By Mark Edward Pfeifer

Assessing the occupational distribution of Vietnamese women enumerated in 1991, a similar overrepresentation in manufacturing positions is evident (Table 9.1). Almost 30% of Vietnamese women worked in machining, product fabricating, assembly and repair jobs while less then 5% of the total female labour force held positions in this category. Within this larger classification of jobs, most Vietnamese worked in product fabricating, assembly and repair as opposed to machining. Also like their male counterparts, Vietnamese women displayed greater proportions in "Other" jobs not classified on the census form as well as processing positions. Over 20% of Vietnamese women worked in clerical jobs, but this figure was more than 10 percentage points lower than that associated with the total female labour force. Vietnamese women were notably underrepresented in managerial, administrative and related occupations, teaching and related occupations, sales, and to a lesser extent health and medicine and services.

In terms of industry distribution, the Vietnamese in the Toronto CMA displayed a remarkable concentration within manufacturing compared to all other groups in 1991. About 44% of the total enumerated Vietnamese labour force were employed in manufacturing (Tables 9.2 and 9.3).With the exception of Southeast Asians as a whole, no other group was nearly so concentrated in this particular industrial category.

As for jobs in the broad categories of construction, transportation, communications and other utilities, the Vietnamese proportion was a bit lower than the average for the total CMA labour force but did not differ substantially from most of the other visible minority groups. About 16% of the Vietnamese were employed in the industrial classification of trade, which was very close to the 18% average for the entire labour force. Among the other minority groups, the Koreans were by far the most heavily concentrated in trade. The Vietnamese were notably underrepresented compared to the total Toronto CMA labour force and other minority groups in several industrial categories. Occupations in which Vietnamese were not well represented included positions in several professional sectors, among these were Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, Business Services, Government Services, Education Services, and Health and Social Services. The enumerated Vietnamese labour force showed a slightly higher proportion than the entire Toronto labour force in the category of accommodation, food, and beverage services. However, the Chinese and Korean shares in this industrial classification were nearly double the Vietnamese figure. In terms of employment in the broad category of other service industries, the Vietnamese percentage was marginally lower than the figure for the total Toronto labour force. Koreans, Latin Americans, and especially Filipinos were overrepresented in the service occupations.

Unfortunately, directly comparable industry distribution data organized by gender was not available for both the Vietnamese ethnic origin population and the other visible minority groups. In this section, the distributions of males and females are analyzed by using Southeast Asians as a surrogate variable. As noted in an earlier chapter, about 70% of the Southeast Asians enumerated in the census in 1991 were of Vietnamese ethnic origin. On almost every variable in the census, the Southeast Asian figure was very close to that of the Vietnamese.

Among the male labour force in the Toronto CMA, Southeast Asians were overwhelmingly concentrated in manufacturing industries in 1991 (Table 9.4). The Southeast Asian figure of nearly 50% was more than double that observed among the total male work force of the metropolitan area. No other minority group showed more than 30% of its male labour force in manufacturing. Southeast Asians in the Toronto CMA were underrepresented in construction, transportation, communication, and other utilities. Southeast Asian males were slightly underrepresented in trade in comparison to the total male population. By comparison, Korean men were very much overrepresented in this category. Highly notable were the miniscule proportions of the Southeast Asian male labour force found in the occupations of finance, insurance, and real estate, business services, government services, education services, and health and social services. Within these economic sectors, Southeast Asian men exhibited proportions below most of the other minority groups. In accommodation, food, and beverage services, the Southeast Asian male percentage was parallel to that of the total male labour force of the CMA. All of the other minority groups with the exception of the Japanese exhibited larger proportions within this category. In the other services classification, Southeast Asian males displayed a slightly lower proportion than the male labour force as a whole. A few groups, notably Japanese, Latin Americans, and especially Koreans, possessed greater proportions in these occupations compared to the overall CMA average for men.

The census data paint a very distressing picture. Compared to the total population and other minority groups, Vietnamese men and women were very much overrepresented in the so-called secondary sector jobs, particularly in certain manufacturing positions within the broad category of product fabricating, assembly, and repair and to a lesser extent service-related jobs in accommodations, food, and beverages. At the same time, Vietnamese were underrepresented in primary sector jobs in managerial, administrative, and related occupations and the professions including finance, insurance, and real estate, business services, education services, government services, and health and social services. It is of course these latter positions that often tend to be of more stable duration and are better compensated in terms of salary and benefits. The income status of Vietnamese in Toronto was also one of extreme marginality. The average income of Vietnamese men and women who worked full-time was about 60-70% that of the average for the total population in Toronto. In several income categories, Vietnamese were at or near the bottom compared to other visible minority groups. Equally sobering were the unemployment rates enumerated among persons of Vietnamese ethnic origin. Unemployment rates exhibited by Vietnamese men and women were more than double the average for the entire population of both genders in the Toronto metropolitan area. The Vietnamese unemployment rate was also higher than that found among any of the other visible minority groups – it approached 20% among men and among women exceeded this figure. It is possible that the very high unemployment rate exhibited by Vietnamese men and women may in fact be related to their concentration in manufacturing jobs, especially positions in product fabricating, assembly, and repair. Restructuring and the resulting deindustrialization of the Toronto economy over the 1980s and early 1990s resulted in the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs, particularly, in the low-value added industrial sectors where immigrants in the city have traditionally found employment (Preston and Giles, 1997). Furthermore, the 1991 census enumeration was conducted at the time of a recession. An estimated 60,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the Toronto region between 1990 and 1992 alone (Murdie, 1995). It is likely that the recession took a particularly severe toll on the Vietnamese labour force, given the occupational distribution of the population.

Social scientists in the U.S. and Canada have identified a number of circumstances which seem to be related to the socioeconomic adjustment of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants. Scholars have noted a positive correlation between length of residence and the occupational adaptation of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian refugees as a whole (Rumbaut, 1989a; Beiser and Johnson, 1994; Rumbaut, 1995; Montgomery, 1996). There is agreement among most scholars that fluency in English is a key intervening variable influencing socioeconomic trajectories of Vietnamese in the context of North America (Neuwirth, 1987; Samuel, 1987; Rumbaut, 1989a; Rutledge, 1992; Neuwirth, 1993: Hung and Haines, 1996; Lam, 1996). As observed in an earlier chapter, compared to most of the other major visible minority groups residing in Toronto, the Vietnamese have arrived relatively recently. The 1991 census figures also showed that the Vietnamese population in Toronto possessed less facility in English or French, as well as more limited backgrounds in formal education when compared to other predominantly visible minority groups. The Vietnamese distribution on these latter variables may be attributed to the fact that many Vietnamese came to Canada as refugees or family-sponsored as opposed to independent immigrants. The socioeconomic profile of the Vietnamese relative to other groups may be partially accounted for by the differential context of their arrival.

Age and health have also been found to be correlated to economic adjustment among Vietnamese refugees (Chan, 1983; Chan, 1987; Chan and Lam, 1987; Rumbaut, 1989a; Rumbaut, 1991; Beiser and Johnson, 1994; Hung and Haines, 1996, Lam, 1996). Older Vietnamese, especially those who migrated when they were older than 40 years of age, often experience a very difficult time finding meaningful employment. The poor socioeconomic adaptation of older Vietnamese is in part related to the extreme hardship older refugees and immigrants confront in attempting to learn and use English. Physical and mental health problems are also not uncommon among many Vietnamese who came to Canada or the U.S. as refugees. These difficulties pose obvious barriers to obtaining and holding onto well-compensated, long-term employment.

Gold and Kibria (1993) argue that a "blocked mobility thesis" of ethnic and racial labour market segmentation is applicable to the experiences of many Vietnamese-Americans. Lam (1996) makes similar claims in his longitudinal study of Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese residing in Montreal. The "blocked mobility thesis" posits that ethnic immigrant groups face structural and cultural barriers as well as discrimination in the host society, all of which serve to restrict their entry into mainstream socioeconomic activities. Lam (1996) conducted ethnographic interviews with about 50 Chinese-Vietnamese individuals at three intervals – 1981, 1986, and 1991. He notes that the economic incorporation of his research population reflected the consequences of being effectively blocked by institutional barriers encountered in the mainstream Canadian economy.

Lam writes of his informants: "A smooth and rapid entry into the Canadian mainstream economy was hindered by factors such as non-recognition of their professional qualifications by potential employers, effective controls by professional associations or licensing bodies in making decisions regarding entry into the professions and licensed occupations and discriminatory practices used against these Vietnamese-Chinese refugees by some employers." (Lam, p. 163)

Lam emphasized that underemployment as opposed to unemployment was the predominant long-term labour market experience of his research subjects. Many of his respondents, a decade after coming to Canada, were still trapped in a cycle of dead-end jobs working in low-skilled secondary and informal sector positions such as janitorial work, cooking and dishwashing in restaurants, factory employment and general labourer jobs. These positions of course tend to be of short-term duration, lack security and benefits, and are usually associated with small non-unionized employers who pay close to the minimum wage.

According to several American scholars, long term underemployment and downward occupational mobility in low-paying jobs have also been a common experience among Vietnamese in the United States (Bach and Carroll Seguin, 1986; Haines, 1987; Caplan, Whitmore, and Choy, 1989; Bach and Agiros, 1991; Hein, 1993; Rumbaut, 1995). In an overview of the adaptation of Indochinese refugees, Haines (1996) cites a 1992 national survey conducted by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. In this particular study, 11.2% of the Southeast Asian refugees interviewed had possessed professional or managerial backgrounds in their home countries but only 0.9% of these same persons had achieved similar types of work in the United States. Haines also notes that in the 1990 U.S. census, Vietnamese participated in the labour force at about the same rate as the general U.S. population (64.5% for the Vietnamese as opposed to 65.3% for all Americans). However, at the same time, Vietnamese across the United States earned a much lower per capita individual income ($9,033 as opposed to $14,420 for all Americans).

Several of my own informants, including a number of Vietnamese employment counselors, noted that a similar pattern of underemployment in low-paying jobs primarily in the secondary sector of the economy mixed with occasional bouts of unemployment is a common labour market trajectory of Vietnamese in the Toronto area. This situation does not necessarily improve with time spent in Canada. Many Vietnamese who came to Canada in their late teens or in early adulthood in the early to mid-1980s continue to experience only a marginal relationship to the mainstream labour market.

Confronting restricted access to attractive, well-paid employment in the mainstream labour market, Vietnamese refugees and immigrants use a variety of means to support themselves. Many Vietnamese find work within the so-called informal sector of the economy. Lam (1996) observed babysitting, electronics repair, hairdressing, and cooking food at home for sale at restaurants and groceries were common income-earning activities of his Chinese-Vietnamese informants in Montreal. In Toronto, I have interacted informally with many Vietnamese who engage in these and other informal income-producing activities including wormpicking, yard care, home renovation, cooking food for sale to supermarkets, and door-to-door sales of chimney caps. In addition I have met many Vietnamese who own industrial strength sewing machines which they use to sew garments at a piece rate for garment manufacturers in Toronto. The classifieds in any given issue of Thoi Bao, the highest circulated Vietnamese language newspaper in Toronto, usually contain many advertisements placed by garment manufacturers seeking Vietnamese labour. An example of such an advertisement appeared in both English and Vietnamese in the October 8, 1998 edition: "Wanted!! Experienced Sewing Machine Operator With Own Single and Serger Machine".

Lam (1996) found that a number of his Chinese-Vietnamese informants had given up hope of achieving worthwhile employment in the mainstream economy and had opened up small businesses, particularly restaurants and groceries. Gold (1992, 1993) writes of a similar response among Chinese-Vietnamese in Southern California to institutional barriers and blocked socioeconomic mobility. In Orange County, California "Little Saigon", a large enclave of co-ethnic commercial and service establishments for mostly owned by Chinese-Vietnamese, has arisen. In contrast to the apparent Chinese-Vietnamese proclivity towards employment in self-owned businesses, the census data make it clear that a turn to self-employment is not common among ethnic Vietnamese in Toronto. In fact, the enumerated population of Vietnamese ethnic origin exhibited lower levels of self-employment compared to the total population of the CMA as a whole as well as most of the other minority groups.

Many Vietnamese have utilized friendship and kinship networks to pool socioeconomic resources and achieve economic self-sufficiency in spite of their marginalized position within the mainstream economy. This phenomenon of resource pooling has been well-documented in the literature on Vietnamese socioeconomic adaptation in the U.S. (Haines, Rutherford, and Thomas, 1981; Haines, 1988; Caplan, Whitmore, and Choy, 1989; Kibria, 1989; Kibria, 1993; Kibria, 1994; Zhou and Bankston, 1994; Hung and Haines, 1996; Zhou and Bankston, 1998). I have observed a similar economic survival strategy practiced among many Vietnamese families in the Toronto area. Vietnamese households are often large, consisting of older parents and numerous grown children as well as young people. The members of the household typically contribute their various sources of income (paycheck, cash earned from "informal sources", and government social assistance checks) to the female parent. This older woman, in turn, decides how the total sum should best be used to meet the needs of the individual members and the family as a whole.

In my extensive interactions with Vietnamese individuals in Toronto I have observed a number of extended families who have utilized just such a strategy to achieve a variety of goals intended to improve the long-term socioeconomic trajectory of the household. These families usually consist of several adult members who have pooled their resources to help pay for the university schooling of young family members as well as to purchase single-family homes in outlying areas of the metropolitan area. In sum, the family functions together as a cohesive economic unit combining enough resources for subsistence despite the often meager financial contributions of individual members.

To Chapter 10

Abstract/Acknowledgements/Table of Contents - [ Chapters - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 ] -  Appendices - References Cited