Title: Does Multiculturalism Work? Language, Friendship Homophily, and Well-being of Immigrants in Canada Speaker: Qiang Li, Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore Host: Wei Xiao, Associate professor, RIEM, SWUFE Time: 14:00-15:30, November 25, Friday Venue: Yide building H503, Liulin Campus Abstract: Multiculturalism is under attack in its birthplace, Canada. I revisit the connection between the two pillars of Canadian multiculturalism, namely acceptance of English and French as the official languages and equal respect of all cultural groups. A unique dataset, the 2002 Canadian Ethnic Diversity Survey, is used to analyze how learning more languages affects ethnic composition of people’s social networks, which I propose as an indicator for social integration of new immigrants. I find that learning the official languages or learning more languages in general increases the ethnic diversity of a person’s network. The wellbeing, attitudes, and social behavior are related to ethnic composition of immigrants’ networks. The findings are generally in favor of advocates for multiculturalism. Keywords: Multiculturalism, Integration of Immigrants, Friendship Homophily, Ethnic Diversity
