I am a historical demographer, a migration scholar and a data builder.
My dissertation work takes advantage of two distinct types of linked data to study how family background and local conditions are associated with migration decisions in a data-rich historical context. The study of migration is marred by the difficulty of accessing reliable information on both migrants and nonmigrants from a range of locations and over long periods of time. These data issues can be circumvented by turning away from contemporary contexts and considering historical contexts, where the large-scale digitization of records makes for an opportunity to track individuals and families across data sources.
My research is shaped by my hands-on experience with historical records from Quebec and Canada. Over the past eight years, I have linked, unlinked and corrected countless vital records, and codified thousands of occupational and religious responses in historical censuses. I am currently responsible for the integration of census microdata with the Population Register of Historic Quebec. Large parts of my dissertation projects involve building novel datasets by optimizing and linking existing records, expanding our ability to not only answer questions, but also ask new ones.
Painting of a French-Canadian home scene (Intérieur canadien) by Cornelius Krieghoff (1850). Generations cohabitate in a small, crowded space, especially during the long winter months.
Family history and migration
Migrating is a complex decision, the result of economic considerations, social attitudes, structural pressures and aspirations that transcend the individual. Despite this, data sources often constrain researchers to study migration at the individual scale and in a limited time window. Using the Population Register of Historic Quebec (RPQA), an exceptionally rich vital register that spans the early 17th century to the late 19th century, I investigate the role of family history and migratory behavior over multiple generations in predicting descendants' internal migration decisions in Quebec, Canada.
The RPQA, which targets the European-descended inhabitants of French Canada, follows the entire population since its inception thanks to high-quality church vital registration. A convergence of factors allowed it to be remarkably exhaustive. As part of this project on multigenerational dependencies in internal migration, I extend the RPQA by deriving complete residential histories from point observations. This novel and unique dataset allows for a dual consideration of lifecourse trajectories and kin influences.
I find that the migration histories of parents, grandparents and broader family networks have long-lasting consequences on individuals' propensity to migrate, uncovering a new and important axis of variation underpinning migration decisions.
Temporary railway built on ice between Montreal and the South Shore. This illustration by Joseph Nash was published in The Graphic on March 13th, 1880. Winter imposed an important cost to remoteness, making rivers impassable for up to six months. Railroads fundamentally altered the implications of distance.
Local context and migration
The Industrial Revolution transformed the landscape of opportunities, shaping important internal and international migration flows. Factories across the Western world generated high demand for low-skilled workers, and the expansion of the railroad played a crucial role in advancing the frontier. These shifts inspired the first attempts to formally define migration laws. What pushed millions to leave agrarian areas, either for the rural frontier or cities and urbanizing settlements?
The digitization and codification of census records offer new insights into this old question. In this project, I study the migration decisions of Canadian-born individuals in the context of their origin communities. I link census records from Canada and the United States in the late 19th century, building a large sample of international migrants, internal migrants and nonmigrants. I then consider their choices within their local context, taking advantage of rich agricultural and manufacturing data.
Combining data from different countries, localities and time periods can help us understand how the interplay of individual and local attributes shaped migration flows out of rural communities in the late 19th century.
Methodological considerations of linking census records across countries and languages as well as preliminary results, which show higher migration out of less prosperous agrarian communities, will soon be published (in French) in Recherches sociographiques.
Other research
Along with my colleague Katie Donnelly Moran, I have also published work on racial and geographic disparities in infant mortality in the United States. In this paper, we investigated heterogeneity in maternal educational gradients of infant mortality by geographic residence both within and between races. Although there is a slight but constant metropolitan advantage for white mothers, we observed a flattening of the educational gradient for nonmetropolitan black women such that nonmetropolitan mothers fare better than their metropolitan counterparts at low levels of education but worse at high levels of education.
Black infants benefit less from maternal education than white infants, pointing to difficulties accessing the health benefits of education among some black communities.
Predicted probabilities of infant mortality by maternal education, metropolitan residence and race, 2011–2015.