The Social Class Basis of Ethnic Residential Segregation: The Canadian Case

Census data for Toronto in 1961 are employed to determine the patterns of residential segregation along three separate dimensions of ethnicity-ethnic origin, birthplace, and mother tongue. For each of these ethnic characteristics, published and unpublished data are used to generate the "expected" patterns of segregation based only on the differences in education, occupation, and income composition between various groups. The SES differences by themselves account for only relatively small proportions of the ethnic residential segregation in all cases. Special-run cross tabulations show, further, that mother-tongue and birthplace groups with similar occupation or income statuses are no less segregated than total ethnic populations. In contrast with accounts of racial residential segregation, the prevailing socioeconomic interpretation of the segregation of immigrants and other ethnic groups has been accepted too uncritically.