Canada likes to describe itself as a multicultural success story — a place where people from radically different backgrounds live side by side without much of the social turmoil seen elsewhere.

The usual explanation credits Canada’s points-based immigration system, its official multiculturalism policy or some deeper national tolerance for people’s differences.

To test this multicultural narrative, we conducted a study with two very different groups of recent arrivals in Canada — Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion and Afghan women who fled Taliban rule. We found something less flattering to that official story.

What seems to smooth the path to multicultural belonging isn’t a celebration of cultural difference. It’s the fact that many newcomers already share a middle-class identity, or the aspiration to reclaim one, regardless of where they came from.

We interviewed 80 people who arrived in Canada in 2023: 45 Ukrainians who came through the federal emergency travel program set up after the invasion, and 35 Afghan women who arrived through Canada’s Afghan resettlement stream.

On paper, these two groups of people have little in common: different regions, religions, migration pathways and reasons for leaving. What united them,........

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