Southern European Canadians


Southern European Canadians are Canadians of Southern European ancestry. Southern European Canadian people can usually trace back full or partial heritage to Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and other nations in, or ethnoculturally connected with, Mediterranean Europe.

Background

Southern European Canadians have been studied and reported on by a wide range of publications and journalistic works, describing them as a distinct ethnic group or pan-ethnic grouping. This includes research into the behaviour and health of South Europeans living in Canada. The group can be subdivided into national subgroups, including Albanian Canadians, Greek Canadians, Italian Canadians, Maltese Canadians, Portuguese Canadians, Spanish Canadians, Cypriot Canadians, and Yugoslav Canadians.

History

In the early 1920s, the arrivals of Southern Europeans had been impeded by national policy changes to immigration, which discounted the group's ability for agricultural work based on various ethnic prejudices from the native-born population. From 1896 to 1905, Clifford Sifton served as Minister of the Interior, under the premiership of Wilfrid Laurier. Sifton was tasked with finding European labor for the Canadian Prairies, and enacted discriminatory policies against the group, preferring immigration from Britain, and northern Europe in general. Despite this, large numbers of Southern Europeans arrived from Mediterranean Europe between 1903 and 1914, with many of the male arrivals working in Canada's industrial sectors, such as mining, lumbering, manufacturing and on the railways. Hundreds of thousands of Southern European immigrants came through Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the 1900s.
The 1986 Canadian census, according to political philosopher William Kymlicka, revealed how the group, alongside French Canadians, were had one of the lowest average incomes in Canada. A 1994 study showed that Southern Europeans, living in Toronto and Montreal, had the least social mobility of all ethnic groups in Canada, and that "immigrants from Southeast and East Asia behave in a somewhat similar fashion, particularly in Vancouver, where their relative concentration is the largest." In 2011, political commentator Darrell Bricker noted that Southern European Canadians, who had historically tended to vote for the Liberal Party, had significantly switched to voting for the Conservative Party since the 2011 Canadian federal election.

Demography

Province / territoryPopulation PercentagePopulation Percentage
Ontario1,671,7051,772,160
Quebec515,745549,750
British Columbia303,170334,740
Alberta182,525215,725
Manitoba55,80059,915
Nova Scotia26,44028,680
Saskatchewan21,51027,415
New Brunswick12,24513,450
Newfoundland and Labrador3,9854,765
Prince Edward Island2,3702,650
Yukon1,3801,490
Northwest Territories1,1351,215
Nunavut390420
Canada2,798,395'3,012,375'

CountryPopulation PercentagePopulation PercentagePopulation PercentagePopulation Percentage
Italian1,270,3701,445,3351,488,4251,587,970
Portuguese357,690410,850429,850482,605
Spanish213,105325,730368,305396,460
Greek215,105242,685252,960271,410
Croatian97,050110,880114,880133,970
Yugoslav 65,50565,30548,32038,480
Serbian55,54072,69080,32096,530
Maltese33,00037,12038,78041,920
Macedonian31,26537,05536,98543,110
Slovenian28,91035,93537,17040,470
Bosnian15,72021,04522,92026,740
Albanian14,93522,39528,27036,185
Cypriot2,0603,3954,8155,650
Montenegrin1,0552,3702,9704,160
Kosovar1,2001,5302,7602,865

Culture

Research has suggested that, with the progression of globalization, Southern European Canadians may become more, not less, involved with their ancestral country of origin, despite sometimes being from families which are multi-generation Canadian-born. Published in 2003 in Canadian Studies in Population, a study revealed that Southern European young adults, living in the Vancouver area, left home at one of the latest stages of life, or remained home-stayers more often, compared with British, Chinese and Indian Canadians. Related research published in the Journal of Comparative Family Studies in 2004, had similar findings for South Europeans in Canada. Data from a 2004 Housing Studies journal article showed that, in statistics relating to housing, Portuguese Canadians are typical, or most representative, of Southern European Canadians in residential behavioural patterns.

Academic research

In 2003, University of Alberta professor Frank Trovato's study, with Dr George K. Jarvis, found that Southern European people in Canada, particularly from Catholic backgrounds such as Italian Canadians and Portuguese Canadians, tended to have lower risk of suicide when compared with citizens from Northwestern Europe, such as German Canadians or Scottish Canadians. The grouping has been used, from in-depth interviewing of around 500 parents in 2014, to compare intergenerational conflict with British Canadians, Chinese Canadians and South Asian Canadians.
A 2017 Journal of the Canadian Historical Association study analyzed mid-20th-century representations of Southern Europeans; how a 1969 Scouts Canada handbook emphasized the British and French origins of the country, while regionally referring to South European people as a less significant and later progression in the history of the nation.