Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The longer-established immigrants… have kept a lot of the Korean customs
like respecting the elderly, honouring those who deserve respect in the hierar-
chy system and so on. They desire their children to keep communicating to
them in Korean and not in English. Actually a lot of the children of the
longer-established immigrants have left the church and are now attending a
Canadian church or a church for second generation only.
Adjustments occur: an English-language service is started, with different
music and worship styles, and a Canadian-born leader. 17 The church and
its congregation have begun the journey toward integration. The intense
bonding and social capital accumulation and distribution of the early years
has moved on to a sometimes challenging integration with the society from
which the church was initially a haven, a place of refuge.
Settlement Agencies: Building the Bridges
Canada has not followed the current American and British model of grants
for faith-based organizations so that the public role of religious institutions
is much more detached from the public ledger in the delivery of social serv-
ices. But the state still plays an active role in immigrant settlement
(Bloemraad 2006), largely through delegating funds for service delivery to
non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Such agencies have provided a
significant interface between the new immigrant and the society to which
they may wish to integrate. NGOs represent in some respects the secular
and formal version of the informal service hub of the immigrant church. 18
A major distinction is the role of public funds and the organization's embed-
dedness in the procedural rules of the welfare state.
The clan and hometown based mutual aid associations in Old Chinatown
(Willmott 1970: Wickberg et al. 1982) and umbrella organizations like the
Chinese Benevolent Association have lost some of their earlier lustre with
the immigration of a largely middle-class population schooled in the achieve-
ments of a cosmopolitan Asian modernity. Points of reference tend now to
be more mainstream, including several business organizations like the Hong
Kong-Canada Business Association or lobby groups like the Chinese
Canadian National Council.
With the large ethnic Chinese populations of Toronto and Vancouver,
there are invariably differences in objectives and strategies among organiza-
tions, compounded by competition for government funding (Salaff 2006).
But that is nothing new. Cross-cutting regional, clan and political sympa-
thies in China contributed to traditional Chinatown civil life that was often
marked by 'disunity and factionalism' (Wickberg et al. 1982), and these
divisions have multiplied as older and more parochial organisations are
juxtaposed with newer and more cosmopolitan associations in North
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