Connecting French Canadian Migrants in the US to Their Origins within Quebec

Danielle Gauvreau, Concordia University
Marie-Eve Harton, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Despite a rich and diversified literature, the study of French-Canadian emigration to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries still has several gray areas. One of them, common to many migration studies, concerns the origins and motivations of the migrants who crossed the border to live in the United States, for a while or for good. To connect the migrants in the US to their origins within Quebec, we use two methodological approaches. First, we identify French Canadian migrants in the complete counts of three American censuses (1850, 1880, and 1910) and match this data with marriages within Quebec. The analysis of the paired data unveils the geographic distribution and professional background of the emigrant population compared to those who did not migrate to the US. The second approach aims at addressing complementary questions about the trajectories of migrants originating from one locality for which we have detailed genealogical information over the period 1871 to 1931. Here, we zoom on the village of Saint-Narcisse, located in the Mauricie region on the north shore of the Saint-Lawrence River, to identify individuals and families who migrated to the US. The study of their trajectories allows us to reconstitute migration networks extending from that village to various destinations in the US as well as the dynamics of the phenomenon which often involved return migrations and re-emigrations to the US. Together, the broad view from the US and the extensive study of one locality within Quebec help shed new light on this mass exodus.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 46. Canadian Migration to the US, 1850-1930:New Studies Mixing Scales and Approaches