Half of the Greater Toronto Area’s population was born outside of Canada — a situation that sociologist Leafia Ye characterizes as “unparalleled in the world.” With the highest number of newcomers of any city in the country, the immigrant experience has become central to Toronto’s identity.
In North America immigration is a hot topic: the federal government recently slashed the number of new immigrants it is willing to accommodate, while arguments over immigration have taken centre stage in the American election.
As a long-time scholar of immigration — and someone who’s lived in multiple countries herself — Ye is particularly well-placed to discuss both the advantages and challenges faced by those who have relocated to Canada.
An assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, and a faculty affiliate at the Global Migration Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, Ye’s work focuses on the difficulties immigrants often face with integration: difficulties that can be especially intense for older immigrants.
Recently, she was awarded a major grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to better understand the role of immigration on life course health and aging: hers was the only award granted to an institution outside of the United States in response to a special funding opportunity on the topic.
A&S spoke with Ye about her research on immigrants in Toronto and elsewhere.
This year, you’re teaching an undergraduate New Topics in Sociology course called Immigrants in Toronto. Since many students at U of T are recent immigrants, I can imagine the class is quite personal to many of them.
I ask my students at the beginning of the semester why they are interested in the topic. I would say almost 100 per cent are either immigrants themselves or are second or third generation immigrants to the city.
Almost everyone is eager to share, and to engage with others about their family’s history as part of the city’s history. What I love is that sometimes I’ll get emails from students telling me they’re thinking about the class while they’re on the TTC, and they’ll say, “I just saw a sign that talks about gentrification, and it made me think about the impact it has on immigrant communities.” Or: “This class made me think about my grandma, and then I visited her over the weekend, and we talked about her immigration journey, and I took so many notes — can I come and share them with you?” So the learning doesn’t stop when the class ends.
What are some of the main challenges for immigrants in Toronto?
It really depends on which immigrant group we are thinking of. The majority of new permanent residents are economic immigrants, and the requirements for them to enter under our points-based system are extremely high. They typically already have really high levels of education, strong skills, often a master’s education or above, and are also quite fluent in English and sometimes French. For this group, the number one challenge is finding a job that truly matches their skills and interests. In addition to that, asylum seekers and older immigrants often need services that are more immigrant-specific, such as language support. International students and other temporary residents have to navigate applying for permanent residency in a country that keeps raising the bar for admission, which can be extremely confusing and stressful. Finally, just like everyone else, all immigrants are faced with general cost-of-living challenges especially in terms of housing.
The government says that in order to stabilize population growth and relieve pressure on the housing market, it now wants to welcome far fewer than the 500,000 immigrants it initially planned to admit in 2025 and 2026. Is there a sense of “immigration fatigue” in Canada right now?
There definitely is a sense of fatigue right now. According to a September poll this year, 58 per cent of Canadians agreed that there is too much immigration to Canada — compared with 44 per cent in 2023, and just 27 percent in 2022. A lot of students also wonder whether we might be taking in too many immigrants. Can the city really handle that many, when things are already so unaffordable? I find that a lot of students coming from an immigrant background feel this conflict inside of themselves: wanting to be welcoming, but also having a lot of doubts about recent policies. I think it is important to keep in mind that this fatigue is a product of both immigration and other social policies, such as in housing and healthcare.
The recent increase in immigration resulted from fears that our population is both shrinking and aging; simply put, we need more people. And yet immigrants age too. Right now, you have just begun a two-year international research project that looks at why some immigrants experience accelerated health declines as they age.
This project seeks to understand the link between immigrants’ integration into the host society and their health in later life. I am interested in many different dimensions of integration — traditionally, sociologists have often focused on socioeconomic outcomes, but I would also like to examine their linguistic outcomes, housing patterns, and social well-being. Previous research has revealed that older immigrants sometimes have health disadvantages relative to the native-born, which is puzzling given that most new immigrants are quite healthy upon arrival. My project will investigate whether difficulties in integration provides an explanation to this phenomenon. One of its highlights is that we will be comparing results from Canada and the U.S. — two countries that share many similar immigrant groups but have contrasting approaches to immigrant integration and have different healthcare systems.
You were born and raised in Shanghai, went to university in Hong Kong, spent a long time studying in the United States, and came to Canada over a year ago. How does your personal experience inform your work?
I initially got interested in this topic because I was moving to a lot of places and noticing that my experience in each one was not just due to my own efforts, or my language skills, or who I was around. Rather, it had a lot to do with the policies of that country and the general climate of that society. This inspires my work as a sociologist of migration, where I often think about what structural factors are shaping people’s well-being.
Over the years, I have also discovered that teaching sociology often helps people develop more empathy for people that they might not have direct access to. Learning about immigration and asylum seeking, for example, helps students understand where immigrants and refugees are coming from — and not just the literal country that they’re coming from. Why did they move? Why is it so important to go through all the trouble and challenges of moving to a new country? Once students understand these questions, they often see immigration in a different light and become more interested in the questions of how we can build a society that sets immigrant up for success.