Social Determinants of Immigrant Selection: The United States, Canada, And Australia (The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society)

The declining skill and wage-earning power of immigrants has been a controversial topic in immigration research since the 1980s. Kawano's (economics, Daito Bunka U., Tokyo) study examines immigrant skills from quantitative and comparative sociological perspectives to explore why some immigrant groups have better skills than others. Coverage includes an overview of immigrant selection in general, and based on skills; histories of immigration in the U.S., Canada, and Australia highlighting the race-ethnic diversification and nativist responses in each wave; presentation of conceptual and empirical models developed for the study focusing on two dependent variables--the earnings differential and the educational attainment differential--and analyses of these variables in four analytical settings; and implications of the study's findings for immigration policy in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.