Living in the Ethnic Neighborhood Increases Co-Ethnic Interaction: Myth or Reality?

Eric Fong, University of Toronto
Feng Hou, Statistics Canada

One of the key assumptions in race and ethnic studies is the association between sharing neighborhoods with co-ethnic members and more co-ethnic interaction. Given the importance of this assumption in understanding race and ethnic relations, it is surprising that few studies have systematically examined the relationship between sharing neighborhoods with co-ethnic members and more co-ethnic interaction. In this paper, we merged the 2008 Canadian General Social Survey with the 2006 Canadian census to explore the relationship between the co-ethnic composition of neighborhoods and co-ethnic interaction among immigrant groups. In our study, we focused on four major minority immigrant groups (Chinese, South Asian, black, and Filipino) and four European immigrant groups (Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Ukrainian. Our findings show that, controlling for socioeconomic and demographic background, the proportion of co-ethnic members in a neighborhood does not relate to the likelihood of giving or receiving favors.