the Ethnic Diversity Survey.³ Among white respondents, recent immigrants reported more discrimination than earlier immigrants regardless of generation status. Among visible minorities, there were trivial differences in rates of perceived discrimination by duration of residence for the first generation, but higher proportions of visible minority second-generation immigrants reported discrimination than their first-generation counterparts. The authors concluded from their analysis that there is substantial discrimination against visible minority immigrants and native-born visible minorities in Canada. Indeed, as a group, visible minorities are more likely to report discrimination than whites (Statistics Canada 2003). Race or skin color was the most often cited reason for visible minorities’ perceptions of discrimination. Perceived discrimination among visible minorities also varied by race/ethnicity, with blacks being the most likely to report discriminatory encounters. The study suggests that race may be an important determinant of immigrants’ perceptions of discrimination.

Everyday Discrimination Versus Global Discrimination

Much of our knowledge of immigrants’ and visible minorities’ perceived discrimination in Canada is based on single-item measures that only gauge the prevalence of discrimination experienced within a given timeframe. For example, both the Ethnic Diversity Survey and the General Social Survey ask whether respondents experienced discrimination within the last five years leading up to the survey. This type of single-item general measure is known as a global discrimination indicator (Krieger et al. 2005; Benjamins 2013). Global discrimination indicators may only be capturing major, stressful life events involving acts of unequal treatment or bias that were so vivid and stressful that they remain imprinted in respondents’ memories (at least enough for them to recall five years later on a survey). For example, events such as being the target of racial profiling at an airport or being passed up for a job promotion at work may stand out in people’s minds. In contrast, subtler, recurrent insults and mistreatments that people encounter as they go about their daily lives may not register in people’s minds when answering a survey question about global discrimination precisely because such daily incidents of bias are so commonplace. Nonetheless, such minor but chronic discriminatory encounters can be just as consequential for individuals as major acts of discrimination (Essed 1991).

To account for more commonplace incidents of bias, Williams et al. (1997) developed the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS). Based on data from the Detroit Area Study, a multistage probability sample of over 1,000 adults living in three counties in Michigan, the authors constructed a race-neutral scale that tapped into the frequency of unfair treatment in the “day-to-day lives of respondents” (ibid, 340). The EDS has since been widely used in the United States, most notably in health research (e.g., Kessler, Mickelson, and Williams 1999; Brown et al. 2000; Schulz et al. 2006) but in non-health studies as well (Oyserman et al. 2007; Surkan et al. 2010). The scale has also been empirically validated in Haiti (Surkan et al. 2010), South Africa (Williams et al. 2012), and South Korea (Kim and Williams 2012).

Rates of everyday discrimination in the United States have been shown to vary across different racial and ethnic groups (Brettell 2011; Lewis et al. 2012), with racial minorities typically reporting greater prevalence of everyday discrimination than non-Hispanic whites (Williams and Mohammed 2009). In contrast to the relatively abundant scholarship on everyday discrimination for racial minorities, far fewer studies have examined everyday discrimination among immigrants. It is possible that immigrants’ experiences of everyday discrimination may be even more pronounced than what is suggested by the Canadian literature on perceived discrimination that uses global discrimination indicators. Immigrants may encounter subtle and recurrent differential treatment as they navigate different host institutions and go about their settlement process in the receiving country (Brettell 2011). Whether this is true and what it tells us about intergroup relations and immigrants’ adaptation are the aims of this study.

The Current Study

Everyday discrimination provides an important lens into immigrants’ social integration because it highlights daily interactions between immigrants and others in society, including native-born residents. The present study fills some of the theoretical and empirical gaps in the literature by comparing perceived everyday discrimination between native-born Canadians and immigrants, differentiated by duration of residence, while adjusting for visible minority status and other important sociodemographic characteristics. By disaggregating the foreign-born population by duration of residence (hereafter referred to as immigrant cohort), we are also able to test hypotheses generated from straight-line and segmented assimilation theses. Additionally, we examine differences in perceived discrimination within the immigrant population by age at arrival to explore possible effects of early socialization.

Methods

Data and Sample

We used data from the 2013 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) rapid response module on everyday discrimination (CCHS-D) (Statistics Canada 2014). The CCHS is a cross-sectional survey that collects information on the health status, health care utilization, and health determinants of the Canadian population at national, provincial, and intra-provincial (health region) levels (Statistics Canada 2013a). Canadian Community Health Survey data are collected on an annual basis from persons age 12 and older living in private dwellings in all provinces and territories, which covers approximately 98 percent of the Canadian population age 12 and older (Statistics Canada, 2013b). The analytical sample consists of 7,638,841 non-Indigenous respondents aged 18 and older with nonmissing information on dependent and independent variables.⁴ Indigenous respondents were omitted from the analysis because our focus is on comparing everyday discrimination between immigrants and native-born Canadians. Moreover, it is not possible to examine perceived discrimination for immigrants and Indigenous peoples using the same theoretical frameworks because colonization is a distinctive feature of the latter group’s marginalized status in Canadian society whereas it is not for the former.

Variables

The key dependent variable of interest is everyday discrimination as measured by a modified version of the EDS (Sternthal, Slopen, and Williams 2011).⁵ The modified EDS consists of five items that gauge the frequency of daily unequal treatment as follows: (1) treated with less respect or courtesy, (2) received poorer service than others in public, (3) treated as being less smart, (4) feared by others, and (5) threatened or harassed. For all five items, respondents could report occurrences of at least once a week, a few times a month, a few times a year, less than once a year, or never. The five items were reverse-coded, summed into a composite score, and recalibrated to the original 5-point scale, with higher values reflecting more frequent discrimination. Preliminary analysis showed that the distribution of the EDS index was skewed right, with many values clustered between 1 and 2 on the 5-point scale. In other words, the average respondent encountered everyday discrimination “less than once a year.” Diagnostic tests also revealed that the residuals were not normally distributed. Given the skewed distribution of the dependent variable and non-normality of the errors, ordinary least squares regression would be inappropriate. We therefore created a binary specification of everyday discrimination where responses of never on all five individual items were coded as no discrimination. A respondent was coded as having experienced discrimination if he or she reported a response other than never for one or more of the five individual EDS items.

The CCHS-D survey also asks respondents who reported that they encountered everyday discrimination to give the reasons for their experiences. Possible reasons included race, gender, age, weight, religion, sexual orientation, physical disability, other physical appearance, income, mental health, and other factors. Respondents were then asked to give the main reason for their experiences of discrimination. Since few respondents gave multiple reasons, we chose the main reason variable to examine the underlying factors that respondents believed to be at the root of their discriminatory encounters. To avoid small cell sizes, we recoded the variable into five categories: race, gender, age, religion, and other.

The key independent variable of interest is immigrant cohort. Information on nativity status and years of residence in Canada (for the foreign-born) were combined to create a categorical variable as follows: recent immigrants (foreign-born, <5 years), midway immigrants (foreign-born, 5–10 years), and established immigrants (foreign-born, >10 years). A fourth category, native-born Canadians, serves as the reference group. The cutoff points for the immigrant cohorts were informed by prior research that suggested 10 years as an important threshold for assessing duration effects for immigrant outcomes (Vang et al. 2017).

Additional explanatory variables include visible minority status (white versus visible minority), age, sex (male versus female), marital status (married versus never married, separated/divorced, and widowed), language most spoken at home (English versus French and other language), education (postsecondary degree versus less than high school, high school diploma, and some postsecondary education), household income ($75,000+ versus <$25,000, $25,000–$49,999, and $50,000–$74,999), and province of residence (Ontario versus Quebec, British Columbia, Atlantic provinces, and Prairie provinces). Age is specified as a continuous variable in the analysis. In the absence of direct measures that tap into expectations of inclusion, age at arrival is used as a proxy for early socialization experiences in supplemental analysis restricted to the immigrant subsample. Age at arrival is specified as both a continuous variable and a dummy variable. We were unable to create finer distinctions by age at arrival (e.g., 1.25, 1.5, and 1.75 generations) due to small cell sizes. Hence, respondents who migrated before age 12 were coded as “0,” and those who migrated at age 12 or older were assigned a value of “1.” The binary specification is used in logistic regression analysis for the immigrant subsample.

Analytical Strategy

A chi-square test was used to compare differences in sociodemographic characteristics between native-born Canadians and immigrant cohorts. Logistic regression was used to estimate the association between immigrant cohort and everyday discrimination while adjusting for important sociodemographic characteristics. Five sequential models were estimated to disentangle the relative contribution of different sociodemographic variables in explaining nativity and cohort differences in everyday discrimination. Model 1 establishes baseline differences in everyday discrimination between native-born Canadians and immigrants differentiated by duration of residence. Model 2 adjusts for visible minority status. Model 3 controls for key demographics: age, sex, marital status, and language. Model 4 adds household income and education. Model 5 adjusts for province of residence. Model 6, our interaction model, tests the segmented assimilation hypothesis by examining whether the association between immigrant cohort and everyday discrimination differs for white and visible minority respondents. Under segmented assimilation, we would expect to see more discrimination for visible minority immigrants than native-born Canadians regardless of how long immigrants have resided in Canada. In contrast, we would expect negligible differences in discrimination between white immigrants and the native-born population. Finally, due to the complex, multistage sampling design of the CCHS, bootstrap weights were applied to produce unbiased variance estimates. All analyses were estimated using STATA 14 (Stata Corp 2015).

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for the full analytical sample. The proportion of males and females is similar for native-born Canadians and immigrants, with slightly more female than male respondents. The overwhelming majority (96%) of native-born Canadians are white. In contrast, less than one-quarter of recent (24%) and midway (20%) immigrants and less than half of established immigrants (45%) are white. Native-born Canadians and established immigrants are older on average than recent and midway immigrants (46.7 and 53.2 years versus 33.2 and 36.2 years, respectively). Reflecting this age difference, the proportions of separated, divorced, or widowed respondents are higher among native-born Canadians and established immigrants (14% and 17%). Across all groups, most respondents are married (61%–74%), however. English (72%) and French (26%) are the languages most spoken at home among native-born Canadians. Not surprisingly, recent and midway immigrants tend to speak a language other than English or French at home (71% and 83%, respectively), though a smaller proportion of established immigrants do so as well (42%). English is more prevalent than French across all immigrant cohorts, with the most striking difference observed among established immigrants, the majority of whom speak English at home (53%). Except for established immigrants, who tend to be concentrated in Ontario and British Columbia, there are minimal differences in the provincial distribution of native-born Canadians and immigrants.

Table 1.

Characteristics of Native-Born Canadians and Immigrant Cohorts: Full Sample.

		Immigrant Cohort
	Native- Born	Recent (<5 years)	Midway (5–10 years)	Established (>10 years)	p-value^a
Age, mean (95% confidence interval)	46.7 (46.2–47.2)	33.7 (31.2–36.2)	38.1 (35.8–40.5)	53.2 (51.9–54.4)	N/A
Sex, %					.014
Male (reference)	50.0	42.0	46.0	43.8
Female	50.0	58.1	54.0	56.3
Visible minority status, %					<.001
White	95.5	23.7	19.5	45.1
Visible minority	4.5	76.4	80.5	54.9
Marital status, %					<.001
Married (reference)	61.3	70.0	74.2	67.8
Separated/divorced/widowed	13.7	3.7	6.3	17.4
Single	25.0	26.3	19.5	14.7
Language most spoken at home, %					<.001
English	71.7	21.6	14.5	53.1
French	26.2	7.8	2.9	4.9
Other language only	2.1	70.6	82.6	42.1
Education, %					.002
Less than high school	12.1	4.7	8.3	13.6
High school diploma	20.6	15.2	12.8	22.8
Some postsecondary, no degree	6.4	6.6	6.0	3.3
Postsecondary degree (reference)^b	60.9	73.6	72.9	60.3
Household income, %					<.001
<$25,000	10.2	32.2	13.3	11.7
$25,000–$49,999	20.4	26.4	26.4	23.7
$50,000–$74,999	20.7	21.8	18.6	22.1
$75,000+ (reference)	48.7	19.6	41.7	42.6
Province, %					<.001
Ontario (reference)	35.2	33.9	55.2	56.5
Quebec	27.4	28.0	10.5	10.3
British Columbia	11.0	18.3	13.0	20.0
Prairies	17.5	18.1	18.7	12.1
Atlantic	8.9	1.7	2.6	1.2
Weighted sample size	5,734,116	282,923	299,333	1,322,469
(unweighted sample size)^c	(13,480)	(210)	(280)	(1,940)
% of total sample	75.2	3.7	3.9	17.1

^a p-value from chi-square tests comparing group differences in proportions.

^bIncludes vocational school certificate, CEGEP diploma, four-year university degree, and graduate degree.

^cRounded values are reported to comply with Statistics Canada vetting rules. Unweighted totals rounded up to the nearest 10.

In terms of socioeconomic status, recent and midway immigrants tend to be more educated, with 74 percent and 73 percent of immigrants, respectively, having earned a postsecondary degree compared to only 61 percent of native-born Canadians. The level of postsecondary educational attainment among established immigrants (60%) is similar to that of native-born Canadians. Household income does not neatly follow in step with educational attainment, however. Focusing on the highest income category, we see that a greater proportion of native-born Canadians (49%) have household incomes of $75,000 or more, whereas only 20 percent of recent immigrants earn as much money. There are less pronounced differences among top earners between midway (42%) and established (43%) immigrants and the Canadian-born population.

Figure 1 depicts perceptions of everyday discrimination by immigrant cohort. Over half of midway immigrants (52%) report encounters with some form of everyday discrimination, compared to 45 percent of native-born Canadians. Reports of everyday discrimination are similar between native-born Canadians and established immigrants (45% and 42%, respectively). Notably, recent immigrants are the least likely to report encounters with everyday discrimination (37%). These unadjusted group differences in experiences of everyday discrimination are statistically significant (p = .051).

Figure 1.

Perceptions of Everyday Discrimination among Native-Born Canadians and Immigrants: Full Sample.

Specific types of discriminatory encounters by immigrant cohort are shown in Table 2. Native-born Canadians and immigrants report that being treated with less courtesy or respect, receiving poorer service in public, and being treated as not smart are the top three forms of everyday discrimination they encounter. However, only the first two reasons are statistically significant across the groups at the p < .05 level. Midway immigrants (46%) are more likely to say that people treat them with less courtesy or respect than either established (34%) and recent (29%) immigrants or native-born Canadians (34%). Likewise, midway immigrants (28%) are more likely to report that they receive poorer service than their recent (19%) and established (22%) immigrant counterparts or native-born Canadians (18%). Interestingly, reports that others fear them are higher among native-born Canadians (14%) than recent (7%), midway (6%), and established (11%) immigrants.

Table 2.

Specific Types of Everyday Discrimination for Native-Born Canadians and Immigrant Cohorts: Full Sample.

		Immigrant Cohort
	Native- Born	Recent (<5 years)	Midway (5–10 years)	Established (>10 years)	p-value^a
Type of everyday discrimination, %
Treated with less courtesy/respect	34.11	29.20	46.12	34.36	.022
Received poorer service in public	18.37	19.25	28.09	21.98	.019
Treated as not smart	19.81	25.05	27.83	18.69	.063
Feared by others	14.39	7.09	6.01	10.82	.001
Threatened/harassed	10.30	3.94	9.92	9.04	.144
Weighted sample size	5,734,116	282,923	299,333	1,322,469

^a p-value from chi-square tests comparing group differences in proportions.

Table 3 lists the rankings of the main reasons that respondents gave to account for their perceived discriminatory encounters.⁶ The top three reasons for native-born Canadians’ perceptions of unfair treatment are gender, age, and other factors (e.g., weight, sexual orientation, physical disability, etc.). In contrast, immigrants say that race, other factors, and gender are the main underlying causes of their perceived discrimination. Immigrants attribute discrimination to religion slightly more than native-born Canadians, but religion is not among the top three reasons underlying either group’s perceived discrimination.

Table 3.

Rankings of the Main Reasons for Everyday Discrimination by Nativity Status: Full Sample.

Main Reason for Discrimination	Native-Born	Foreign-Born
Race	4	1
Gender	2	3
Age	3	5
Religion	5	4
Other^a	1	2

^aOther reasons for discrimination include: weight, sexual orientation, physical disability, other physical appearance, income, mental health, or other factors.

Table 4 shows perceptions of everyday discrimination both overall and for specific types of encounters by select sociodemographic characteristics. Variations by visible minority status, age, and education are of interest. Consistent with previous research (Reitz and Banerjee 2007), visible minorities report discrimination more than whites (48% versus 44%; p = .042). Regarding specific encounters, visible minorities are more likely to say that they are treated with less respect/courtesy, received poorer services, and are treated as though they are not smart. Notably, visible minorities and whites do not differ in their perceptions of being feared by others and being threatened/harassed. The greater proportion of whites among native-born Canadians and established immigrants in our sample may account for the nativity and immigrant cohort variations in everyday discrimination shown in Figure 1. Age differences in perceptions of everyday discrimination are also striking. Young adults aged 18 to 44 consistently report more everyday discrimination than their middle-aged and elderly counterparts. This age effect may partly explain nativity status differences in everyday discrimination since foreign-born respondents in our sample are younger on average than native-born respondents. Finally, more educated respondents (some postsecondary schooling or a postsecondary degree) report more everyday discrimination than less educated respondents (high school diploma or less). This educational effect may be picking up possible schooling-related socialization experiences, as we hypothesized. Since immigrants tend to be more educated than native-born Canadians, this education effect may also reflect immigrants’ frustrations about the occupational downgrading they face in the Canadian labor market due to nonrecognition of foreign educational credentials (Reitz 2007).

Table 4.

Any Everyday Discrimination and Types of Discrimination by Select Sociodemographic Characteristics: Full Sample.

	Any Everyday Discrimination	Treated with Less Courtesy/Respect	Received Poorer Service in Public	Treated as Not Smart	Feared by Others	Threatened or Harassed
Age, %
18–44	54.37	43.36	24.76	27.86	16.96	13.29
45–64	41.57	31.43	17.49	16.05	12.32	8.7
65+	25.59	18.18	9.87	8.72	5.44	3.46
p-value	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001
Sex, %
Male	43.19	3.11	18.68	17.5	17.3	9.25
Female	45.69	37.59	20.09	22.6	9.31	10.38
p-value	.093	<.001	.250	<.001	<.001	.184
Visible minority status, %
White	43.63	32.86	17.19	19.10	13.24	9.72
Visible minority	48.10	41.24	28.94	24.55	12.86	10.34
p-value	.042	<.001	<.001	.003	.777	.612
Marital status, %
Married	40.29	30.59	17.87	16.39	11.39	7.8
Separated, divorced, or widowed	40.21	30.91	15.89	17.17	10.25	10.02
Single	58.49	47.1	25.73	32.08	19.8	15.31
p-value	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001
Weighted sample size	7,638,841
Language most spoken at home, %
English	48.84	37.33	21.79	22.96	16.23	12.15
French	32.48	25.29	9.35	9.8	8.36	5.24
Other language only	42.4	34.8	23.26	22.38	6.64	6.23
p-value	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001
Education, %
Less than high school	33.19	23.13	12.27	14.46	8.45	5.65
High school diploma	45.44	34.95	20.39	21.69	12.97	9.63
Some postsecondary, no degree	60.49	46.97	20.78	27.56	19.9	12.9
Postsecondary degree	44.82	35.28	20.34	20.00	13.52	10.42
p-value	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	<.001	.003
Household income, %
<$25,000	41.47	32.76	15.07	20.59	10.54	11.33
$25,000–$49,999	41.9	33.68	18.65	22.74	10.97	9.53
$50,000–$74,999	43.68	33.46	19.69	20.27	11.28	7.42
$75,000+	46.77	35.66	20.69	18.74	15.69	10.7
p-value	.021	.399	.035	.089	<.001	.020
Weighted sample size	7,638,841

Multivariate Regressions

Table 5 shows the odds ratios (OR) and 95 percent confidence intervals (CI) from logistic regression models predicting everyday discrimination. The unadjusted results from Model 1 indicate that recent immigrants have slightly lower odds of reporting everyday discrimination than native-born Canadians (OR = 0.70; 95% CI: 0.47–1.06). Recent immigrants’ marginally lower likelihood of reporting everyday discrimination becomes even more pronounced once we adjust for visible minority status in Model 2 (OR = 0.52; 95% CI: 0.33–0.82). The odds of reporting everyday discrimination for recent immigrants remain statistically significant and similar in magnitude in subsequent models that adjust for sociodemographic characteristics, socioeconomic status (SES), and province of residence. The odds of reporting discrimination for midway immigrants relative to native-born Canadians are not statistically significant in any of the models. Finally, while established immigrants have lower odds of reporting discrimination compared to native-born Canadians in Model 2 (OR = 0.71; 95% CI: 0.58–0.87), adjustment for sex, marital status, and language most spoken at home in Model 3 diminishes all the group differences.

Table 5.

Odds Ratios (OR) and 95 Percent Confidence Intervals (CIs) from Logistics Regressions Predicting Any Everyday Discrimination: Full Sample.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6
	OR (95% CI)	OR (95% CI)	OR (95% CI)	OR (95% CI)	OR (95% CI)	OR (95% CI)
Immigrant cohort
Native-born	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Recent (<5 years)	0.70⁺ (0.47–1.06)	0.52** (0.33–0.82)	0.52** (0.32–0.84)	0.52** (0.32–0.85)	0.52** (0.32–0.84)	0.75 (0.26–2.16)
Midway (5–10 years)	1.30 (0.92–1.83)	0.94 (0.65–1.36)	1.13 (0.76–1.67)	1.13 (0.76–1.67)	1.09 (0.73–1.63)	0.76 (0.38–1.54)
Established (>10 years)	0.88 (0.72–1.05)	0.71** (0.58–0.87)	1.00 (0.81–1.24)	1.01 (0.81–1.24)	1.02 (0.82–1.26)	1.01 (0.80–1.27)
Visible minority
White		1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Visible minority		1.52*** (1.22–1.90)	1.10 (0.85–1.40)	1.08 (0.84–1.39)	1.10 (0.86–1.41)	1.10 (0.76–1.60)
Age			0.97*** (0.97–0.98)	0.97*** (0.97–0.98)	0.97*** (0.97–0.98)	0.97*** (0.97–0.98)
Sex
Male			1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Female			1.14* (1.00–1.29)	1.14* (1.00–1.30)	1.15* (1.01–1.30)	1.15* (1.01–1.30)
Marital status
Married			1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Divorced/separated/ widowed			1.26** (1.06–1.50)	1.27** (1.06–1.52)	1.26* (1.05–1.51)	1.25* (1.04–1.50)
Single/never married			1.27** (1.11–1.47)	1.28** (1.10–1.49)	1.29** (1.11–1.50)	1.29** (1.11–1.50)
Language most spoken at home
English			1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
French			0.50*** (0.44–0.58)	0.51*** (0.44–0.59)	0.62** (0.45–0.84)	0.61** (0.45–0.82)
Other language only			0.71* (0.54–0.93)	0.73* (0.56–0.95)	0.76* (0.58–0.99)	0.76* (0.58–0.99)
Household income
<$25,000				0.95 (0.78–1.17)	0.99 (0.80–1.21)	0.99 (0.81–1.22)
$25,000–$49,999				0.98 (0.82–1.15)	1.00 (0.84–1.19)	1.00 (0.84–1.18)
$50,000–$74,999				0.95 (0.81–1.11)	0.96 (0.82–1.12)	0.96 (0.82–1.12)
$75,000+				1.00	1.00	1.00
Education
Less than high school				0.86 (0.71–1.05)	0.84⁺ (0.69–1.02)	0.84⁺ (0.69–1.02)
High school diploma				0.95 (0.82–1.10)	0.93 (0.80–1.08)	0.93 (0.80–1.08)
Some postsecondary–no degree				1.48** (1.13–1.96)	1.48** (1.12–1.95)	1.48** (1.12–1.96)
Postsecondary degree				1.00	1.00	1.00
Province of residence
Ontario					1.00	1.00
Quebec					0.86 (0.63–1.17)	0.86 (0.64–1.17)
British Columbia					0.95 (0.77–1.17)	0.96 (0.78–1.18)
Prairies					1.32** (1.12–1.55)	1.32** (1.12–1.56)
Atlantic					1.03 (0.86–1.22)	1.03 (0.87–1.23)
Immigrant duration × visible minority (VM)
Recent immigrant (<5 years), VM						0.61 (0.17–2.12)
Midway immigrant (5–10 years), VM						1.56 (0.66–3.66)
Established immigrant (>10 years), VM						1.01 (0.62–1.65)
Constant	0.82*** (0.77–0.87)	0.81*** (0.76–0.86)	2.55*** (1.89–3.43)	2.43*** (1.80–3.29)	2.28*** (1.67–3.11)	2.26*** (1.65–3.08)

⁺ p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Postestimation tests comparing the ORs among immigrant cohorts for the full model (Model 5) show that perceived discrimination is substantially higher among midway and established immigrants than recent immigrants net of nativity status, sociodemographic characteristics, language, SES, and province of residence. Differences in perceived discrimination between midway and established immigrants are not statistically significant. Thus, perceptions of everyday discrimination appear to be less among recent immigrants than either native-born Canadians or fellow immigrants who have been living in Canada for five years or longer.

In terms of our other explanatory variables, the multivariate results are consistent with prior research that used global discrimination indicators (e.g., Nangia 2013). Model 2 shows that visible minority status has an independent, statistically significant association with everyday discrimination: visible minority respondents are 1.5 times more likely to report everyday discrimination than whites (OR = 1.55; 95% CI: 1.22–1.90). However, adjustment for sex, marital status, and language attenuates the association between visible minority status and perceived everyday discrimination to statistical nonsignificance (Model 3).

Model 3 also shows that respondents whose home language is French (OR = 0.50; 95% CI: 0.44–0.58) or a language other than English and French (OR = 0.71; 95% CI: 0.54–0.93) have lower odds of reporting discrimination compared to English speakers. Similarly, married respondents perceive less everyday discrimination than either single (OR = 1.27; 95% CI: 1.11–1.47) or divorced, separated, and widowed respondents (OR = 1.26; 95% CI: 1.06–1.50). Perceptions of everyday discrimination is higher among females than males (OR = 1.14; 95% CI: 1.00–1.29). Adjustment for SES (Model 4) and province of residence (Model 5) did not substantially alter the effects of language, sex, and marital status on discrimination.

Model 4 indicates that SES is weakly associated with perceptions of everyday discrimination. Household income is not a statistically significant predictor of discrimination. Less educated respondents (high school or less) are no different from those with a postsecondary degree in terms of their likelihood to report discrimination. But respondents with some postsecondary schooling have higher odds of reporting discrimination than those with a postsecondary degree (OR = 1.48; 95% CI: 1.13–1.96). Accounting for province of residence in Model 5 does not alter the associations between SES and discrimination. Province is also weakly associated with discrimination, with only respondents in the Prairie provinces reporting more discrimination than Ontario residents (OR = 1.32; 95% CI: 1.12–1.55).

Finally, Model 6 shows that the association between immigrant cohort and everyday discrimination does not vary by visible minority status. Neither the likelihood ratio test for an omnibus interaction effect nor the individual interaction terms is statistically significant. Thus, contrary to our expectations under the segmented hypothesis, race does not appear to differentially influence white and minority immigrants’ perceptions of everyday discrimination relative to native-born whites.

An Indirect Test of Socialization Experiences

Variation in perceptions of everyday discrimination among immigrants by duration of residence may be picking up socialization effects, but it is too blunt of an instrument to assess the early socialization hypothesis. We thus need a more refined measure of early socialization experiences. Absent direct measures of socialization, age at arrival gives more information about where and when socialization occurred, thus providing insight into the possible content of the socialization experiences. Information on age at arrival for immigrant cohorts is displayed in Table 6. Recent and midway immigrants migrated at slightly older ages on average than established immigrants (31.7 and 31.2 years compared to 22.3 years, respectively). Reflecting the higher mean ages at arrival, 98 percent of midway and 75 percent of established immigrants emigrated as adolescents or adults. Notably, none of the recent immigrants uprooted as children.

Table 6.

Age at Arrival by Immigrant Cohort: Immigrant Subsample.

		Immigrant Cohort
	All Immigrants	Recent (<5 years)	Midway (5–10 years)	Established (>10 years)	p-value
Mean age at arrival (95% confidence interval)	25.1 (24.1–26.1)	31.7 (29.2–34.3)	31.2 (28.8–33.6)	22.3 (21.2–23.4)	N/A
Age at arrival, %					<.001
<12 years old	17.40	0	1.88	24.64
12+ years old	82.60	100	98.12	75.36
% of immigrant sample	100.00	14.85	15.72	69.43
Weighted sample size	1,904,725	282,923	299,333	1,322,469

In addition to descriptive statistics, we also used multivariate logistic regression to estimate the association between age at arrival (<12 years versus 12+ years) and discrimination while controlling for immigrant cohort, sociodemographic characteristics, language, SES, and province of residence. This analysis is restricted to midway and established immigrants because these are the two cohorts with respondents who migrated when younger than 12 years old. Results of this analysis are shown in Table 7. Consistent with the socialization hypothesis, immigrants who uprooted at age 12 or older have lower odds of discrimination compared to those who migrated as children (OR = 0.65; 95% CI: 0.44–0.96). Since the primary school experiences of immigrants who arrived as preadolescents mostly took place in Canada, they likely learned about multiculturalism ideology and meritocracy from an early age and grew up expecting equal treatment from fellow Canadians and others in society. This greater awareness of their rights as members of Canadian society might influence their perceptions of discrimination and judgments as to whether an act of disparate treatment constitutes discrimination.

Table 7.

Odds Ratios (OR) and 95 Percent Confidence Intervals (CIs) from Logistic Regressions Predicting Everyday Discrimination: Midway and Established Migrants Only.

	Full Model
	OR (95% CI)
Age at arrival
<12 years old	1.00
12 and over	0.65** (0.44–0.96)
Immigrant cohort
Established (< 5years)	1.00
Midway (5–10 years)	1.13 (0.70–1.82)
Visible minority status
White	1.00
Visible minority	1.34⁺ (0.96–1.88)
Age	0.98** (0.97–0.99)
Sex
Male	1.00
Female	0.98 (0.68–1.41)
Marital status
Married	1.00
Divorced/separated/widowed	1.35 (0.85–2.12)
Single/never married	1.15 (0.74–1.79)
Language most spoken in home
English	1.00
French	0.48⁺ (0.22–1.04)
Other language only	0.86 (0.60–1.22)
Household income
<$25,000	0.70 (0.44–1.13)
$25,000–49,999	0.95 (0.64–1.43)
$50,000–74,999	0.75 (0.50–1.13)
$75,000+	1.00
Education
Less than high school	0.47** (0.28–0.79)
High school diploma	0.91 (0.60–1.36)
Some postsecondary, no degree	1.21 (0.49–3.03)
Postsecondary degree	1.00
Province of residence
Ontario	1.00
Quebec	1.16 (0.64–2.13)
British Columbia	0.92 (0.57–1.46)
Prairies	1.75** (1.20–2.55)
Atlantic	3.66** (1.65–8.11)
Constant	2.91* (1.06–7.39)

⁺ p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this paper, we examined perceptions of everyday discrimination among immigrants differentiated by duration of residence in Canada and in comparison to native-born Canadians. Our results corroborate Ray and Preston’s (2009) findings of lower perceived global discrimination among immigrants in Toronto and Vancouver. Immigrants in our study also did not have higher odds of reporting everyday discrimination relative to native-born Canadians. In fact, all else being equal, the odds of reporting everyday discrimination were lower for recent immigrants than native-born Canadians. The odds of reporting discrimination also did not significantly vary for the different immigrant cohorts by visible minority status. Overall, our results do not appear to support either straight-line or segmented assimilation theories. Straight-line assimilation would predict that discrimination declines across immigrant cohorts as their duration of residence increases. Yet we did not observe this pattern in our data. Under segmented assimilation, we would expect discrimination to be more prevalent for visible minority but not white immigrants. We also did not find this to be the case.

We found some empirical support for the early socialization thesis. Specifically, midway and established immigrants who arrived in Canada as children were more likely to report encounters with everyday discrimination than those who uprooted as adolescents or adults. We hypothesized that expectations of societal inclusion learned in school might lie at the heart of immigrants’ greater sensitivity to unfair treatment. Reitz and Banerjee (2007) also noted that visible minority second-generation immigrants are likely to attribute experiences of unequal treatment to racial discrimination in part because of higher expectations associated with citizenship rights. Second-generation immigrants’ higher expectations combined with blocked mobility and racism might lead to a sense of alienation. Indeed, research shows some disillusionment among visible minority second-generation youth because of the disconnect between the ideology of Canadian multiculturalism they learned in school and their lived experiences of social exclusion (Ali 2008).

Recent immigrants stand out as consistently reporting less everyday discrimination than either native-born Canadians or midway and established immigrants. The lower perceptions of everyday discrimination among recent immigrants may not solely be due to socialization outside of Canada. It might also be influenced by the absence of inferiorization. Safi (2010, 161) notes that part of immigrants’ adaptation process entails acquisition of knowledge about the “inferior position of immigrants” in their adopted country. Recent immigrants may not have had enough exposure to host country institutions to learn their place in society. There is some support for the idea that perceptions of discrimination increase as immigrants acquire information about their subordinate group position vis-à-vis natives. Portes, Parker, and Cobas (1980), for example, found that perceptions of discrimination among recent Mexican and Cuban immigrants in the United States increased with cultural and socioeconomic assimilation. The authors accounted for this counterintuitive finding by arguing that assimilation — and the competition from native-born persons resulting from assimilation — enables immigrants to have “a more refined understanding of the host society, and hence…a clearer perception of the reality of discrimination” (Portes, Parker, and Cobas 1980, 204).

Interestingly, other scholars have demonstrated that recent visible minority immigrants in Canada face significant earnings disadvantages in the labor market despite their high qualifications (Li and Li 2013). It is noteworthy, then, that this form of structural inequality in the labor market does not translate into heightened perceptions of everyday discrimination. This disconnect between labor market discrimination and everyday discrimination among recent immigrants in the Canadian context is important because it suggests that actual experiences of blocked mobility and competition from native-born residents may not matter for perceptions of everyday discrimination, at least initially. Inferiorization and a greater willingness to attribute unequal treatment to discrimination might require persistent blocked mobility over many years.

In the descriptive analysis, perceptions of everyday discrimination differed significantly for white and visible minority respondents. But in multivariate analyses, race was not a robust predictor of everyday discrimination. This finding diverges from prior studies that suggest race is a strong and consistent predictor of perceived discrimination (Reitz and Banerjee 2007; Williams and Mohammed 2009). Our inconsistent finding might be due to the aggregation of diverse nonwhite groups into the visible minority category. There is substantial variation in perceived discrimination among visible minorities in Canada, with groups such as East and South Asians reporting less discrimination than blacks (Statistics Canada 2003). The aggregation of diverse visible minority subgroups, with varying proclivities to attribute disparate treatment to discrimination, into a single category might have diluted the predictive power of race in the current study.

Our study thus is not without limitations. First, as noted previously, we were unable to further differentiate visible minority respondents by ethnicity due to small sample sizes. Given that discrimination is perceived and experienced differently by people of different racial/ethnic origins (Brettell 2011), it is likely that the white/visible minority dichotomy we used masked important within-group heterogeneity. Second, we were unable to disaggregate the native-born population by generation status because our data do not capture parental nativity status. Close to 5 percent of the native-born respondents in our sample are members of a visible minority group, and it is reasonable to assume that some, if not the majority, of these individuals are second-generation immigrants. Previous research showed that visible minority second-generation immigrants tend to report more discrimination than either their first-generation counterparts or foreign- and native-born white Canadians (Reitz and Banerjee 2007). Thus, inclusion of visible minority second-generation respondents in the native-born group may inflate reports of everyday discrimination for the native-born population as whole. This might make native-born respondents appear more like immigrants than would otherwise be if the native-born population excluded the second generation. Finally, while our findings suggest that early socialization might be important for perceptions of everyday discrimination, further research is needed to understand why it matters. We hypothesized that expectations of inclusion, acquired through schooling, is the mechanism. This suggests, at minimum, the need for direct measures of immigrants’ knowledge of and attitudes about multiculturalism ideology and meritocracy along with assessments of perceived everyday discrimination. Additionally, larger samples of immigrants with varying ages at arrival — particularly at the younger age range (0–12) — would enable finer analysis of early socialization experiences consistent with Rumbaut’s (2004) decimal generations typology.

In sum, while it is tempting to conclude from this study’s findings that immigrants can socially integrate into Canadian society with ease, we are cautious to make this leap for two reasons. First, as noted previously, research using global discrimination indicators reveals that immigrants, and particularly immigrants of color, do perceive a substantial degree of discrimination in Canada (Reitz and Banerjee 2007; Nangia 2013). Because our study uses a different measure of perceived discrimination, we are tapping into a different dimension of immigrants’ social integration. Reports of chronic subtle mistreatments may not differ much between immigrants and native-born Canadians, but this does not preclude more overt forms of discrimination (e.g., being denied a promotion or being profiled while driving or flying) from happening at the same time. Second, this is the first time that the EDS has been administered to a nationally representative sample in the Canadian context.⁷ Thus, we do not know whether or how much immigrants are underreporting their experiences of everyday discrimination. Given the socialization processes discussed previously, underreporting may be a real possibility, especially for immigrants who arrived in Canada as adolescents and adults. These individuals may be less familiar with a rights discourse and thus may not be as inclined to attribute daily insults and mistreatment to discrimination. Future research, including qualitative inquiries, will help shed light on the nature, perception, and prevalence of everyday discrimination among immigrants in Canada. Our study provides a starting point for such future research endeavors.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We thank Karen Kobayashi for assistance in accessing the data. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions in prior versions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by grant 430-2015-00940 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to Dr. Vang, principal investigator.

Notes

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