Second-generation Canadians faring worse earnings compared to their white Canadian peers
Sinthu Vimaladasan’s parents never got to pursue their dreams of higher education. Discrimination and wars back home in Sri Lanka made that impossible.
Instead, they pinned their hopes on their two daughters after the couple came to Canada three decades ago.
Born and raised in Canada, Vimaladasan not only finished an undergraduate degree in criminology and human rights, but went on to a master’s in immigration settlement and settlement studies, as well as a postgraduate program in immigration law and policies.
Now, at 29, the second-generation Canadian says her parents have always instilled in her the importance of education and pushed her and her younger sister to study hard.
“It’s like seeing their dreams through their children,” said the Mississauga resident. “Your worth is relying on your educational success.”
It’s in some ways a typical story among immigrant families who struggle to find their footing and push their children to do well in school in order to get a well-paying job — and have the same opportunity as “other Canadians.” It’s how success is defined and how the immigrant dream has worked.
But according to a study being released Wednesday, that dream has started to show cracks, as each subsequent cohort of second-generation Canadians born here since the mid-1960s is faring worse when it comes to how much money they make compared to their established white Canadian peers. For some ethnic groups, that’s in spite of having more education.
“Over time, all of these groups experienced greater difficulty in the labour market in terms of earnings relative to the mainstream third-generation, Anglo Canadians of the same age,” said University of Toronto sociology professor Jeffrey Reitz, co-author of the study, titled “Is the Canadian dream broken?”
“That suggests that there are broader labour market changes underway.”
Of all groups, he said, Black Canadians are falling further and further behind in successive cohorts.
Researchers combed through the Canadian censuses and the national household surveys for 2001, 2011 and 2021 to examine educational and earnings disparities among three waves of second-generation Canadians ages 26-35, who were born between 1966 and 1995. Groups included were South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino and Latin American.
Their study uncovered some “salient” trends in education attainment and employment earnings among the groups:
Each second-generation received higher and higher university education, in many cases exceeding that for third- or higher-generation white Canadians of the same age;
Each second-generation of whites, Chinese and South Asians increased or maintained a relatively high level of education compared to their previous cohorts, but their Black and Latino peers saw educational levels dropped in successive waves;
Second-generation Canadians earned less compared to established white Canadians across cohorts for both men and women, except for Chinese and South Asian;
Earning declines were most striking for Black Canadians. In the 1966-1975 cohort, second-generation Black men earned 15.2 per cent less than their mainstream counterparts of the same age, which grew to 33.4 per cent. Black women born here in that period earned 17.6 per cent over the mainstream benchmark but by the last cohort, they actually earned 10 per cent less than their white Canadian peers;
Filipino men in first cohort made three per cent more than the mainstream baseline, but by the third cohort, that figure fell 15.8 below white males’ earnings. Filipino women started making 30.6 per cent above their white peers, but that advantage dropped to just 12.3 per cent over time;
Second-generation Latin American Canadians’ earnings relative to white Canadians decreased over time, especially among women.
“The children, for the most part, their education levels just kept going up with some exceptions,” said report co-author Rupa Banerjee of Toronto Metropolitan University. “But the most disturbing finding is, for several of the groups, that didn’t necessarily result in better labour market outcomes. In fact, they had poor relative labour market outcomes.”
“Social class is a huge thing. It’s all about networking and who you know outside of your own ethnic community,” she said. “What other ways can you make money or have the quality of life that you want? Education alone will not give you that.”
While what one studies matters in earning, Vimaladasan said discrimination exists in employment, even for second-generation Canadians, who conduct themselves professionally or like her, can “code-switch” to speak accentless English. She remembers how she once added the middle name “Nina” on her resume, and the number of responses from employers after the name change struck her.
“Your name does still matter,” lamented Vimaladasan, who is not involved in the research study. “They would prefer a brown person with a white name.”
Report co-author Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, a McGill University professor, said he was not surprised by the deteriorating educational attainment and earnings of successive cohorts of second-generation Black males, who he said have all the odds — discrimination over class, race and gender — stacked against them.
During the civil rights movement, he said many Black families managed to achieve middle-class status but the gains quickly evaporated in the post-industrialization era, when the types of jobs that gave many Black families financial security vanished. It made second-generation Black people more vulnerable in terms of earnings potential.
He said discrimination tends to be directed at visible minority men more often than at their female peers, and hence harms them more.
“There’s a sense that, within the patriarchal structure, within a system of white supremacy, women and girls are less threatening to the status quo,” said Adjetey, whose parents came to Canada from Ghana in the 1980s and found themselves in menial jobs.
The 38-year-old grew up in Toronto and worked in youth gang prevention and intervention programs after he was refused admission to the doctoral program at the U of T, and ended up pursuing a PhD in history and African American Studies at Yale University.
Adjetey said it takes a lot of favourable “contingent factors” for Black males to beat the odds and thrive. In his case, even though he failed high school in his senior year, a white guidance counsellor saw his potential and encouraged him to repeat the courses and go to university, where he met many mentors who guided him.
“Given my parents have minimal formal education, my siblings and I were already on a particular trajectory,” he said. “There’s a great deal of contingent factors that ensured that we were able to get adequate education and to self-actualize in ways that many of my peers have been denied the same opportunity.”
This article was reported by The Star
