Limited by cultural and language barriers, many Chinese immigrant women from Hong Kong experience great difficulties in integrating with the Canadian culture. Through the implementation of a pilot project and a qualitative study, the author explored whether volunteer work in Canadian organizations could be a means of fostering positive settlement experience. Analysis with the grounded theory approach showed that participants had new observations of Canadian culture, language, and community resources and they were able to apply these in their daily life. The volunteer experience also helped to generate positive feelings of being recognized which became sources of growing confidence for further interaction with the mainstream society.

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Canada human China female volunteer normal human language adaptation social care Article community adult migration