Why Atlantic Canadian immigrants fared better than others during the pandemic

The pandemic didn’t take as much of a toll on the mental health of immigrants in Atlantic Canada as it did on other Canadians, according to a Statistics Canada study.

Immigrants in Atlantic Canada previously told researchers that their mental health had gotten better rather than worse since the start of the pandemic. This was not the case for non-immigrant Atlantic Canadians or immigrants in other parts of the country.

The Statistics Canada survey, conducted in 2022 and with results published this spring, found that 30 percent of immigrants in Atlantic Canada reported better mental health compared to pre-pandemic times, with only 22.7 percent reporting to feel worse.

In that same survey, more than 30 percent of other Atlantic Canadians reported their mental health got worse, not better, after that experience, with only a few more than 10 percent saying it had improved. Nationally, immigrants reported better mental health than non-immigrants, but the difference was not as great as in Atlantic Canada.

Raquel Hoersting, a psychology professor at the University of Prince Edward Island with a specialty in mental health and culture, described immigrants as a unique population.

“Here’s someone who has a lot, oftentimes, of perseverance, a lot of strength, a lot of resilience to be able to move, to build a whole new life in a new country,” Hoersting said.

Paul Musa, president of the Nigerian Canadian Association of Prince Edward Island, said anyone who is willing to seek that level of change in their lives is better able to cope with hardship.

“They must have developed themselves mentally and socially to handle any challenge they encounter on their journey to greener pastures,” Musa said.

He described the mindset as follows: “This journey I am ready to take on anything that comes my way, whatever challenge comes my way.”

‘We were on top of it’

Immigrants also have a heightened sense of community, Hoersting said.

It’s a sentiment reinforced by organizations like Musa’s, and in Atlantic Canada, some of those organizations rallied to support their members even before the pandemic was declared in March 2020.

Atousa Costandi, board member and secretary of the Iranian Cultural Association of Nova Scotia, said her group saw how COVID-19 hit their homeland and began preparing before Canada began to really feel the effects.

The association connected with doctors who were immigrants from Iran, who began translating public health information into Farsi. When quarantine requirements were introduced, it found rooms for new arrivals from Iran.

“We were right. We tried to get sanitizers and masks to people, especially people who were new to the city,” Costandi said.

There were vulnerable people or seniors who couldn’t leave the house, so we helped them with groceries… We tried to help, to help our community.— Atousa Costandi

“We were able to get them and we spread it out [those] who needed it. And of course there were vulnerable people or seniors who couldn’t leave the house, so we helped them with groceries with our Helping Hands group. We were trying to help, to help our community.”

The association’s annual cultural celebration in spring 2020 was canceled but hosted online events featuring local artists and performers from Iran. It set up online programs for children to play, read and otherwise interact with each other.

“That kept our community together during the COVID,” Costandi said. “We’re still hearing about that. They’re still talking about, ‘You were great and the programs were great.'”

Call home

While immigrant resilience and strong community ties may explain why immigrants handled the pandemic better than other Canadians, it doesn’t explain why newcomers to the Atlantic had a better experience than immigrants in other parts of Canada — or a better time than not. newcomer Prince Edward Islanders, who also have a strong sense of community.

“A lot of people who live here, and who have lived here for many generations, have very close, intricate connections to each other and social networks,” Hoersting said.

But those close ties are different for islanders born and raised in the province as opposed to those who emigrated, she said. Indigenous islanders are used to having close personal contact with their social groups.

“The pandemic forced you to cut off some of those networks. You couldn’t visit people,” Hoersting said.

“That was a bigger impact for them than for immigrants, who had already built up a much smaller social network by moving here.”

Immigrants, who were in the habit of keeping their contacts strong by calling back to their home country, were also already prepared for the distance communication needed to stay in touch during the height of the pandemic.

Immigrant paradox

As for why immigrants on the East Coast fared better than those in the rest of the country, Hoersting takes credit for what is known as the immigrant paradox.

While you would expect someone who has been completely uprooted and placed in a new environment to struggle, the opposite is true.

“Immigrants who arrived more recently outperform established immigrants or non-immigrants in many different indicators, such as employment or health or crime or mental health,” Hoersting said.

This is probably because most immigrants moved voluntarily. These are not random people uprooted by circumstances. They are people who have uprooted themselves.

“These people come here to PEI to make it work. They come for, hopefully, a better life. They sacrifice a lot. They do it to improve their lives. So when they come here, you can count on them doing their best to make it work,” said Nathaly Munoz, president of the Latinos Association of PEI

“There’s not necessarily a second option, so they have to be optimistic. They’ve given up everything.”

This is important for Atlantic Canada, as the region has a higher rate of recent immigrants than other parts of the country.

According to the 2021 census, Canada is home to more than 8 million immigrants, and 29 percent of them had arrived since 2011. In Atlantic Canada, 44 percent of immigrants had arrived in the decade before the census recorded their presence.

The theory that new immigrants are more resilient than their more established counterparts also seems to hold true in the three Prairie provinces, albeit not to as great an extent as in Atlantic Canada.

On the prairies, 42 percent of census-registered immigrants had landed in Canada between 2011 and 2021. 24 percent of prairies immigrants reported better mental health, and only 25 percent reported it was worse.