La participation sociale des Canadiens : une analyse selon l'approche des parcours de vie

The level of participation of Canadians in civic and public life fell significantly between 1992 and 2005. A better understanding of this change in the life courses of Canadians could allow the development of policies that encourage the engagement of individuals within their communities. Until now, the development of such policies, and the longitudinal analyses done in Canada, have seldom incorporated the collective dimension of communities. In this article, we propose an indicator that makes it possible to include the interaction between individuals and their communities while maintaining an analysis centred on the individual and his or her life course. We propose to use the concept of social participation of an individual, defined as the gift of time to another individual or an organization, to capture formal (volunteering) and informal (mutual aid) contributions to the community. Data from the General Social Survey (GSS) on Time Use for the years 1992, 1998, and 2005 are used to understand changes in the practices of social participation in the lives of Canadians.