First Nations Mobility on the Prairies: Understanding Migration Decisions

Martin J. Cooke, University of Western Ontario
Danièle Bélanger, University of Western Ontario

First Nations Mobility on the Prairies: Understanding Migration Decisions Martin Cooke and Danièle Bélanger Abstract: The urbanization of the Canadian Aboriginal population has received a great deal of attention in recent decades. The increase in the urban Aboriginal population in Canada has been assumed to be due to migration from Aboriginal communities into urban areas, generally in search of employment or education. However, analyses of census data have found that in fact there has been positive net migration from cities to reserve communities at least since the 1980s, and that strong flows to reserves have existed since the 1960s. Return migration between reserves and urban centres is important to understand because of its implications for both urban and reserve communities. This paper attempts to shed light on the phenomenon of return and circular migration between reserves and urban centres through quantitative analysis of 1991 Aboriginal Peoples Survey Data, and the analysis of qualitative structured interviews with Registered Indian migrants. In models of migration, return migration is generally understood as a response to a failure to adequately achieve the goals of the initial migration, a reassessment of options in light of new information gained as a result of having moved, or the replacement of original goals with new ones, such as a desire to return to friends and kin. These characterizations of return migration correspond closely to the literature that does exist on migration from cities to reserves. While migration into the city is understood to be largely due to economic considerations, migration to reserves is thought to result from failure to achieve employment or education goals in the city, or a failure to integrate socially into the urban setting. Gender differences in migration have also been observed, with Aboriginal women more likely to move to the city and men more likely to move to reserves. However, the motivations for return migration have largely been assumed rather than explicitly studied. A lack of understanding of return migration is evidenced by the failure of individual-level human capital variables such as employment and education to predict migration to reserves. Ultimately, migration must be understood in terms of the intentions of the individuals involved. While quantitative models of the individual determinants of migration or of community-level migration rates are important to the description of the dynamics of migration, they can be seriously misspecified if they begin with incorrect assumptions about the goals, costs, and benefits that figure into people’s migration decisions. In the first part of the paper, we review the existing evidence of migration flows from reserves to urban areas, and present an analysis of the 1991 Aboriginal Peoples Survey data describing the demographic and human characteristics of migrants from reserves to urban areas, return migrants, and circular migrants. Logistic regression models provide little evidence that either the education or labour force attachment of those who move to reserves are different than those who do not. However, they do find that migration to reserves is more likely among people who are married, and that the likelihood of migration back to a reserve appears to increase with age, particularly among Aboriginal women. An analysis of the categorized reasons provided for the moves reported in the 1991 APS indicates that family and community reasons, as well as employment, figure prominently in decisions to move or to return to reserve communities. In the second part of the paper, we analyse qualitative interview data with migrants in order to gain a richer understanding of the reasons people may choose to mover from the city to a reserve and to place the quantitative results in context. Seventeen structured interviews were conducted in 1998 with Registered Indians who had moved to the city of Winnipeg from reserve communities, including several who had returned to a reserve community. The participants were treated as knowledgeable informants who, while they may not have made a return move themselves, could provide information as to the types of motives and patterns of mobility that they have seen in their own communities. The qualitative data indicate that concerns for the well being of children, housing conditions, and access to health care may figure prominently with employment and education in migrants’ decisions to move in either direction. Gender differences in migration may partly reflect the types of employment opportunities available in reserve communities, as well as social problems in some reserve communities. While some mobility to reserves appears to be due to difficulties encountered in the city, much also may be due to the conscious pursuit of other goals, including safety and education of children, access to traditional activities, and retirement to a rural setting. Respondents also indicated that in some cases, political allocation of housing and employment in some communities can lead to migration. We conclude that return migration to reserve communities results from a variety of motivations, besides failure to find employment or adjust to urban living. Models of migration as the result of rational choice must accurately identify the goals which migration is intended to fulfil, as well as the various costs and benefits of migration from the perspectives of the individuals involved. These findings indicate that future research into the migration between Aboriginal communities and urban areas should consider migrants’ motivations from a perspective that is wider than purely economic considerations, and return migration should be understood as undertaken in pursuit of particular goals rather than resulting only from failure.