Emigration from Canada: Rationale and Implications of Immigrants Leaving
Project Lead: Richa Shivakoti
Co-Applicant: Anna Triandafyllidou
Collaborators: Stein Monteiro and Feng Hou
Research Assistants: Devaanshi Khanzode and Victoria Ogley
Emigration from Canada is an important phenomenon that often gets overshadowed by our academic and policy focus on immigration issues. However, asking and understanding why people leave Canada is equally important for a country that relies so heavily on its immigrant population for various economic, labour market and demographic challenges. It is also important for policymakers to think about immigration policies beyond just attracting immigrants to come to Canada but also to ensure that they feel well integrated in the society to retain them.
Exploring the migration journeys of immigrants to Canada and their decisions to leave Canada involves a deeper examination of the motivations, aspirations, challenges and experiences of this immigrant/emigrant population and their decision-making processes resulting in unique trajectories. This project takes a holistic approach to explore this by using the IMDB database to quantitatively analyze the characteristics of emigrants and the trends in onward migration among Canadian immigrants. We will also collect primary data through interviews of immigrants who have emigrated from Canada to explore their rationale and decision-making processes. We are particularly interested to identify the turning point that led an immigrant to decide to leave.
This project aims to explore the trends and reasons of immigrant onward migration from Canada. The objectives of this study are:
- To provide an up-to-date socioeconomic and demographic profile of people emigrating out of Canada and to explore the long-term trend of onward migration
- To produce new knowledge on the reasons for people leaving and whether these drivers differ across people with varying socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and varied immigration pathways (arriving directly as PRs or arriving initially as temporary migrants)
- To examine the role of Advanced Digital Technologies in shaping decisions for onwards migration.
- To offer new insights on the challenges related to immigrant integration and retention to support policy discussions around these topics
- Why do some immigrants decide to emigrate out of Canada?
- What does the socioeconomic and demographic profile of people emigrating out of Canada look like?
- How do they of digital technologies during their complex migratory decision-making processes?
The phenomenon of immigrants leaving Canada needs to be studied further, as much of the research focus has been on immigration to Canada. Emigration is a relatively difficult process to study as Canada does not record or track when people leave the country or where they go afterwards making it challenging to estimate the magnitude of out-migration. Furthermore, the few studies that have investigated onward emigration often use different data sources and techniques to measure emigration, making them incomparable or inconclusive. The proposed research contributes to filling the gap in emigration research by providing a quantitative and qualitative analysis of emigration from Canada, by examining the characteristics of immigrants choosing to migrate onwards and by exploring their reasons for doing so.
This research uses a mixed-methods approach incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods. We analyze the Longitudinal Immigrant Database (IMDB) to provide an up-to-date estimate on the number of immigrants that have left Canada over the years. Furthermore, we will look at the socio-economic and demographic profile of those leaving to understand implications for Canada’s economic, labour market and demographic challenges. In addition, the qualitative research will focus on conducting 50 semi-structured interviews with Canadian immigrants who have emigrated out of Canada to explore their migration trajectories and understand their rationale and decision-making processes.
2027
This project is in progress, quantitative data collection is currently ongoing.
Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Emigration, Canada, Immigrants, Retention, Decision-making; Migrant agency