Acculturation and Immigrant Health in Canada (2001 - 2005)

Astrid Flénon, Université de Montréal
Alain Gagnon, Université de Montréal
Jennifer Sigouin, McGill University
Zoua M. Vang, McGill University

When comparing the health of immigrants to the native-born, studies have found what is called a “healthy migrant effect” where immigrants are likely to have a health advantage. The objective of this paper is to analyze the effects of acculturation on immigrants’ self-perceived general and mental health. The Longitudinal Survey of Immigration to Canada (LSIC) provides an original way to assess acculturation, one of the leading causes of immigrant’s health deterioration. The LSIC contains a cohort of 7716 landed immigrants in Canada between October 2000 and September 2001. The analysis is based on multivariate logistic regressions that control for other migration factors which may potentially confound the relationship between acculturation and health. Our preliminary results show that among the four possible acculturation outcomes proposed by Berry (1997) - integration, assimilation, separation, marginalization-separation significantly increases immigrants’ chances of having mental health problems in the first six months of arrival in Canada.