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Abstract
Two key attributes of contemporary global capitalism are on the one hand, financialization and rising household indebtedness, and on the other, high levels of mobility and migration between nations, particularly into the `global' cities. Studies on household debt as it relates to race and immigrant status are scarce outside of the US. This thesis investigates levels and types of household indebtedness at the neighbourhood scale among immigrant communities and areas containing more racialized people, in the three largest Canadian cities – Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver (TMV). In particular, it seeks to understand whether racialized and immigrant neighbourhoods experience higher and more onerous kinds of debt (such as unsecured forms of consumer debt) than other neighbourhoods, and the contours of any correlations between them. Descriptive statistics and regression models demonstrate that neighbourhoods housing immigrant groups, and certain visible minority groups, relate to higher levels of unsecured consumer debts in TMV.
