Residential Patterns among Religious Groups

Eric Fong, University of Toronto
Elic Chan, University of Toronto

With recent geopolitical developments and the influence of religious groups in the recent political processes, there has been a renewed interest in the sociology of religion. More and more researchers are considering the relevance of religion in relation to politics and group relations. Despite the study of residential patterns among religious groups can provide us a glimpse of their social relations, there has been little focus on residential segregation among various major world religious groups in North America. In this study, we attempt to fill this gap in the research. We explore the segregation patterns of major world religious groups, including Buddhists, Catholics, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, and Sikhs, in Canadian metropolitan areas. Among Protestants, we further differentiated conservative, mainline, and orthodox Christians. We used 2001 Canadian Census. The Canadian census includes a variable for religion that provides a unique opportunity to explore the residential segregation of different religious groups.