The Vietnamese Boat People in Canada: 30 Years Later

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 7. Dynamics of Incorporation

Abstract

Although the United States holds the record of admitting the largest numbers of Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s and 1980s, Canada also was a significant player in resettling those from Vietnam. After admitting more than 5,000 Vietnamese in 1975 and 1976, Canada welcomed approximately fifty thousand Vietnamese refugees between 1979 and 1981, colloquially labelled “the Boat People.” Chain migration and continued flight further increased the size of the Vietnamese population and by the beginning of the 21st century, the entire Vietnamese community represented Canada’s fifth largest non-European ethnic group (Lindsay 2001); According to the 2016 special tabulations (Catalogue Number 98-400-X2016184) approximately 169,000 immigrants now reside in Canada. Close to 60 percent (or nearly 100,000) either arrived as boat people or in the flows that continued during the 1980s.
Despite an early explosion of policy and social science interest in the Boat People, a dearth of research exists on Vietnamese experiences since the late 1980s and early 1990s. Our paper redirects attention to this notable group. Specifically, we ask how the labour force experiences of these early groups compare to others some 30-plus years later, focusing on occupational location and weekly earnings. Using data from the 2011 National Household Survey, we use binomial logistic regression and OLS techniques to demonstrate the relative socioeconomic position of two focal Vietnamese arrival groups compared to other migrant groups entering during the same period (China, Hong Kong and the Philippines and those born in the UK and NW Europe), controlling for compositional differences in age, marital status, place of residence, language use and education. Our empirical results confirm that economic outcomes are closely linked to educational attainments

Authors

• Monica Boyd, University of Toronto

• Shawn Perron, University of Toronto