Sense of Belonging and Life Satisfaction among Hong Kong Adolescent Immigrants in Canada

Abstract

This article attempts to disentangle the primary factors affecting Hong Kong adolescent immigrants’ life satisfaction and sense of belonging to Canada. A total of 368 participants attending 26 high schools under the jurisdiction of six school boards in Toronto took part in a self-administered questionnaire survey. Results of the multiple ordinary least-squares regression analysis indicated that presence of father in Canada, higher self-rated socio-economic status, immigration to Canada being politically and culturally motivated, positive experience in making friends with Canadians, immigration to Canada at a later stage in life, and no prior experience in Canada before immigration were associated with a stronger sense of belonging to Canada. On the other hand, positive experience in making friends with Canadians, positive academic experience, absence of discrimination experience, and immigration to Canada being non-economically motivated were associated with a markedly higher level of life satisfaction.

Keywords:

• Hong Kong Immigrants
• Canada
• Adaptation
• Sense of Belonging
• Life Satisfaction

This research was partially funded by the Chinese Professional Association of Ontario and the Chinese Business Association through a fellowship (The Chinese-Canadian History and/or Culture Fellowship) administered by the University of Toronto. The author wishes to acknowledge the valuable assistance and tenacious support of Edward B. Harvey, David N. Wilson, Roxana Ng, Thomson Yu, Sutton Cheung, Koon-ming Hui, Chap-ning Wong, Yau-tsang Chan, and Angel Chow. Appreciation is extended to Paul Gingrich of the University of Regina for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 Annual Meetings of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association.

Notes

1. Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997. The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed by Britain and China in 1984, provides that Hong Kong's lifestyle will remain unchanged for 50 years after 1997. Hong Kong will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs, and China's socialist system and policies will not be practised in the Hong Kong SAR.

2. Chow's (1997) multivariate model of immigrant student adaptation, which was adapted from Goldlust and Richmond's (1974) multivariate model of immigration adaptation, took into account various subjective and objective aspects of adaptation (e.g. social, cultural, educational and linguistic). Thirteen scales were constructed to measure adaptation, which was operationalised as respondents’ satisfaction with school life, identification with both homeland and Canada, internalisation of Canadian values, participation in community organisations, English language usage and proficiency, frequency of exposure to the English and Chinese languages, frequency of exposure to English and ethnic media, academic ability and performance, interaction with Canadians, and problems encountered in Canada. Subsequent factor analysis of the 13 scales using varimax rotation delineated five independent factors, including frequency of English usage (eigen value = 3.243), academic performance (eigen value = 1.604), sense of belonging to Canada (eigen value = 1.365), ethnic language retention (eigen value = 1.153), and life satisfaction (eigen value = 1.031). These five factors accounted for 24.9, 12.3, 10.5, 8.9, and 7.9 per cent of the variance respectively. The present analysis focuses on two of these newly-delineated dimensions of adaptation, namely sense of belonging to Canada and life satisfaction.

3. Campbell et al. (1976: 11) pointed out that subjective assessment may derive from any or all of the four bases of evaluation, including aspiration levels (i.e. the situation that individuals hope to eventually attain, where a given domain is concerned), expectation levels (i.e. the situation individuals feel they are likely to attain in the fairly immediate future), equity levels (i.e. what individuals think should be true of their situations if perfect justice prevails given how much they invest in it relative to others), and reference group levels (i.e. what individuals believe to be true of the situations of others with whom they identify, such as friends and family or others of their income, race or occupation).

4. Identification with Canada/homeland was based on respondents’ degree of agreement (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) with the following statements: (a) I am very interested in issues, events, or affairs concerning Canada/homeland, (b) I have a strong positive feeling about being Canadian, (c) I have a strong sense of belonging to Canada, (d) I feel a strong attachment towards my own ethnic group, (e) I am active in organisations or social groups that include mostly people of my own ethnic group, (f) I find it easy to make friends with Canadians who are not of my own ethnic group, and (g) I seldom spend time with Canadians who are not of my own ethnic group.

5. The reasons for immigration were measured on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 = very unimportant to 5 = very important). With respect to the personal and family characteristics, sex was a dichotomous variable (1 = male; 0 = female). Age at immigration was measured in years. English proficiency was a composite score based on self-assessed level of English proficiency in terms of skills in writing, reading, speaking and understanding English (1 = very unsatisfactory to 5 = very satisfactory). Self-assessed socio-economic status was measured on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (low) to 5 (high). Presence of father in Canada was a dichotomous variable (1 = present; 0 = absent). With regard to the four variables dealing with lived experiences in Canada, racial discrimination experience in Canada (1 = reported discrimination experience; 0 = other) and prior experience in Canada (1 = yes; 0 = no) were both measured as dichotomous variables. Experience in making friends with Canadians (1 = very easy to 5 = very difficult) and academic experience (1 = very dissatisfied to 5 = very satisfied) were measured on a five-point Likert scale.

6. This variable measures the respondents' perceptions of the principal reasons why their families decided to emigrate to Canada. According to Fan and Skeldon (1995), emigration decisions in Chinese society typically involve all members of the immediate family and, in many cases in Hong Kong, the extended family as well. The decision of any member of the family, therefore, represents the joint decision of the family.

7. The presence of father in the household, as a form of active capital (i.e. encouragement, help with homework, contacts with school officials), was also found to have a significant impact on students’ academic performance and language use in this study. This may be related to the impact of the traditional Chinese pattern of close parental guidance and supervision (Chow 2000, 2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henry P.H. Chow

Henry P.H. Chow is Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina and Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary