Canadian immigrants at the polls: the effects of socialisation in the country of origin and resocialisation in Canada on electoral participation

ABSTRACT

Political socialisation plays a crucial but complex role in determining how immigrants adjust to the political environment of their host country. This study examines the effects of initial political socialisation and resocialisation on immigrants’ electoral participation in Canada. It addresses three questions: To what extent does the outlooks that develop from earlier political experiences in the country of origin shape immigrants’ subsequent electoral participation in Canada? To what extent, and how, does subsequent experience with politics in Canada affect electoral participation? And finally, how does initial socialisation in the country of origin condition resocialisation in Canada? The results indicate that not only does resocialisation leave a unique and lasting imprint on immigrant electoral participation in the host country, but also that the nature of resocialisation process in the host country is conditioned by the distinctive political outlooks immigrants acquire under different political regimes in their respective countries of origin.

KEYWORDS:

• Canada
• immigrants
• voting
• political
• socialisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Meisel (1969), Clarke et al. (1982), Lambert et al. (1988), Johnston et al. (1992b, 1995); Blais et al. (2000, 2004b, 2007), Gidengil et al. (2009) and Fournier et al. (2011). Data from the 1980 Canadian National Election Study are excluded, because that panel study re-interviewed the same respondents from the 1979 election survey. The 1979 Canadian National Election Study and the 2006 and 2008 CES also included panel components in which respondents from previous studies were re-interviewed. These panel respondents have been excluded from the analysis. Data from the 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2008 CESs were provided by the Institute for Social Research (ISR), York University. The 2004, 2006 and 2008 surveys were funded by Elections Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The 1988, 1993, 1997 and 2000 surveys were funded by SSHRC. Neither the original collectors of these data, Elections Canada, SSHRC, ISR, nor the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

2. In additional analyses, partly democratic and mostly autocratic regime types were merged to investigate the possibility that a larger number of cases and greater statistical power would reveal statistically significant differences. This was not the case.

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Notes on contributors

Stephen E. White

Stephen White is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. His research focuses on Canadian and comparative public opinion and political behaviour, and immigrant political incorporation. He is a co-editor of Comparing Canada: Methods and Perspectives on Canadian Politics, and has contributed articles and chapters on North American political cultures, attitudes towards immigration, and immigrant political engagement.