MONTREAL — Immigrants to a new country – whether Canada or Israel – take jobs they are too educated for, struggle with languages they don’t know, co-mingle and settle with other immigrants from the same backgrounds, and then slowly but surely become part of the economic and social fabric of their new lands.
Those were the conclusions of a recent conference comparing “Immigration and Integration in Quebec and Israel,” held Sept. 8 at the Gelber Conference Centre and organized by the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) and co-sponsored by the Quebec-Israel Committee.
At a panel workshop on “the challenge of migrant insertion” that included experts from Canada and Israel, McGill University sociologist Morton Weinfeld avoided arcane PowerPoint slide shows and academic jargon to talk personally and fondly about his own father, a trained lawyer from Krakow, Poland, who survived the Holocaust and came to Canada in 1948.
“He took a job in the ‘Jewish niche’ economy,” Weinfeld said, referring to a term used by an earlier presenter, going to work as a bookkeeper at the Keneder Adler, the Canadian Jewish community’s most popular newspaper of the time.
Sociologists today might say he would have been disappointed that he was under-employed in a new country fraught with anti-Semitism and low pay, Weinfeld said.
His situation “would have been seen as a problem of social integration,” but such analysis would have missed the point, because his father was “delighted and happy to be in Canada,” Weinfeld said.
Moreover, Weinfeld noted that it’s the “second generation” of immigrants who are the “ultimate yardstick” of adaptation and integration into a new land.
Weinfeld said that contrary to what some experts think regarding the economic integration of immigrants, not all newcomers seek to be “income maximizers” and should not be looked upon as “one group,” given the obvious diversity of immigrant populations.
Another presenter, Nonna Kushnirovich of the Ruppin Academic Centre in Israel, studied 321 immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union.
Her data revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, that they tended to form their own ethnic “niches,” including in their private lives and in the labour market, but followed the integration process socially and economically.
Another presenter, Moshe Semyonov of Tel Aviv University’s sociology department, backed Kushnirovich’s statement that over time, Soviet immigrants adapt to their new land, eventually experiencing “upward economic mobility” as they integrate into their “host society” – in this case, Israel.
The situation for Soviet Jews in Israel is unique, he offered, since they came with a “European” sensibility and high levels of education, hence were valuable “human capital” in their new host society. They also came in huge numbers over a brief period.
His own study of them revealed that compared to other categories of immigrants, Soviet Jews were, over time, able to narrow the “occupational gap” with other educated Israelis, and, in general, are not currently at the bottom of the economic ladder.
In fact, Semyonov thinks that they will be the next group to be “at the top of the Israeli system.”
Iris Geva-May, an Israeli who is a professor of policy studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., suggested that non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government and businesses all have a stake in determining the adaptation process for newcomers to Canada, particularly in an era of “decentralization.”
“The central government cannot really reach out any more,” she said.
The day-long conference included remarks by ACS president Herbert Marx and Federation CJA president Marc Gold.
Other subjects covered included “Language and Cultural Adjustment in Israel and Quebec”; “The Role of NGOs/Volunteer Organizations in Newcomer Adjustment,” and “Identity Debates in Quebec and Israel.”
Participants included ACS executive director Jack Jedwab, Université du Québec à Montréal philosophy professor Daniel Weinstock and Israeli Consul General Yoram Elron.