Search

This paper investigates the language fluency problems of skilled immigrants from mainland China to Canada. It capitalises on interview data to explore the relationships between Chinese immigrants' identities, second language practices, and language skills. It reports the informants' difficulty in integrating into their workplaces and their unwillingness to make considerable investments in learning English. Drawing on Bourdieu's (1984) theory of practice and linking it with the issue of identity, this paper explains how the habitus of the informants interact with their milieux, how a marginalised identity emerges, and how this identity negatively impacts on their oral proficiency in English.

Studies have shown the ways in which non-Western middle- and upper-class families are seeking to educate their children in the West. The rationale for this kind of social reproduction strategy is the acquisition of 'valuable' cultural and symbolic capitals which can be advantageous in the graduate job market of both their home country and internationally. Presenting a case study of four middle-class Nigerian fathers, the paper reveals the rationale behind these fathers' decision to opt out of the Nigerian HE sectors. The paper focuses on three Western capitals -- specifically institutional (a Canadian degree), embodied (high proficiency in English language) and symbolic (Canadian citizenship) -- capitals which will position these parents' children advantageously in the future. The paper concludes by presenting an argument that in seeking these Western capitals for their children, these parents become implicated in the Western hegemonic discourse of 'West is best'.

The biggest threat to civil society in Canada and the United States is the economic doctrine known as neoliberalism. Sometimes referred to as the corporate agenda, this philosophy supports the deregulation of industry, the privatization of the commons, the weakening of workers' rights, and corporate tax cuts. Acknowledging that teaching is a political act, this paper makes a case for social studies and history teachers to develop pedagogy that lifts the hegemonic veil for students. Progressive values--progressive tax reform, support for workers, strengthening social welfare, and regulating industry--are the antithesis of neoliberalism. After describing the effects of neoliberalism today, the paper highlights important victories for working- and middle-class citizens taken for a stronger civil society in the pasts of both countries based on Keynesian economics and social democratic values. The paper outlines a pedagogical approach for social studies teachers based upon ideology critique, critical media literacy, and reframing of neoliberal discourses with progressive ones. Deconstructing hegemony is the crucial component of this critical pedagogy.

The article discusses polarization and middle class. It references the 1992 article "Polarization and the Decline of the Middle Class: Canada and the U.S.," by James Foster and Michael Wolfson in the same issue. The authors used Lorenz curve to determine pay inequality and Gini-like index to measure bipolarization. It is said that the authors' concept of polarization was divided between people with incomes below and above the median income.

This paper examines the links between language, social difference and political domination in the practices of parental school choice at the heart of a global city, Vancouver. Vancouver is a highly diverse city, especially in terms of language. Its inner city is replete with multiple languages whose exchange values are not equal. In this context, our case study of two elementary schools observes that white middle-class parents choose a predominantly white school--whose students are non-ESL and have a second language choice of French--in a socially and ethnically mixed inner city neighbourhood, creating a stark imbalance in the student population of local neighbourhood schools. This paper examines parents' accounts of their choices, which they rationalise on the basis of linguistic competency and differentiation from multilingual others. We draw from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power and Ghassan Hage's spatial theory of nationalist practice to understand the linguistic dimension of school choice rationalisation made by white middle-class parents. In the context of these insights, we argue that the way anglophone white middle-class parents choose their children's schools is intricately linked to active processes of reproducing a "stratilingual" society in Canada. (Contains 8 notes.)

This paper describes a research project that uses Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural and social capital to penetrate how middle-class parents exercise influence and form positive relationships at the neighbourhood public school that serves various ethno-cultural groups of students. One group of white, economically privileged students have populated the school since its founding; the others are new, immigrant, and diverse in ethnicity, race, and immigrant status. The parents of the former group of children enjoy active involvement in the school and trusting relationships with teachers that involves their differentiation from and exclusion of the new immigrant group. While the paper affirms the importance of social class differences in parent involvement, it integrates additional dimensions of immigration status and ethnicity. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper presents the results of a survey administered during the spring of 2005. At this time, graduates of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program from two public schools in a large city in British Columbia, Canada, were asked to respond to 20 statements on a 4-point Likert-type scale, and to 7 open-ended questions. Graduates from the years 1996 and 2000 were selected. At the time of this survey, many of the graduates of 2000 were just finishing their undergraduate postsecondary programs, and the graduates of 1996 were settling into their chosen careers. Both groups were in a position to reflect on their experiences while they were in the program, and also to analyze the benefits of IB, if any, that they experienced during their postsecondary studies. Overall, graduates reported positive experiences in the program. They felt that the rich curriculum to which they were exposed, and the critical thinking and time management skills that they developed, were well worth the extra effort required to earn an IB diploma. Furthermore, they felt that the IB experience prepared them well for postsecondary studies. (Contains 20 tables.)

In this paper, we revisit Brown's ("Br J Soc Educ" 14: 65-85, 1990) concept of "parentocracy" which has been informatively applied in educational research in a number of studies in various countries internationally--but almost none in North America. We provide an expanded conceptualization of parentocracy and suggest that it provides a useful encapsulation of a number of similar, and/or complementary, conceptual approaches to understanding middle class educational advantage. Our expanded conceptualization of parentocracy stems from Brown's ("Br J Soc Educ" 14: 65-85, 1990) original use, but encompasses both a socio-political ideology that favors parental sovereignty and market solutions in education, as well as a proactive interventionist parenting style premised on fostering child development (and strategically optimizing life opportunities) through structured, progressive skill-enhancing educational and extra-curricular experiences. We offer a discussion of a number of studies that can be seen to exemplify, either expressly or implicitly, these parentocratic tendencies. Finally, using the examples of "Schools of Choice" policy and French immersion schools in the Canadian province of Manitoba, we explore the implications of parentocratic practices for educational inequality and "social reproduction" in the 2010s.

This paper presents a psychosocial analysis of interview data of three Canadian, middle-class, Jewish mothers engaged in processes and practices of "school choice". We consider how middle-class, white identity intersects with Jewish ethnicity. We also examine how commitments to Canadian ideals of multiculturalism sit in contradiction with investments in neo-liberal discourses of school performance and individual academic success and competition. Through analysis of narratives we illustrate how the mothers invoke binaries to differentiate self and others: self in the form of the middle-class, Jewish self; others in the form of the risky and dangerous "multicultural" body encountered in their children's primary school. We examine how contradictions are salient in the mothers' attempt to perform a morally legitimate selfhood in the face of competing commitments to individual attainment versus a collective good represented by ethnocultural diversity. Narratives reveal mothers' aspirational fantasies for their children that inform their class- and ethnic-based choices and decisions around schooling. School choice is thus thoroughly inflected with imperatives to preserve middle-classness and Jewish ethnic identity, and constituted through binary-making. Yet as we illustrate, these processes are not stable but subject to constant to psychical re-negotiation and flux. (Contains 1 note.)

Concerned that public schooling leads to mediocrity rather than meritocracy, many middle-class parents are seeking other options such as private schools, alternative public schools, and charter schools to develop their children's academic, creative, and athletic talents. Based on a mixed method investigation of school choice among parents (N = 1,871) in the two largest cities in the Province of Alberta, this paper examines the logic, values, and concerns that inform parental decision-making and the impact of social class differentiation in the process of selection of elementary schools. Issues surrounding the placement of gifted students in various school options are discussed. (Contains 2 figures.)

Copyright of Anthropologica is the property of CASCA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper uses the concept of ethnic prejudice to examine the extent to which fears and anxieties related to immigration and ethnic diversity constitute obstacles to middle-class nation-building in Canada. Our underlying assumption is that if immigration is so contentious and the status anxiety it induces so great, then it should manifest into substantial levels of ethnic prejudice. Moreover, if status anxiety induced by immigration is indeed a widespread concern in Canada, we expect it to translate to significant differences in ethnic prejudice between class and immigration status. To measure ethnic prejudice, we developed an index using common factor analysis with the Provincial Diversity Project. This dataset allows us to create a robust index of ethnic prejudice based on the individual attitudes regarding eight different ethnic groups. While our findings indicate that ethnic prejudice in Canada remains relatively low for the time being, it is evident that a certain level of ethnic prejudice persists and intersects with other forms of status anxieties and competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Gardening metaphors with English middle-class overtones were widely used in the late nineteenth-century child saving writings in Toronto, Canada to explain and promote the ideal mode of parenting and the objective of child saving. An analysis of gardening metaphors contributes to understanding mechanisms of bio-power on the site of child saving. This paper argues that the child saving movement attempted to install a mode of proper parental control that can be described as “the gardening governmentality”– it was primarily positive/productive (yet without excluding repressive elements), individualized, intelligent, and localized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing political, social and economic circumstances operating across a variety of scales are transforming the socio-spatial landscapes for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) people in Toronto. While the established gay village continues to be the imagined and material centre of political and social life for the LGBTQ community, various groups are increasingly utilizing other locations in the downtown core but outside the Village, particularly an area know colloquially as 'Queer West.' This paper argues that for some queer women/gender queers individuals, the Village is not viewed as a desirable location for social or political organising given perceptions the area is dominated by largely white, middle class, gay men. Further, the possibilities, potentials and limitations for queer women/genderqueer individuals to take up alternative locations are constituted through complex social relations and include notions of what 'queered' and 'queering' space entails and participants' own imagined sense of place and reflecting aspects of their own classed, racialized and gendered positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a paper whose purpose is to call into question, both theoretically and empirically, the widely accepted proposition that the traditional petite bourgeoisie has declined constantly over time and fairly evenly across different sectors. The paper use Canada as an empirical case study. It is argued on the basis of an analysis of Canadian Census and Labor Force Survey data that the traditional petite bourgeoisie or the self-employed who hire little or no wage labor, has not continuously declined between 1931 and 1981. The petite bourgeoisie persisted generally between 1931 and 1951 and became stronger between 1931 and 1941. In some economic sectors, such as building construction, it persisted at considerable strength until 1961. Intersectoral differences occur in the size of the traditional petite bourgeoisie. It was generally larger in agriculture, fishing, retail trade, personal services and the autonomous professions than in forestry, manufacturing, mining and transportation. The petite bourgeoisie as a class is obviously being destroyed. But this should not blind us to the periods in Canadian history during which it increased its strength nor to the sectors of Canadian society where it persisted against overwhelming odds.

Copyright of Canadian Review of Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Nepali-Canadian Living Standards Survey is collaborative research that assesses the economic and social incorporation of newly immigrated Nepalese into Canada. The study is based on survey interviews with sixty-two Nepali households in the Greater Toronto Area, conducted between November 2015 and April 2016. In this paper, we show that those who have immigrated from Nepal since 2012 are still struggling to find work commensurate with their expectations and their overall high human capital. The persistence of single income families, and a lack of female participation in the labour force, appear to be factors in this struggle. Those who have migrated earlier, however, report that they are more firmly anchored, both economically and socially, in the Canadian middle class, even though they continue to lag behind the native-born population. Both groups reported a high degree of investment in their children's education. The study suggests that policy makers find resources for retraining current immigrants who are attempting to secure better employment, including provisions for early childcare. Finally, Nepali-Canadian voluntary organizations are encouraged to pursue these same goals, both with levels of government and with each other. Le sondage népalais sur les niveaux de vie au Canada est une recherche collaborative qui évalue l'incorporation économique et sociale des Népalais nouvellement immigrés au Canada. L'étude est basée sur des entrevues menées entre novembre 2015 et avril 2016 auprès de soixante-deux ménages népalais dans la région de Toronto et ses environs. Nous démontrons dans cet article que, ceux qui ont immigré du Népal depuis 2012 se déploient encore pour trouver un travail à la hauteur de leurs attentes malgré leur capital humain généralement élevé. La persistance des familles à revenu unique et le manque de participation féminine sur le marché du travail semblent être un facteur dans ce combat de survie. Cependant, ceux qui ont immigré plus tôt affirment qu'ils sont plus solidement intégrés, tant sur le plan économique que social, dans la classe moyenne canadienne, même s'ils continuent d'être à la traîne par rapport à la population née au pays. Les deux groupes ont signalé un fort degré d'investissement dans l'éducation de leurs enfants. L'étude suggère que les décideurs trouvent des ressources pour la reconversion des immigrants actuels qui cherchent à obtenir un meilleur emploi, y compris des dispositions pour la garde des jeunes enfants. Enfin, les organisations bénévoles népalaises et canadiennes sont encouragées à poursuivre ces mêmes objectifs, à la fois avec les gouvernements et entre eux-mêmes. [End Page 69] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent studies have suggested that the distribution of income (earnings, jobs) is becoming more polarized. Much of the evidence presented in support of this view consists of demonstrating that the population share in an arbitrarily chosen middle income class has fallen. However, such evidence can be criticized as being range-specific—depending on the particular cutoffs selected. In this paper we propose a range-free approach to measuring the middle class and polarization, based on partial orderings. The approach yields two polarization curves which, like the Lorenz curve in inequality analysis, signal unambiguous increases in polarization. It also leads to an intuitive new index of polarization that is shown to be closely related to the Gini coefficient. We apply the new methodology to income and earnings data from the U.S. and Canada, and find that polarization is on the rise in the U.S. but is stable or declining in Canada. A cross-country comparison reveals the U.S. to be unambiguously more polarized than Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changes that occurred in community organization practice in the public establishments of Quebec (Canada) in the 1990s. The results of replicated statistical research show that many changes in community organization practice occurred during this period. Most of these changes can be explained by the socioeconomic crisis that took place in the 1990s that affected part of the middle class, driving the reorganization of public social services organizations and important cuts in the government's budget. In this context of crisis, the government of Quebec more easily accepted the local development strategy to overcome unemployment and poverty. These changes can also be explained by a change in community organizers' perceptions of their profession and their strategy for professional recognition observed in the creation of a professional association. doi:10.1300/J125v15n03_07 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Earlier studies of Canadian inner-city gentrification, especially in Toronto, project an image of the process as being emancipatory: a middle-class reaction to the oppressive conformity of suburbia, modernist planning and market principles. This paper, a case study of gentrification in South Parkdale, Toronto, questions this image by illustrating the role of local context in theory and policy and the consequences of gentrification for vulnerable inner-city populations. Once a desirable residential neighbourhood, South Parkdale experienced disinvestment following the construction of the Gardiner Expressway in the 1960s and also experienced further problems in the 1970s and 1980s following the deinstitution-alisation of psychiatric patients from adjacent hospitals. Discharged patients suffered from a shortage of affordable housing options, and many ended up in substandard rooming houses and bachelorettes, of which South Parkdale has a disproportionate share in Toronto. The neighbourhood's sporadic gentrification since the mid-1980s has intensified in recent years, as the City of Toronto is regularising and licensing the neighbourhood's low-income housing—a major concern for tenants who fear that landlords will use recent provincial legislation on tenancy to attract wealthier residents into their improved buildings. This paper examines this situation with qualitative evidence and argues that gentrification in South Parkdale, driven and managed by neoliberal policy, is far from an emancipatory process and argues for an interpretation of gentrification that looks beyond the experiences of the middle classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Division of classes by sexes and sectors (capitalist goods and services versus the state) reveals different focal points in five advanced capitalist societies: the United States, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Finland, Using data from the Comparative Class Structure Project, this paper offers a 'minimalist' set of class categories (capitalist/executive, old middle class, new middle class and worker) based upon commanding the means of production and the labour of power of others. The paper emphasizes the importance of distinguishing classes by sex. The results report on how men and women distribute in the working and new middle classes over sectors in the five nations, revealing a strong Nordic/North American difference. Some implications for the strength of political blocks for men and women in these classes, sectors and nations are tentatively presented. While Nordic working and new middle class women have a solid base of strength in the state sector, North American women are concentrated in the much weaker capitalist service sector. Men continue to dominate the capitalist goods sector for the working class but for the new middle class men there is a Nordic/North American split between their respective strengths, with the Nordic new middle class stronger in the state sector and the North American equivalents stronger in the capitalist sector. These patterns suggest different national bases for alliances in class politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses household travel survey data (of the National Capital Region of Canada) and a comprehensive random utility maximizing travel options modelling approach to investigate non-workers’ activity-travel scheduling behaviour. The empirical model reveals that the presence of children shapes the daily activity-travel patterns of non-workers by reducing the flexibility of out-of-home activity-type choices. Availability of private cars increases flexibility in travelling and increases the spread of spatial locations of out-of-home activities of non-workers. Income plays a significant role in non-workers’ activity-travel behaviour and it seems that non-workers from lower to middle-income households are less active (return home early) than those living in higher income households. In general, it is found that male non-workers are less active than the female non-workers and it is also evident that non-workers living in single detached houses are less active (return home early) than those living in condos/apartments. These findings have an implication to health issues as the average age of non-workers is over 50 years and the majority of detached houses are far from the central business district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about personal reflections of an immigrant, Muslim, Pakistani, middle class, minority woman working in a business school in Canada who receives an invitation to a White dinner. She writes of experiencing emotional labor and esthetic labor; tensions based on gender, religion, class, age, and culture; skepticism against belonging and otherness—and the space in between; along with her consciousness of being under the disciplinary gaze of her own community members. She feels suspended between strength and vulnerability, resorting to reflective writing for sense‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently Edward Bell presented a strong case that the class basis of Social Credit in Alberta has been misrepresented by almost every analyst since C.B. Macpherson proposed his widely acclaimed thesis that Social Credit's mass support was rooted in the structural problems of the petite bourgeoisie in this peripheral capitalist area. Authors adopting the view that Social Credit was disproportionately supported by the petite bourgeoisie are charged with failing to provide supporting evidence. On reviewing what is now known about the class composition of Alberta and the distribution of Social Credit votes, Bell is able to show that the conventional wisdom is open to serious doubt. Although Bell's sharp critique of established positions is generally sound, the question is how to go forward. It is difficult to identify a theoretical approach in Bell's paper and suggestions of how to conduct future work are limited. As yet, he does not offer an alternative interpretation. It is in this respect that the article is weakest and thus a few comments have been offered here, which, are hoped will be found constructive by those drawn to work on this fascinating example of a Canadian social movement.

The regional economic crisis that descended upon the Maritimes in the 1920s wrought considerable change to the business world of the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie in Saint John, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Studies in Population is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Conventional wisdom says that the middle classes in many developed countries have recently suffered losses, in terms of both the share of the total population belonging to the middle class, and also their share in total income. Here, distribution-free methods are developed for inference on these shares, by means of deriving expressions for their asymptotic variances of sample estimates, and the covariance of the estimates. Asymptotic inference can be undertaken based on asymptotic normality. Bootstrap inference can be expected to be more reliable, and appropriate bootstrap procedures are proposed. As an illustration, samples of individual earnings drawn from Canadian census data are used to test various hypotheses about the middle-class shares, and confidence intervals for them are computed. It is found that, for the earlier censuses, sample sizes are large enough for asymptotic and bootstrap inference to be almost identical, but that, in the twenty-first century, the bootstrap fails on account of a strange phenomenon whereby many presumably different incomes in the data are rounded to one and the same value. Another difference between the centuries is the appearance of heavy right-hand tails in the income distributions of both men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the presumed benevolence of mixed-income public housing redevelopment, focusing on the first socially-mixed remake of public housing in Canada, at Toronto’s Don Mount Court (now called ‘Rivertowne’). Between 2002 and 2012 the community was demolished and replaced with a re-designed ‘New Urbanist’ landscape, including replacement of public housing (232 units) and 187 new condominium townhouses. While mixed redevelopment is premised on the hope that tenants will benefit from improved design and mixed-income interactions, this research finds that many residents were less satisfied with the quality of their housing, neighbourhood design, and social community post-redevelopment. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic participant observation, this article finds that tenant interviewees missed their older, more spacious homes in the former Don Mount, and were upset to find that positive community bonds were dismantled by relocation and redevelopment. Challenging the ‘myth of the benevolent middle class’ at the heart of social mix policy, many residents reported charged social relations in the new Rivertowne. In addition, the neo-traditional redesign of the community – intended to promote safety and inclusivity – had paradoxical impacts. Many tenants felt less safe than in their modernist-style public housing, and the mutual surveillance enabled by New Urbanist redesign fostered tense community relations. These findings serve as a strong caution for cities and public housing authorities considering mixed redevelopment, and call into question the wisdom of funding welfare state provisions with profits from real estate development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration, mobility, globalisation and individualisation have transformed the way people relate to space by affecting their physical, social and emotional bonds to place. Yet, does it mean that place attachment is due to wane and that the neighbourhood does not matter nowadays? The article is tackling this question by addressing the underexplored neighbourhood attachment and the residential choices of young middle-class families in Montreal Census Metropolitan Area. Empirical results are drawn from in-depth interviews with immigrant and non-immigrant households in a comparative perspective between a peri-urban and near-suburban neighbourhood in recent ethnic transition. We explore three types of neighbourhood attachment: physical and social as underlined in the literature, but we also suggest the importance of accounting for the symbolic dimension of neighbourhood attachment. Findings reveal how families display neighbourhood attachment through an extensive use of neighbourhood amenities (physical), embedded social ties (social) and distinctive lifestyles convergent with the representations of middle-class family life (symbolic). Unlike narratives of middle-classes’ place detachment and withdrawal from neighbourhood life, our case study of ‘middle’ middle-class neighbourhoods suggest that the neighbourhood preserves its importance, but that neighbourhood attachment takes different forms and that these forms differ among urban and suburban families. It is argued that what residents believe urban and suburban life should be and their values and identities associated with it needs further investigation, given their considerable role in neighbourhood attachment and residential choices of middle-classes families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While a single survey is a snapshot of a given moment in time, a series of surveys on the same topics over the years is akin to time-lapse photography, tracing the unfurling trends of public opinion. In examining the results of surveys conducted in recent decades by EKOS Research Associates on Canadians' views of the economy, the prospects of the middle class, immigration and foreign trade, the time-lapse images show a dispiriting pessimism, especially among younger Canadians. For example, in 2002, nearly 70 per cent of Canadians surveyed described themselves as middle class. That figure dropped precipitously to just 47 per cent in 2015. Nearly half (46 per cent) of those aged 25-44 said they were earning less in inflation-adjusted dollars last year than their fathers earned at the same age. Fewer than one in five Canadians believed their personal economic lot improved last year. Thirty-seven per cent of respondents said they had fallen behind economically in the last year and the last five years. When a society sees shared progress as an imperative, it is truly dismal that fewer than one in five Canadians thought things had improved for them last year. Just over a month and a half before the October 2015 federal election, a survey showed that restoring middle-class prosperity was the top issue for all demographic groups, standing at 35 per cent of respondents between the ages of 35 and 49 and 55 per cent among those aged 49 to 64. Accompanying this incipient uneasiness about the future of the middle class in Canada is a concomitant drawing inwards, a tendency towards parochialism about aspects of foreign trade and immigration, which may be perceived as threatening an economic future already considered to be tenuous. For example, support dropped dramatically (from 47 per cent the year before the 2008 recession to 25 per cent last year) for the notion that Canadians, Americans and Mexicans should be free to work anywhere in North America. While enthusiasm for immigration traditionally declines during times of economic angst, current trends bear watching. Ten years ago, 25 per cent of Canadians surveyed said this country had too many immigrants; by 2015, the numbers of respondents who felt this way had practically doubled. Caution is urged, however, against reading too much into this, as these latter responses were given to a machine, not a live interviewer. People may have thus felt less inhibited about their answers. Meanwhile, a majority of Canadians surveyed think that foreign investment or foreign ownership of Canadian companies threatens national sovereignty. The 2015 results show a 10-point increase in the perception of a threat to sovereignty, compared to seven and 10 years ago. While deploring the state of the economy, the Canadian public remains at least somewhat unreceptive to the potentially ameliorative force of foreign direct investment, and this attitude appears to be worsening. Anxiety over Canada's economic future helped the Liberals attain power in the 2015 federal election. Their win has infused the heretofore gloomy economic mood with a shot of hope. There can be no quick fix. Dispelling the gloom and replacing it with optimism will depend on the integrated success of efforts to liberalize trade, redefine attitudes towards immigration and change perspectives on foreign direct investment under the new federal leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Ontario industrial workers' family finances, including in regard to gender and the economic vulnerabilities that family budgets face. An overview of the members of middle classes in Canada, including their ability to find employment and the class distinctions between middle and working classes, is provided. The role that women play in the social conditions of Ontario families, including women's role in heading single-parent families, acting as caregivers to laid-off spouses and managing family budgets, is discussed.

The article examines the judicial interpretation and law application inside the courtroom with regards to access to justice for public interest in Canada. It explores the age-old concern on the increasing inaccessibility of justice being depicted as a problem for middle-class Canadians during public interest litigation. It argues in favour of accounts of the access to justice story that underscores the function of judicial decision-making inside the courtroom.

The first academic survey of the members of the Green Party of Canada (GPC) is analysed, and major findings in green literature are discussed. It is shown that the new middle class thesis and Eckersley's education theory do apply to Canadian Greens. The supporters of GPC and other political parties in Canada, Europe and Australia are compared. GPC has more members from the self-employed and private sectors than the public sector - a novel influence on Green party policy orientation. GPC operates from the centre position of the political spectrum, unlike other Greens; it is nonetheless a staunch supporter of ecologism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I would like pay personal tribute to Professor J.A. Mangan, who was the supervisor of my Ph.D. His constant encouragement and support while I was completing my thesis is gratefully acknowledged. He also showed great generosity to the extent of inviting me to stay at his house on my visits to Strathclyde University. He is a truly wonderful mentor and I am proud to call him a friend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the formation of the middle-class society in Ontario in the nineteenth-century based on manuscript censuses of 1861 and 1871. Patterns of structured rural inequality in the provinces; Geographic distribution of farm sizes; Patterns of farm acquisition and improvement; Very active land market as evidenced by local newspaper advertisements.

The article discusses the municipal restructuring and middle-class politics in Toronto, Ontario. This article is structured around the idea that while state political and territorial restructuring is a multi-scale process, it is also a spatial struggle between different segments of the population, particularly between different segments of the middle class. The middle class is more than a shrinking income category, more than a simple silent majority. The author argues that the middle class also comprises conflicting political actors, often divided along spatial lines such as the urban and the suburban segments. Despite the fact that the City of Toronto Act was passed into law and that the new Megacity of Toronto was incorporated in 1998; despite the fact that the new megacouncil is dominated by suburban interests, and despite the fact that the Greater Toronto Area was not restructured as many urban progressives would have wished, Citizens for Local Democracy cannot be judged as a failure. It played a crucial role in mobilizing the urban middle class to challenge the Progressive Conservative Party government who had targeted middle-class people, public-sector employees, health-care or education professionals since its election in 1995.

The article focuses on the occupational mobility of Canadian managers to the U.S. This article has three purposes. First, a theoretical framework will be set out within which international mobility at the new middle class level can be studied. Special attention will be paid to managerial personnel. This framework integrates mobility at the individual level, social closure at the group level, and monopoly capitalism at the international macro level. Second, a qualitative summary of the individual reasons for which Canadian-born managers now resident in the United States moved there will be given. This analysis will focus on their perceptions of Canadian and American opportunity structures as reasons for migration. Third, this individual-level analysis will be set within a broader context by considering the relation of these reasons for migration to other individual characteristics and to macro historical changes in the relation between Canada and the United States. This will be a quantitative analysis of factors influencing the avenue of migration to the United States. As the multinationalization of corporations has increased throughout the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, the direction and type of mobility into high managerial ranks have changed.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents information on the various studies conducted by the authors, that focused on intellectual and cognitive functioning where consistency across situations is expected. In the first experiment , school marks were taken from 91 lower middle-class and middle class children, aged 10 to 12 attending a school servicing both urban and rural homes in a community north of Toronto. A correlation matrix was computed for the six school subjects over the three time periods. In an another experiment final year marks were taken from every student enrolled in the Faculty of Science at York University for the year 1974-75. There were a total of 1,012 such students who had marks altogether on several hundred courses. The studies found high consistency in academic achievement across situations. In Experiment 1, a mean correlation of .56 was obtained across six academic disciplines for 91 primary school children. A variance components analysis revealed that the variance due to Persons was 49 percent and to the Person multiplied by Situation interaction, 19 percent. Situations accounted for only 4 percent of the variance. In Experiment 2, a mean correlation of .58 was obtained across four academic disciplines for 150 high school students. Variance components analysis revealed that the variance due to persons was 53 percent and the Person multiplied by Situation interaction, 24 percent. Situations accounted for only 1 percent of the variance.

Focuses on a housing model for lower- and middle-class wage earners in the suburb of Saint-Leonard in Montreal, Quebec from 1955 to 1967. Residential development of Saint-Leonard-de-port-Maurice; Predominance of wage earners; Community based on solidarity; Cooperative apartment buildings as a social innovation; Expansion of scope from the cooperative to the local community.

This article focuses on class base of the Quebec independence movement. The Quebec referendum took place under the aegis of the independentist Parti Québécois (P.Q.) government. Quebec would have become an independent country which would maintain an economic association with the rest of Canada. However, the Quebec electorate defeated the P.Q. proposal. Intellectuals were the social stratum most likely to intend to vote for the proposal. Two-thirds of them supported that option, while only 20 percent intended to vote against the proposal. Intellectuals from lower stratum were more likely to vote for the proposal. Among the intellectuals of the upper middle class, 61 percent intended to vote for the proposal, only 30 percent intended to vote against the proposal. Among liberal professionals of the upper middle class, 56 percent voted for and 22 percent voted against the proposal. The strongest support for the P.Q. proposal was not so much found in the middle class or even in the upper-middle class as a whole, but only in segments of those classes, the intellectual proper first, then in other groups which could be considered as constituting various layers of a larger intelligentsia. Within the latter, professionals, semi-professionals and technicians proved more favorable to the proposal than clerical workers. The strongest support against the proposal was not only located within the less privileged classes, but also within upper middle class managers and businessmen as well as small, lower middle class ones.