Social capital and voting participation of immigrants and minorities in Canada

Abstract

Using the social capital literature as a base, we explore the issue of interaction with others on voter participation with particular emphasis on exploring the differences between Canadian-born majority, and minority residents. We use the 2002 wave of the Equality Security Community Survey to explore the relationship between voting and personal characteristics, work characteristics, social capital attributes and ethnic characteristics. We find that the odds of voting are largely a product of socio-demographic and social capital attributes. The impact of immigration and ethnicity is largely overridden. This suggests that it is not the minority attribute that impacts voting. Rather it is age, level of schooling and level of civic engagement which affects the probability of voting, both federal and provincial.