The Impact of Communal Organizational Density on the Labour Market Integration of Immigrants in Canada

Researchers have long posited that immigrant social structures play an important role in the settlement and adaptation of immigrants in most host countries, including Canada. Recent studies report that immigrant organizations can have divergent effects on the economic outcomes of the communities they serve. However the topic has yet to be addressed adequately for lack of systematic information on immigrant organizations. This article proposes to partially fill this gap by measuring the impact of several new variables drawn from infrequently used, but readily available administrative data collected by the Canadian government on three census labour market variables: income, unemployment, and self-employment. This addresses a specific part of the labour market impact of immigrant social structures: the role of officially recognized charitable organizations serving specific ethno-immigrant communities in fostering their labour market integration. The results of descriptive analysis and regression models show that organizational density is positively associated with self-employment and negatively associated with income and unemployment.