Immigrant Rites of Passage: Urban Settlement, Physical Environmental Quality and Health in Vancouver

This paper sets out, and provides a preliminary test of, the hypothesis of immigrant rites of passage: that immigrant settlement in Canadian cities is associated with a disproportionate burden of exposure to environmental health hazards. We test this hypothesis with the case of Vancouver, one of Canada’s main immigrant gateways, using neighbourhood socioeconomic and air pollution (total suspended particles) data as well as individual socioeconomic and health data. Spatial interpolations are used to assign air pollution to neighbourhoods and individuals and these exposures are combined with socioeconomic markers for analysis in multivariate models including multi-level logistic regressions. The results reveal that immigrant status is in fact ‘health protective’: that immigrants have lower asthma rates than incumbent Canadians and that air pollution does not exert an effect on either group. The results point to future data needs including analysis stratified by time (for health follow-up) and immigrant group and the need for a wider range of health hazards and health end points.