Présentation de la recherche "Migration des groupes linguistiques" et de ses préoccupations actuelles

The first part of the authors' research (undertaken for the Conseil de la langue française) deals with the situation of language groups in Quebec and the mechanisms for their renewal for the period 1966-1976. However, they did the same kind of study, although less elaborate, for the six regions for Quebec (Outaouais/Western Quebec, Montreal north, the Island of Montreal, the Eastern Townships, and the rest of Quebec). They discovered that the results for Quebec as a whole showed that the mechanism of population renewal differed according to mother tongue. For Anglophones and Allophones, the authors point out, interprovincial and international migration components dominated, respectively, while mortality was the main component of the negative increase with Francophones, and for the latter, inter-regional migration was the main component of migration growth. The second part of their research focused on the future evolution of the linguistic composition of the Quebec population. In this context they were asked to evaluate, in the light of the 1976 census data, the prospects compared to data from the 1971 census used by demographers Jacques Henripin and Réjean Lachapelle in their 1977 study. The authors concluded that the Henripin-Lachapelle perspectives neglected language mobility attributes to English to persons who, in 1971, reported having a language of use other than English or French. This led the authors to question the results of Henripin and Lachapelle showing that very favorable assumptions for Anglophones would, at best, maintain their relative importance in the Quebec population. In the authors' opinion, such assumptions would have led to an increase in Quebec's English-speaking population.

Cahiers québécois de démographie

Vol. 9

no. 2

185-209

Août 1980

fr