foundation of canada asia pacific - Content Tagged with

cautioned that “not every Asian Canadian has the necessary business skills, knowledge
and contacts to expand a company’s trade with the Asia-Pacific region.” The recent focus
groups organized by the Foundation suggest that businesses are becoming interested in
using Asian Canadians to develop Asian market contacts. However, some younger Asian
Canadians, who generally have no more business connections than their non-Asian peers,
worry that this quest for “Asian experts” may now be sidetracking their careers. The “hidden
advantage” image is rebounding as a disadvantage for at least some Asian Canadians under
the age of 40. At the same time, it is creating an unexpected career hurdle for non-Asian
Canadian management graduates.
Many Asians who emigrated to Canada after 1986, especially business visa holders from
Hong Kong and Taiwan, brought with them skills from which they — and established
Canadian businesses — have profited. Some of these immigrants had business and social
connections which they maintained after emigrating by travelling frequently between
Canada and Asia. However, as time has passed, sources of immigration have changed and
the proportion of business visa immigrants in the total has declined sharply. 5 Most
importantly, a generation of Asian Canadians has grown up with little or no first-hand
experience of Asia. These are the tens of thousands of high school, college and university
graduates who may speak (but frequently not read) the Asian language of their parents,
but otherwise have had the same experiences as their non-Asian classmates. Canadian
society generally has not yet differentiated its second-generation Asian Canadians from
their parents. One result is that mainstream Canadian business often assumes these young
people have the same “hidden advantage” — the connections — as first-generation
business immigrants.
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Young Asian Canadians have had different experiences and hold a different outlook from
first-generation immigrants. Most young Asian Canadians were either born or grew up in
Canada. By birth or ethnicity they may be Asian, but by citizenship and social connections
they are Canadian. They see themselves as embodying two cultures without conflict though,
depending on the context, they will sometimes identify with one more than the other.
They can communicate with both mainstream and Asian cultures and see themselves as
a bridge between the two — but a cultural, rather than a business, bridge. In contrast,
first-generation Asian Canadians tend to cling to their Asian heritage and the way of life
of their country of birth, even though it may have changed considerably since they left.
They preserve their Asian heritage much more than the second generation because often
they do not see themselves as bicultural. They do not feel fully integrated, nor see the
need to be. Like many of the recent business migrants, they separate their ethnic from
their civic identity. Most of them have grown up in an Asian business environment.
Locally educated Asian Canadians appear to choose professions outside the areas
traditionally favoured in Asia — arts, literature, political science and law rather than
science, medicine or accounting. In contrast to the generations before them or to recent
business migrants, second-generation immigrants tend to have technical or professional
skills rather than the talents of the entrepreneur (perhaps a reflection of Canadian society
generally). Many totally lack the “hidden advantage” of business connections. Their
social connections may be largely within the Asian-Canadian community, but these friends