SWIS News and Notes 6

SWIS News and Notes is the newsletter of the Settlement Workers in Schools program, a partnership of the Settlement Sector, School Boards and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. This newsletter promotes communication between the steering/operations committees of the eight SWIS projects and shares information about newcomer students and their families.

17/2/03

Report Praises

SWIS Programs

A recent report by the Laidlaw Foundation has praised the SWIS programs and notes the importance of schools as sites for newcomer services. The report, Immigrant Settlement and Social Inclusion, was written by Ratna Omidvar (Executive Director of The Maytree Foundation) and Ted Richmond (researcher with the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto). The report was prepared as part of the foundation’s Children’s Agenda Program and can be downloaded from

“There is clearly a need for improved and

extended settlement services for both newcomer

youth and their parents, and recent research

and program developments suggest that the

school system is the natural location for such

programs. Along with its importance for the

education of increasingly large numbers of

newcomer children and youth, the school system

provides opportunities for interaction with

these children’s parents and their ethnoracial

communities, for experimentation and innovation

in the development of anti-racist curriculum,

and for more effective coordination of

support services. Kilbride et al. (2000) emphasize

the importance of schools as a location for integrated, supportive programs with a focus on anti-discrimination and anti-racism. They

note as well that programs and interventions

Newcomers and Employment:

Highlights from Census Report

The following items are from the February 11 Statistics Canada report The Changing Profile of Canada’s Workforce. The complete report can be downloaded from

Recent immigrants represented almost 70% of labour force growth As of May 15, 2001, almost 3.2 million people in the labour force, or 20% of the total, were born outside the country.

During the 1990s, an annual average of about 220,400 immigrants came to Canada. This was a considerable increase from the annual average of 125,400 who arrived during the 1980s.

Immigration has been an important source of growth in the labour force during the 1990s. In 2001, a total of 977,500 immigrants who arrived in the 1990s were part of the labour force. They represented almost 70% of the total growth in the labour force over the decade.

The lion's share of new foreign-born workers who arrived in the 1990s went to Ontario's labour market. About 557,900 immigrants who arrived in the 1990s, or 57% of the total, were in the province's labour force in 2001…In distant second place was British Columbia, where 186,400 immigrants who arrived in the 1990s were in the labour force in 2001.

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must be targeted, taking into account the differences experienced by newcomer youth

according to country of origin, ethnoracial and

cultural and religious background, immigration

status and gender.

One example of the development of such

programs is in Ontario, where Citizenship and

Immigration Canada during the past few years

has funded pilot programs for school settlement

workers, working in collaboration with

both school boards and local settlement agencies

(Centre for Applied Social Research 2002).

The program began in Toronto in 1998 as a

partnership of the Ontario Administration of

Settlement and Integration Services (OASIS),

the TorontoDistrictSchool Board (TDSB)

and a number of community-based immigrant service agencies. Since its inception, the program has expanded to other cities in Ontario and also has developed in French-language schools. Initial evaluation suggests that the program has been very successful in providing increased support to newcomer children and youth, in helping their parents understand and interact with the school as an institution and in building productive partnerships amongst various agencies involved in newcomer settlement.”

From the same report…

“One of the more comprehensive studies of newcomer youth is that by Kilbride et al. (2000)…The researchers found that the challenges of adolescence were greatly compounded by the stresses of settlement. The found as well that immigrant youth felt pulled in opposite directions, between what seemed to be irreconcilable values or cultures, and a desire to adapt and fit in their new homeland. The tensions between parents and youth associated with the challenges of settlement were very important. Feelings of isolation and alienation were linked to perceptions of cultural differences and experiences of discrimination and racism. Support from friends, family and institutions was key to overcoming the challenges of settlement.”

Comparing employment rates of newcomers and Canadian born Census 2001 shows that the gap in labour market conditions between recent immigrants and Canadian born persisted, despite the strong economic growth of the late 1990s. In 2001, only 65.8% of recent immigrants were employed, 16 percentage points lower than the rate of 81.8% among Canadian born.The unemployment rate of recent immigrants aged 25 to 44 was still twice that of the Canadian born population, 12.1% compared with 6.4%.

In contrast, only 55.6% of female recent immigrants in 2001 were employed, 21.8 percentage points lower than the employment rate of 77.4% for Canadian born women in 2001. In 1995-96, 26% of recent female immigrants were attending school compared to 13% of their Canadian born counterparts.

Dramatic increase in newcomers working in high skilled occupations The census showed a dramatic increase in the proportion of recent immigrants working in high-skilled occupations - those that normally require a university education.

In 2001, 24% of immigrants aged 25 to 64 who arrived between 1996 and 2000 were in highly skilled occupations compared to only 13% for those who had arrived between 1986 and 1990. This substantial increase occurred primarily among younger recent immigrants aged 25 to 44. A large proportion of recent immigrants were still in low-skilled jobs in 2001, although their proportion was in decline. In 2001, 43% of those aged 25 to 44 were in low-skilled occupations, compared with 51% a decade earlier.

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