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- Resource Type:
- Article
- Creator:
- Mendez, Pablo
- Abstract:
- This paper asks whether age at arrival matters when it comes to home-ownership attainment among immigrants, paying particular attention to householders' self-identification as a visible minority. Combining methods that were developed separately in the immigrant housing and the immigrant offspring literatures, this study shows the importance of recognising generational groups based on age at arrival, while also accounting for the interacting effects of current age (or birth cohorts) and arrival cohorts. The paper advocates a (quasi-)longitudinal approach to studying home-ownership attainment among immigrants and their foreign-born offspring. Analysis of data from the Canadian Census reveals that foreign-born householders who immigrated as adults in the 1970s and the 1980s are more likely to be home-owners than their counterparts who immigrated at a younger age when they self-identify as South Asian or White, but not always so when they self-identify as Chinese or as ‘other visible minority’. The same bifurcated pattern recurs between householders who immigrated at secondary-school age and those who were younger upon arrival. Age at arrival therefore emerges as a variable of significance to help explain differences in immigrant housing outcomes, and should be taken into account in future studies of immigrant home-ownership attainment. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
- Date Created:
- 2009-01-01
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- Resource Type:
- Article
- Creator:
- Quastel, Noah and Mendez, Pablo
- Abstract:
- This article draws on Margaret Radin's theorization of 'contested commodities' to explore the process whereby informal housing becomes formalized while also being shaped by legal regulation. In seeking to move once-informal housing into the domain of official legality, cities can seldom rely on a simple legal framework of private-law principles of property and contract. Instead, they face complex trade-offs between providing basic needs and affordability and meeting public-law norms around living standards, traditional neighbourhood feel and the environment. This article highlights these issues through an examination of the uneven process of legal formalization of basement apartments in Vancouver, Canada. We chose a lengthy period-from 1928 to 2009-to explore how basement apartments became a vital source of housing often at odds with city planning that has long favoured a low-density residential built form. We suggest that Radin's theoretical account makes it possible to link legalization and official market construction with two questions: whether to permit commodification and how to permit commodification. Real-world commodification processes-including legal sanction-reflect hybridization, pragmatic decision making and regulatory compromise. The resolution of questions concerning how to legalize commodification are also intertwined with processes of market expansion.
- Date Created:
- 2015-11-01
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- Resource Type:
- Article
- Creator:
- Moos, Markus and Mendez, Pablo
- Abstract:
- Current research depicts suburbs as becoming more heterogeneous in terms of socio-economic status. Providing a novel analysis, this paper engages with that research by operationalising suburban ways of living (homeownership, single-family dwelling occupancy and automobile use) and relating them to the geography of income across 26 Canadian metropolitan areas. We find that suburban ways of living exist in new areas and remain associated with higher incomes even as older suburbs, as places, have become more diverse. In the largest cities the relationship between income and suburban ways of living is weaker due to the growth of condominiums in downtowns that allow higher income earners to live urban lifestyles. Homeownership is overwhelmingly more important than other variables in explaining the geography of income across 26 metropolitan areas.
- Date Created:
- 2015-01-01