Gaining through Giving: A National Study of Volunteering and Health Status Among Immigrants in Canada

Background/Purpose: With one fifth of the total population being immigrants, Canada has been one of the most attractive countries as a destination for immigration. Based on a point system, immigrants who have greater human capital and better health are invited to migrate. As a result, most immigrants have better health than their local-born counterparts when they arrive, which is known as the healthy immigrant effect. However, even though immigrants are highly skilled and educated, their advantage in health dissipates gradually due to many reasons including the lack of social capital.

Studies suggest that social capital can be enhanced through civic engagement activity such as volunteering with, by, and for immigrants, thus facilitating immigrants’ integration into the society. It is known that a sense of community belonging also contributes to this integration. Both volunteering and sense of community belonging are important social determinants for one’s health status. Thus, this study aims to examine the relationships between the activity of volunteering, sense of belonging, and health statuses among immigrants. It is hypothesized that volunteering would increase immigrants’ physical and mental health and these associations would be mediated by the sense of belonging.

Methods: Utilizing a population-based data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey, we selected participants who were born outside of Canada and 15 years and older (N = 6802). Variables such as volunteering activity (by asking participants a Yes/No question if they have volunteered in the past 12 months), sense of community belonging (a 5-point scale on their level of belonging to the community), their physical and mental health statuses (10-point scales) as well as other covariates (age, importance of religious faith, years residing in Canada, educational level, visible minority status, and income) were included in the models. Using PROCESS in SPSS, two mediation model analyses with covariates and bootstrapping techniques were conducted.  

Results: The results revealed that not only does immigrants volunteering have a positive impact on their physical (B = .12***) and mental health (B = .06**), it also builds their sense of community belonging (B = .16***). At the same time, immigrants’ sense of community belonging serves as a positive mediator on the pathways between volunteering and health, partially on physical health (B = .15***), and fully on mental health (B = .18***) respectively. Such pathways were found significant after controlling the aforementioned social demographic characteristics.

Conclusions/Implications: From the social capital lens, our findings validate the significance of volunteering as a civic engagement activity in facilitating immigrants’ integration in Canadian society and improving their health. While diversity is believed to be the beauty of Canada, it is pivotal to utilize immigrants’ strengths and empower them to participate socially, culturally, economically, and politically in the society. Volunteering with, by, and for immigrants appears to be a way to achieve that. Findings shed lights on programs like volunteering for social workers and community development practitioners to instill immigrants’ sense of community belonging. Ultimately, it can help build immigrants’ social capital, a sense of identity, and uphold their health statuses.