Adapting to the Ontario Labour Market: A Critical Assessment of the Role of Family in the Labour Market Integration of Immigrants

For more than a decade, academic research has pointed out that economic class immigrants in Canada experience significant levels of underemployment. Studies in Canada, however, have tended to ignore the role of the family in the process of immigrant labour market integration. The purpose of this research is to study the labour trajectory of immigrant families highlighting their experiences with barriers to finding employment, their strategies for overcoming these barriers, and how their family story interacts with this process. Also, this study sheds light on immigrants’ experiences with employment services and it includes the perception of service providers about economic class immigrants’ integration into the Canadian labour market. A qualitative study of economic class immigrants and their families was utilized employing semistructured interviews and focus groups in order to examine their experiences with the labour market in the Great Toronto Area.