Life course and the experiences of visible minorities and immigrants

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Life course and the experiences of visible
minorities and immigrants

• Victor Thiessen
• Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology
• Dalhousie University
• Halifax, NS Canada B3H 4P9
• Email Victor.Thiessen_at_Dal.Ca

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The seductive appeal of a life course perspective

• Micro-macro linkage
• Agency-structure balance
• Shift from variable to context
• A move from static to dynamic analysis

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The challenges of life course analysis

• A perspective that provides insufficient
  perspective
• A focus on transition sequences without a
  rationale for that focus
• A celebration of diversity without a cause for
  celebration
• Unusual transitions and sequences are not
  necessarily unpredictable

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Einstein meets Mozart

• Einstein Make everything as simple as possible,
  but no simpler
• Mozart There are as many notes in my music as
  are needed
• Resolution Mozart made music Einstein made
  models
• Question What is our task?

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Context for my subsequent remarks

• Survey research
• Policy relevance
• The issue with which I am grappling Under what
  conditions can a life course framework be
  fruitfully employed when analyzing survey data as
  a basis for informing social policy?

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Assessing the potential importance of a life
course transition or sequence

• Resource disruption criteria
• Independence criteria
• Distribution criteria
• Interaction criteria

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Resource disruption criterion

• Transitions are important to the extent that they
  incur either
• a) A loss of access to capital (resources) or
• b) Provide access to new sources of capital
• c) Or both

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Independence criterion

• Transition sequences (especially non-normative
  ones) are important to the extent that they are
  statistically independent of other attributes
  characterizing individuals and their contexts

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Multiplicative criterion

• Life course positions, transitions, and sequences
  are important to the extent that the effects of
  the position, transition, and transition sequence
  exceed the additive effects of their constituent
  parts
• Test

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Distribution criterion

• A lifecourse framework is important to the extent
  that there are sufficient numbers of cases in a
  given transition or transition sequence to be of
  policy concern

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Interaction criterion

• A lifecourse framework is fruitful when it
  identifies a particular transition or sequence
  that has outcomes associated with it that are out
  of line with what would be expected on the basis
  of a regression analysis.
• Perform a regression analysis using as predictors
  all the variables that formed the basis for
  defining life course
• Calculate the average residual for each of the
  life course groups
• Identify the groups whose residuals are not zero

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Ethnic Diversity Survey 2002

• Large (N42,000).
• Permits the construction of very detailed
  discrete life course positions
• Nationally representative, when weighted
• Oversampling of immigrants and ethnic groups
• Permits an assessment of whether life course
  positions have similar effects on immigrants and
  visible minorities as they do for other Canadian
  citizens.
• Linked with 2001 census data
• Access to additional economic and background
  information

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Life course position

• Gender Male or female
• Marital status never married, previously
  married, currently married.
• Age of youngest child in the household no child,
  infant, preschooler, compulsory school-aged
  child, adult child.
• Main status student, work-based, home-based,
  retired
• Education Indicator variable for possession of a
  university degree.

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Trust

• Generally speaking, would you say that most
  people can be trusted or that you cannot be too
  careful in dealing with people?
• Using a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means cannot be
  trusted at all and 5 means can be trusted a lot,
  how much do you trust each of the following
  groups of people
• People in your family?
• People in your neighbourhood?
• People that you work with or go to school with?
• Cronbachs a .65

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Life satisfaction

• All things considered, how satisfied are you with
  your life as a whole these days? Again, 1 means
  not satisfied at all and 5 means very satisfied.

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Sense of belonging

• Some people have a stronger sense of belonging to
  some things than others. Using a scale of 1 to 5,
  where 1 is not strong at all and 5 is very
  strong, how strong is your sense of belonging to
• Your family
• Your ethnic or cultural group(s)
• Your town, city or municipality
• Your province
• Canada
• North Americal
• Cronbachs a .76

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Civic participation

• Are you a member of, or have you taken part in
  the activities of, any groups or organizations at
  anytime in the past 12 months? For example, a
  sports team, a hobby club, a community
  organization, an ethnic association, etc.

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Expectations

• Life course effects differ by domain
• Life course effects differ by immigration status
• Life course effects exceed those of the sum of
  its parts

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Findings
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Additive versus interactive effects
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Summary of findings

• Life course has broadly similar effects on trust,
  life satisfaction, and sense of belonging
• Life course positions in which there is a high
  level of civic participation are neither more nor
  less likely to be ones where individuals have a
  sense of belonging
• The effects of life course position are roughly
  similar for immigrants and native-born Canadians
• A life course framework is modestly to moderately
  better than a traditional variable approach for
  the topics investigated here

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Conclusion

• Constructing detailed life course positions is a
  systematic way to detect interaction effects
• Where none are found, can proceed with
  traditional variable analysis
• Where a few are found, can construct
  corresponding interaction variables
• Where many are found, it would be best to abandon
  variable analysis in favour of a life course
  framework

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Next steps

• Identify specific life course positions/transition
  s that are out of line
• Calculate the predicted score on the DV using the
  best OLS equation
• Save the residuals
• Calculate the mean residuals for all life course
  positions
• Explore the characteristics of those whose mean
  residuals are significantly different from zero