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Population Movements and the Assimilation of Alien Groups in Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Eva R. Younge
Eva R. Younge*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

This paper deals with some of the problems which confront immigrants who strive to become adjusted to a new environment in Canada's largest cities. The materials presented refer to people from the continent of Europe who have settled in Montreal or Toronto during the present century. The point of view taken here is that the experiences of European immigrants, as told by themselves or by their Canadian-born children, contribute valuable information and significant insights into the processes by which they become assimilated toward one or the other of Canada's two major cultures.

As a social term, assimilation commonly refers to a political rather than a cultural concept. As R. E. Park points out, “it is the name given to the process or the processes by which people of diverse racial origins and different cultural heritages, occupying a common territory, achieve a cultural solidarity sufficient at least to sustain a national existence.” In this country, as in the United States, an immigrant is usually considered assimilated when he has learned the language and the social usages of the native community well enough to participate in its economic, political, and social life without encountering prejudice. The emphasis is here on external indices, such as ability to speak French or English, achievement of the status of a citizen through naturalization, and adoption of the dress, the manners, and the social ritual of the Canadian-born with whom the immigrant comes in contact.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , August 1944 , pp. 372 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1944

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References

1 The materials presented here are taken from five unpublished M.A. theses dealing with immigrant groups in Montreal. The authors were graduate students in sociology at McGill University. Their names and the titles of their theses are as follows: Chas. M. Bayley, “The Social Structure of the Italian and Ukrainian Immigrant Communities in Montreal, 1935-1937”; Gibbard, Harold A., “The Means and Modes of Living of European Immigrants in Montreal” (1934)Google Scholar; Moellmann, Albert, “Occupational and Social Adjustment of German Immigrants in Canada” (1934)Google Scholar; Mamchur, Stephen W., “The Economic and Social Adjustment of Slavic Immigrants in Canada, with Special Reference to the Ukrainians in Montreal” (1934)Google Scholar; Seidel, Judith, “Social Organization of the Jewish Community in Montreal” (1939).Google Scholar The writer is also indebted to Dr. Mary Northway for permission to use data from a number of family histories written by students at the University of Toronto in 1944.

2 Park, R. E. and Burgess, E. W., Introduction to the Science of Sociology (ed. 2, Chicago, 1924), p. 735.Google Scholar

3 Park, R. E., “Assimilation” (The Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, vol. II, p. 281).Google Scholar

4 Cf. Park, R. E. and Burgess, E. W., The City (Chicago, 1925)Google Scholar, Zorbaugh, H. W., The Gold Coast and the Slum (Chicago, 1929)Google Scholar, and Cressey, Paul F., “Population Succession in Chicago: 1898-1930” (American Journal of Sociology, vol. XLIV, no. 1, 07, 1938, pp. 59–69).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ausländer is the term given to Germans from countries outside the old German Empire. Reich German is the term used for people from the German Empire or from Germany proper of the present day.

6 Cf. Hughes, E. C., French Canada in Transition (Chicago, 1943), pp. 173–5.Google Scholar

7 Census of Canada, 1941, Population Bulletin no. A-15.

8 The 1941 Census Bulletin on Population, no. A-15, reports a total of 5,844 persons of Ukrainian origin in the City of Montreal.

9 Mamchur, Stephen W., “The Economic and Social Adjustments of Slavic Immigrants in Canada,” pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

10 The 1921 Census of Canada recorded less than a hundred Finns for Montreal city. In 1931 more than 1,800 Finns lived in Greater Montreal. Census Bulletin no. A-15, which gives the population of the City of Montreal by racial origins for 1941, does not list the Finns separately.

11 Adapted from Mamchur, , “Economic and Social Adjustments of Slavic Immigrants in Canada,” pp. 167–8.Google Scholar

12 Bayley, , “Social Structure of the Italian and Ukrainian Immigrant Communities in Montreal,” p. 71.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 72.

14 Ibid., p. 282.

15 Family history, no. 69; courtesy of Dr. Mary Northway.