Visible minority neighbourhoods in Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver

Feng Hou and Garnett Picot
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
2004, Statistics Canada Catalogue 11-008-XPE,
Canadian Social Trends , Spring 2004, No. 72: 8-13

Context

Within Canada's largest cities, ethnic neighbourhoods with a significant presence of a visible minority group vividly reflect how successive waves of immigrants have adjusted to Canadian society. Unlike earlier cohorts of immigrants, recent immigrants have settled primarily in large metropolitan areas and many of these recent immigrants belong to visible minority groups.

Objectives

This article examines the expansion of visible minority neighbourhoods in Canada's three largest cities and explores how visible minority neighbourhoods are formed. Are they formed by non-visible minority residents moving out as large numbers of a visible minority group move into the neighbourhood?

Findings

Visible minority neighbourhoods in Canada's large metropolitan areas rapidly expanded between 1981 and 2001 and were primarily concentrated among the Chinese and South Asians in Toronto and Vancouver.

This rapid emergence of visible minority neighbourhoods is associated more with the increase in a group's share in the city population than with an increased concentration of the group in particular neighbourhoods.

Most of the visible minority neighbourhoods were formed through an increase in the visible minority group in a neighbourhood, with a corresponding decline in the non-visible minority population.

Although neighbourhoods with a large concentration of visible minorities tend to have poor economic status, in terms of high unemployment rates and low-income rates, this may be because about one third of visible minorities are recent immigrants.

Data Source: Census, 1981-2001.