Richard A. Wanner

Institutional Structure and Immigrant Integration: A Comparative Study of Immigrants' Labor Market Attainment in Canada and Israel

The present study focuses on the incorporation of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in two receiving societies, Israel and Canada, during the first half of the 1990s. Both countries conducted national censuses in 1995 (Israel) and 1996 (Canada), making it possible to identify a large enough sample of immigrants and provide information on their demographic characteristics and their labor market activity. While both Canada and Israel are immigrant societies, their institutional contexts of immigrant reception differ considerably. Israel maintains no economic selection of the Jewish immigrants and provides substantial support for newcomers, who are viewed as a returning Diaspora. Canada employs multiple criteria for selecting immigrants, and the immigrants’ social and economic incorporation is patterned primarily by market forces. The analysis first examines the characteristics of immigrants who arrived in the two countries and evaluates the extent of selectivity. Consistent with our hypotheses, Russian immigrants to Canada were more immediately suitable for the labor market, but experienced greater difficulty finding and maintaining employment. Nevertheless, immigrants to Canada attained higher-status occupations and higher earnings than their compatriots in Israel did, although the Israeli labor market was more likely to reward their investments in education.

Public opinion in host Olympic cities: the case of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.

Olympic analyses typically depend heavily on perspectives built from macro processes characteristically rooted in political economy. Using survey data of city residents gathered at six different points in time during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, this article proposes a focus on what happens within the host city during the Games. While the Olympics were the centre of much debate and controversy before the Games, the data show that attitudes towards the Games became much more favorable thereby providing hard evidence that the Olympics had an experiential urban impact. Regression models revealed that attending free unticketed events and supporting the Liberal party in the last provincial election were the best predictors of positive attitudes towards the Games. It is concluded that the Olympics represent a form of public policy which generates responses related to socio-political factors while also being an interactional event transforming local attitudes towards the Games.

Educational attainment of the children of divorce: Australia, 1940-90.

Much research suggests that the disruption of marriage through parental death or divorce imposes a small but significant educational disadvantage on American children, although the most recent and comprehensive analysis casts serious doubt on this claim. What is the situation in Australia? Using representative national samples (n= 29,443) and OLS and logistic regression with robust standard errors, we estimate models controlling many potentially confounding variables. We find that divorce in Australia costs seven-tenths of a year of education, mainly by reducing secondary school completion. Importantly, divorce has become more damaging in recent cohorts.

Social and Economic Context and Attitudes toward Immigrants in Canadian Cities.

It has long been a part of the conventional wisdom among both social scientists and laypersons that periods of unemployment are characterized by higher levels of prejudice and discrimination directed at immigrant groups, particularly those of a minority ethnic or racial background. Yet surprisingly little research has addressed this issue. This article presents a study of the effects of a number of socioeconomic features of Canadian cities, particularly their unemployment rates, on the attitudes toward immigrants of their native-born residents. Using data from a national study of ethnicity and multiculturalism, we estimate several regression models predicting three separate dimensions of attitude toward immigrants and including as independent variables both individual characteristics and structural characteristics of city of residence. We find no evidence of a sizeable effect of local unemployment rate on attitude toward immigrants. Of the other contextual variables included in our models, the only one consistently influencing these attitudes is rate of population growth. Of the individual level variables included in the models, educational attainment and income, along with mother tongue, exhibit the strongest and most consistent effects on the attitude dimensions.

Trends in occupational and earnings attainments of women immigrants to Canada, 1971-1996

This study examines the extent to which immigrant women arriving in Canada between the 1960s and the early 1990s were able to attain occupations and earnings equivalent to those of Canadian-born women using a data file created by merging public-use microdata files from Censuses of Canada between 1971 and 1996. We study both changes in country of birth effects on the earnings and occupational status of women aged 25 to 29 immigrating prior to each of the five census years and the experience of successive female immigrant cohorts as they age to determine the extent to which the effects of birthplace on occupational status and earnings change over their careers. In both cases we find a considerable advantage associated with being educated in Canada compared to being educated abroad. For those visible minority immigrants just beginning their careers in Canada, we could find no evidence that more recent cohorts have lower attainments than earlier cohorts, though this was true for some European groups. In our analysis of aging cohorts we find evidence of a tendency for immigrant earnings to converge with those of the Canadian born and for that tendency to be stronger in more recent cohorts.

The psycho-social impact of the Olympics as urban festival: a leisure perspective

Typical impact assessments of mega-events such as the Olympics focus on economic and tourism indicators or urban regeneration efforts. This paper instead focuses on the perceptions and attitudes of local residents about the mega-event and how it impacts them. Using poll data gathered in relation to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games and the 2012 London Summer Olympics, it is shown how attitudes shift over time and, above all, how the Games-time experience of living in a host city impacts resident’s attitudes towards the Games. It is argued that the Olympics creates both new leisure time and leisure spaces in the host city that produces psycho-social effects, whereby the event is viewed more positively and almost independent of perceptions of economic benefits. The creation of a festival atmosphere affects the public mood and surprisingly seems to at least somewhat overwhelm fiscal issues and other controversies.

Intergenerational Occupational Mobility Among Men in Canada and Australia

To examine in more detail the results of global comparisons of male occupational mobility rates and patterns, we chose two countries that are matched closely on a number of important socioeconomic dimensions, Canada and Australia. Although we find no difference between the two countries in their rates of exchange mobility, this superficial similarity masks important differences in both patterns of structural mobility and in the role of education in the status transmission process. While in Canada a university degree eliminates the effect of origin status on current occupational status, in Australia we observe the same effect among those with any amount of post-secondary schooling. As well, the Canadian mobility regime is characterized by considerably more structural mobility than is the Australian, particularly for movement involving farming.

Economic Segmentation and the Course of the Occupational Career

Although most empirical assessments of the dual economy perspective have been limited to studies of sectoral differences in the earnings attainment process, the theory itself has many implications for status movements during the occupational career. In this article we develop some of these implications and attempt to determine if meaningful differences exist in the careers of workers in core and periphery sectors of the U.S. economy. Using data for a cohort of older U.S. men, we find that significant differences exist in the patterns of occupational mobility in the core and periphery sectors, both between first jobs and midcareer jobs, and between midcareer jobs and late-career jobs. In addition, educational and training factors have a greater impact on status movement at both career stages among workers in core industries.

Consequences of Divorce for Childhood Education: Australia, Canada, and the USA, 1940-1990

Parental divorce imposes a small but significant educational disadvantage on American children. Does this generalize across nations and over time? We analyze representative national samples from Australia (n=29,443) and Canada (n=28,266), together with US General Social Survey data (n=32,380). Using OLS and logistic regression with robust standard errors, we estimate models controlling many potentially confounding variables. Divorce costs seven-tenths of a year of education, mainly by reducing secondary school completion. Importantly, it has become more damaging in recent cohorts. Because this holds in all three nations, the explanation probably lies in common circumstances of, and parallel changes in, modern industrial societies.

Public Opinion in Olympic Cities: From Bidding to Retrospection:

Whereas traditionally hosting the Olympics was viewed as a top-down decision with little public input, public opinion is becoming more important in assessing and evaluating the merits of hosting the Games. Using bid documents from 2010 to 2020, the formal role that public opinion officially plays in the bid phase following the International Olympic Committee (IOC) procedures is examined. Public opinion in the preparation stage is reviewed, which demonstrates the problem of seeking simple declarations of support (Yes/No) that obfuscate important local issues (cost, traffic, urban priorities). Shifts in public opinion during the Games themselves, as well as one and four years after the Games, provide a new perspective on resident attitudes. Using retrospective data from Vancouver 2010 and London 2012, multivariate analysis demonstrates that participation in Olympic-related events (sporting and nonsporting) was the most important predictor of attitudes toward the Games and that concerns over costs were the only concerns that were justified.