ABSTRACT
Economic production sets the material framework within which social structures and individual life opportunities are shaped. Together with child-rearing, which continues to impact differentially on men and women, the business of earning a living takes up more of the average adult’s waking life than any other activity. At the same time, it provides the resources which are indispensable to virtually every other part of life. The single most important resource to which it gives access is housing, the location and quality of which provide the context for numerous other social experiences. If people of immigrant origin are atypical in their employment and residential patterns, compared with the rest of the population, they are by the same token marked as signifi cantly different in some of the most basic aspects of social incorporation.
