Highlights

The survey that is the subject of this report was the result of a collaborative research effort by the Strategic Planning Directorate of the MRCI and the Ethnic Studies Centre at the University of Montreal (CEETUM). The chief parameters of the survey were established following consultations with various people who work with asylum seekers, including Ministry officials and other stakeholders. Among others, the Montreal consultative committee of refugee aid agencies and the Ministry of Income Security took the time to express their views and concerns. The SOM firm was commissioned to administer the survey questionnaire to respondents. The report was written by Jean Renaud, Professor of Sociology at the University of Montreal and Director of CEETUM, and his research assistant, Lucie Gingras.

Purpose of Survey

Since the early 1980s, landed refugee claimants have made up a significant proportion of the overall immigrant flow into Quebec. [1] Until now, little has been known about this unique population's settlement process, compared with that of ordinary immigrants. The purpose of this survey is to fill this gap.

Of the 2,034 adult asylum seekers who arrived in Quebec in 1994 and subsequently became permanent residents, 407, all living in the Greater Montreal area, were surveyed from June 1997 to September 1997.

General Characteristics, Progression, Waiting Times

* The characteristics of landed refugee claimants compare favourably with those of immigrants as a whole. Most are young (70% are under 41) and educated (60% have some post-secondary education). By the time they became permanent residents, most spoke French (60%) and, less often, English (40%). They are rarely bilingual (7%). For the most part, however, this language proficiency was acquired after their arrival in Canada. When they filed their claim, 51.3% of respondents knew neither French nor English, or had a very limited knowledge of one or the other. By the time of the interview, this percentage had dropped to 22.3%.

• Most had no status when they filed their claim (73%), while 18% were in the country as tourists and 5% as foreign students. In most cases, they filed a claim as soon as they arrived, but 16% of respondents waited at least a month before doing so.
  
  
• Nearly a quarter of respondents (22%) had spent three months or more in a third country.
  
  
• Waiting times for obtaining refugee status and permanent residence were long. It took seven months from the time they filed their claim for 50% of respondents to be granted refugee status, and a total of 22 months for 50% of respondents to finally be granted permanent residence.

[15]

Housing

Housing was an important subject on the survey questionnaire administered to the landed refugee claimants. The following points are particularly noteworthy :

• 23% of respondents said they got help finding housing at the time they filed their claim. The main sources of assistance were relatives and friends.
  
  
• Immediately after their claim, 36% of respondents were receiving free lodging, while the others rented. By the fourth month following their claim, only 7% of respondents were still getting free lodging.
  
  
• Respondents lived in their first dwelling for a median duration (the time that had elapsed by the time 50% of respondents left their first dwelling) of six months. At the time of the interview, 13% of respondents were living in the same dwelling as at the time of their claim, about three years earlier.
  
  
• According to the questionnaire, the chief obstacles encountered during the search for housing were insufficient financial resources (40%), lack of knowledge of the market (24%), lack of appropriate transportation (20%), lack of knowledge of the city (19%), the negative attitude of landlords towards respondents' status as social assistance recipients (16%), and language and communication problems (14%).
  
  
• The average monthly rent or mortgage was $373 in the first month following the claim and $425 at the time of the interview.
  
  
  

Courses

Like other newcomers, many refugee claimants enrol in classes :

• 75% of respondents took at least one training program during the period under study (83% of women and 92% of 18- to 25-year-olds).
  
  
• 66% of the training programs taken by respondents were full-time.
  
  
• 80% of all the training programs combined (including COFI programs) were given in French.
  
  
• 43% of respondents took a language class (other than COFI courses), 25% went to a COFI (full time or part time) and 25% took courses in the regular school system. Women went to COFIs (17%) less often than men (34%).
  
  
• 18% of respondents took a full-time COFI program.
  
  
• At the time of the interview, 16% of respondents were enrolled in full-time regular programs, most at the post-secondary level.
  

[16]

Employment

• The survey revealed the following trends related to respondents' employment history :
  
  
• 78% have had employment before their arrival in Canada (86% of men, 68% of women). Only 38% of 18- to 25-year-olds have had employment before arrival.
  
  
• It took 32 months (24 months for men and more than 36 months for those 41 and over) for 50% of respondents to land their first job after their claim.
  
  
• Respondents' first jobs were mainly in manufacturing industries other than apparel (15%), apparel (13%), food services (12%) and other service industries (14%).
  
  
• The mean gross weekly salary for respondents' first jobs was $285.
  
  
• 87% of first jobs were wage-earning positions.
  
  
• First jobs were generally in small companies :  10 employees or fewer in 43% of cases ; 11 to 100 employees in 39% of cases ; and over 100 employees in 18% of cases.
  
  
• Of those who have had employment after their claim, 73% held on* ly one job, 20% held two and 7% held more than two.
  
  
• 46% of respondents did not have a job during the period under study. The figure is 60% for women and 61% for those over 40.
  
  
• At the time of the interview, 32% of respondents had a job. Among these, 17% said they were in the same line of work as before settling in Quebec, and 48% rated their jobs as requiring as much or more skill than the jobs they had held before their arrival in Canada.
  
  

Assistance in the First Years of Settlement

Services related to the refugee claim

• 87% of respondents, as part of their claim, retained the services of a lawyer or legal advisor through legal aid ; 11% retained the services of a lawyer or legal advisor at their own expense ; 6% called upon the services of a relative, friend or acquaintance ; less than 2% of respondents used the services of an NGO.
  
  

Assistance with immigration procedures

• 66% of respondents went to one or more public or government agencies for information on immigration procedures ; 44% went to relatives, friends or acquaintances ; 7% sought help from NGOs offering services to immigrants ; 3% went to their place of worship ; and 2% used the media.
  
  
• 13% of respondents said they had not needed information on immigration procedures.
  

[17]

Services provided by NGOs

• 35% of respondents stated that they, their spouse or the head of their household had contacted an immigrant or refugee support organization at one time or another since their claim (43% among respondents aged 41 and over and 43% of those who had attended university).
  
  

Social assistance

• It is estimated that 93% of respondents received social assistance during the period under study. More than 50% did so in the first month after their claim.
  
  
• At the time of the survey, about three years after their claim, 45% of respondents were still receiving social assistance (55% of women and 68% of those aged 41 and over).
  
  
• 7% of respondents did not receive social assistance during the period under study. They were more likely to be women (9%) than men (4%) and more likely to be university-educated (10%).
  
  

Uncertain Status and its Effect on Settlement

There are clear indications that claimants' precarious status has an impact on the settlement process. Access to full-time language instruction in a COFI is much quicker after status is granted (four times quicker), which is to be expected given the formal barriers imposed by the regulations. Indeed, obtaining permanent residence seems to have the effect of removing implicit obstacles to regular education and employment. Access to a first full-time regular program is 3.1 times quicker and access to a first job, 1.6 times quicker. In the case of regular programs, landed status means that claimants no longer have to pay foreign student tuition and are eligible for loans and bursaries. This alone is probably enough to explain the liberating effect that permanent residence can produce. As for employment, it seems clear that a work permit, even a generic one (for all employers and all types of work), which most claimants can obtain relatively early in the process, is not enough to persuade some employers to hire refugee claimants whose status has not yet been fully settled.

These preliminary results illustrate the difficulties that landed refugee claimants encounter. There are even indications that, to some extent, this population is marginalized socioeconomically during the settlement process.

It can well be imagined that the long delays refugee claimants are subjected to during the status determination and landing process and their uncertain status throughout this period weigh heavily on them during the settlement process. The accelerator effect of obtaining permanent residence on access to employment and full time regular education would seem to support the assumption that these delays have a negative impact on the settlement process. A more in-depth analysis of the data would be in order, however, before any firm conclusions can be drawn.

[18]

Arriving in a new country, making new friends and acquaintances, rebuilding social networks that have been lost or left behind, integrating into a new society, learning the social geography of a new city in order to find housing, learn a language or, at the very least, get used to the local dialect, landing a first job in order to secure a measure of financial independence and then trying to improve one's fortunes is, to be sure, both difficult and time-consuming. While all immigrants face these challenges, they do not all experience these difficulties to the same degree.

Those who arrive with an immigrant visa in hand, secure in the knowledge that they are welcome, at least do not have to fear legal uncertainty about their future in their new country, for they have permanent residence from the start. Of course, depending on their personal characteristics (age, gender, education, occupational experience, etc.) and the circumstances of their migration (in part reflected in their admission category : independent, family or refugee), the time it takes them to settle may vary somewhat. [2]  But they know that they can settle, that their future is in their new country and they can begin to build new lives as soon as they arrive.

On the other hand, for those who arrive without status, seeking refuge, the process of settlement is likely to be less smooth. They face a period of uncertainty about whether they will be allowed to settle, which will last until they are granted legal landed status ; they may not even obtain landed status and be sent back. Moreover, if these individuals applied for asylum for reasons of political uncertainty in their country of origin, or if they experienced physical or psychological abuse, these factors will likely complicate the settlement process ; they must not only live with legal uncertainty about their future but must also bear the double psychological burden of adapting to a new society while recovering from physical or psychological trauma.

This study examines these unsure migrants, as refugee claimants must be considered to be. More specifically, it looks at migrants who filed refugee claims in 1997 and were landed in Quebec by March 31, 1997. [3] Only landed refugees were interviewed, both for ethical reasons (it would be in poor taste, to say the least, to ask for the co-operation and trust, for research purposes, of claimants who are likely to be deported), and because they fall fully within the responsibility of the MRCI only once they have the right to settle permanently.

There are consequences, however, to choosing this population ; the study does not examine all claimants, only those whose claims were successful. Therefore, the data from this survey cannot be used to assess transition prevalences or probabilities prior to obtaining landing ; the study examines only refugees who had positive outcomes, not all those who were liable to experience these transitions.

The analyses presented here are essentially descriptive. Various aspects of the refugee claimants' settlement process will be presented, starting from the filing of the refugee claim.

[19]

After a description of the claimants and the administrative process, their experiences in finding housing, attendance in the school system and the specific courses they took, their experiences with wage employment, and the private and public sources of support they called upon overtime will be presented. The focus, then, will be on the "objective" life experiences of landed refugee claimants in the three years following their refugee claim. A proper exploration of their subjective experiences would demand an entirely different approach from the one adopted here.

Population Under Study and Sample

The study is based on a random sample of 407 respondents aged 18 and over at the time of the claim, taken from a population of 2,034 claimants from 1994 who were landed (obtained the right to establish permanent residence) in Quebec no later than March 31, 1997, and were living in the Greater Montreal area at the time of the survey. A description of this population and a discussion of the sample's representativeness appear in the Appendix. It should be noted here, however, that the sample does not seem biased and that the differences between the sample and the population are likely attributable to a dynamic redefinition of the population. Since claimants' geographic mobility probably increased when they were granted permanent residence, they were able to leave Montreal or Quebec for other parts of Canada ; if this is true it would explain the slight overrepresentation of couples, who would be less mobile.

The interviews were face-to-face and took place in the summer of 1997.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire was designed to capture the dynamics of settlement. It included a conventional section and also catalogued the events that respondents experienced from the time they filed their claim for refugee status. Experiences with housing, employment, unemployment and education were all recorded, including beginning and end dates and other particulars. The dates of a number of other events are also indicated, which will help us describe the settlement process overtime. To alleviate the problems of memory entailed by this type of study, given the large number of dates respondents needed to recall, the month has been used as the unit of time in the survey and in the descriptions and analyses that follow. [4]

Preparation of the questionnaire was greatly aided by the experience gained in the study on the settlement of new immigrants (ENI), the work of Christopher McAII and working meetings with a wide variety of individuals interested in the subject. [5]

Time Data

The period under study varied from 29 to 44 months after respondents filed their applications for asylum (Figure 0.1). The median time was 36 months. [6]

[20]

For the first 29 months, the total number of respondents is equal to the total size of the sample (n=407), whereas, after this time, their number decreases. Figure 0.2 shows the size of the sample for every month after the refugee claim. After the 36th month, the total number under study is too small to be robust, especially when the data are broken down using the control variables : gender (Figure 0.3), age (Figure 0.4) and education (Figure 0.5). Our analyses will therefore be limited to this 36-month period.

We will use graphs extensively to illustrate complex data produced by survival tables and time series over 36 months. These graphs and explanations on how to read them appear in the Appendix.

[21]