Resilient teenagers

The fi rst documents the rising educational and occupational aspirations of Canadian youth, the second profi les visible minority and immigrant families in Canada, and the third explores the educational aspirations and experiences of visible minority and immigrant youth. [...] The YITS national survey of 18 to 20 year-old youth (Bowlby & McMullen, 2002)1 found high levels of post-secondary participation in 2000, although not quite as high as 2 PRAIRIE CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR RESEARCH ON IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION 2005 WORKING PAPER SERIES the aspirations of the 12th grade students in the earlier Alberta study. [...] The availability of the YITS database allows us to utilize a large, nationally representative sample to examine in detail the educational aspirations of visible minority immigrant youth and the factors that infl uence these aspirations. [...] Parents of VMI youth had even higher aspirations for their children; 88% hoped their child would acquire a university education, compared to 71% of the parents of the “mixed” group and 59% of the parents of NBNVM teenagers. [...] Figures and Tables.pdf First language and post-secondary aspirations As we would expect, given that most recent immigrants to Canada have come from non-traditional source countries, only 36% of the VMI youth in the YITS sample spoke English or French as their fi rst language (according to their parents), compared to 99% of the teenagers in the NBNVM category and 70% in the “mixed” sub-sample.