ABSTRACT
This research, although influenced by human ecological models related to immigrant settlement in the United States which described the spatial assimilation of white immigrant groups from Europe (Alba and Logan 1991, 1993; Massey 1985), approaches the issue from a perspective that is also different from most previous and similar research on Canada. It assumes that in Canada, as in other white-dominated industrial societies, visible minorities (that is, people of colour) are set apart from the white majority. They are ‘racialized’ through practices and/or policies imposed by the white majority. These ‘racialized’ minorities have become an increasing concern since Canada changed its racially restrictive (whites preferred) immigration policy in 1967. Since then, immigrants have become qualified not on the basis of their country of origin or ethnic background as was the case in the past, but based on points given for education qualifications, job experience and other criteria (Department of Manpower and Immigration 1974: 27-34; Henry 1994).
