Immigrant Women and Community Development in the Canadian Maritimes: Outsiders Within?1

Although immigrant women are often outsiders within Canadian communities and peripheral, at best, in the literature on community development, this paper argues that they make important contributions to community development thereby improving their own individual lives and those of others in Canadian society. Following a qualitative analysis of forty semi-structured interviews conducted in two major Maritime cities, we derive what community means for immigrant women from the organizations in which they participate and the issues that they embrace, as we analyze their contributions to community development in the Maritime region of Canada. Based upon abroad definition of community development to encompass not only community-development motivated actions but also other-motivated, non-paid organizational participation, our findings reveal that even if the immigrant women's motives for organizing may be individualistic, driven by narrow, practical needs, their involvement with others in groups and organizations has broader social consequences. Furthermore, some Maritime immigrant women's narratives indicate that indi-