This study examines immigrant integration in the low socioeconomic stratum in Trinidad. Integration is operationalized as participation in overlapping societal spheres. The study also focuses on corollary aspects of access and goals. While several factors facilitated participation in the social sphere, labor market participation was inhibited by conditions of open unemployment and underemployment. These exigencies had elicited strategies of subsistence from first generation immigrants whose work-related attitudes, ethics, and wage expectation levels functioned to their advantage and led to their competitiveness in a difficult labor market. Some of the second generation were disengaging themselves from their parents' level of labor market activity but relocating farther from the mainstream labor market into a marginalized peer stratum.

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information processing Studies Research Methodology unemployment Americas economics population Migrants demography methodology developing country poverty Surveys Population Dynamics Sampling Studies Research Report Developing Countries epidemiology socioeconomic status Central America North America social status health care manpower Health Manpower Socioeconomic Factors social integration low-income sector Behavior socioeconomics Caribbean immigrants Western Hemisphere intra-regional migration Caribbean Region Caribbean Article social adaptation Trinidad and Tobago migrant integration migration Demographic Factors research Emigration and Immigration low income population Economic Factors Transients and Migrants social class Human Resources Macroeconomic Factors employment Labor Force Social Adjustment Data Collection social behavior immigrants