Work and immigrants: An analysis of employment activity in the first ten years of establishment in the Montreal area

摘要

The Quebec labour market of the last two decades has undergone profound changes due to progress in information technology and market globalization. This new context has generated new forms of work which have been termed” non-standard work”. Since the early eighties, the number of such positions has been growing significantly. Often associated with precarious employment activity, the phenomenon of non-standard work has raised a fundamental question: are these positions stable? This is the main question that we wish to investigate from the perspective of new immigrants: do new immigrants achieve stability in the labour market upon arrival in Quebec? In a society that has, quite often for demographic and economic reasons, welcomed an average of 35,000 newcomers every year since the early 90s, the success (or failure) of economic integration rests in part on immigrants’ capacity to participate in the labour market and remain employed. Our analysis is based on a longitudinal survey that describes the biographical trajectories of the Settlement of New Immigrants (SNI). This survey describes the main attempts of 1,000 immigrants’ to establish themselves over a period of 10 years in the greater Montreal area. This research mainly shows that continuous sequences of employment are growing overtime, thus ensuring new immigrants greater stability in the labour market. On the other hand, results suggest that racial discrimination modulates labour market participation, in particular for natives of North Africa and the Middle East.