Ethnicity and Social Capital in Canada

ABSTRACT/RESUME A review of recent research suggests that ethnic heterogeneity negatively influences attitudes and behaviours necessary for community cohesion. Using data drawn from the 2000 Equality Security Community Survey, we test the applicability of these findings to the Canadian context. Our results suggest that individual ethnocultural diversity characteristics do not appreciably affect scores on standard social capital measures but that broad designations of ethnicity such as visible minority and immigrant status do, however weakly. Larger community size is a consistent predictor of lower interpersonal trust, lower propensity to join organizations, and less time spent with friends. We speculate that in Canada, where community size, diversity, wealth, and education are so closely and positively correlated, an urban lifestyle, or city effect, may be a more accurate predictor of civic attitudes and behaviours. L'examen d'etudes recentes indique que l'heterogeneite ethnique influence negativement les attitudes et les comportements essentiels a la cohesion des communautes. En utilisant les donnees du sondage Equality Security Community Survey effectue en 2000, nous examinons l'applicabilite de ces resultats au contexte canadien. Les resultats demontrent que les caracteristiques individuelles de diversite ethnoculturelle n'ont pas d'incidence appreciable sur le resultat des mesures de capital social courantes, alors que les designations generales d'appartenance ethnique (tels que le statut d'immigrant ou celui de minorite visible) ont un effet, quoique faible. En comparaison, la taille accrue des communautes constitue un indice fiable du manque de confiance interpersonnelle, du declin du nombre de nouveaux membres des associations, et de la diminution du temps consacre aux amis. Nous estimons qu'au Canada, ou la taille de la communaute, la diversite, la richesse et l'education sont fortement correlees, le style de vie urbain, aussi appele effet-ville, constitue un indicateur previsionnel plus precis en ce qui a trait aux attitudes et aux comportements civiques. INTRODUCTION Social capital is, in theory at least, about working together to pursue common objectives. It manifests itself as specific forms of social conduct--including networks, norms, and trust--that allow people to interact in ways that encourage the production of social goods. The past decade has spawned a good deal of work that has sought to define social capital and to identify the appropriate personal and community characteristics that lead to higher levels of community co-operation, trust, and participation (see in particular Putnam 1995; Fukuyama 1995; Brehm and Rahn 1997). To date social capital has been shown to be positively associated with high levels of education, confidence in public institutions, and participation in social, cultural, and political activities. These positive associations are appealing to policy makers given the hypothesis that trust, reciprocity, and co-operation will correlate with higher outcomes on quality of life indicators, such as public safety, health, and life satisfaction and create value not only for individuals, but for communities and societies in general. Not all studies have yielded encouraging results. Though a great deal of attention has been focused on the identification of good conditions for the creation of social capital, a small body of work carried out in the United States suggests that other things--ethnic diversity in particular--may work to reduce it. These findings are not limited to qualitative conjecture; a modest body of survey-based empirical research consistently shows that negative relationships exist between measures of social capital and indicators of ethnic diversity at the individual and community levels (see Alesina and Ferrara 1999, 2000; Saguaro Seminar 2000; Marschall and Stolle 2002; Glaeser et al. 2000, Johnston and Soroka 2001). Some hypothesize that it is the differing levels of civic-hess exhibited by ethnic groups themselves that account for lower overall stocks of social capital (see Putnam 1993; Inglehart 1988, 1990). …

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