Resisting the Melting Pot : The Long Term Impact of Maintaining Identity for Franco-Americans in New England

MacKinnon, Mary;Parent, Daniel

From MacKinnon and Parent - Department of Economics, McGill University: "In this paper, we look at the emigration of approximately 1 million French-Canadians who moved to the United States, with the bulk of the migration occurring between the end of the Civil War and 1930 and with most settling in neighboring New England. What makes this episode particularly interesting is the fact that the French-Canadian immigrants exerted considerable efforts to maintain their language and to replicate their home century institutions, most notably the schooling system, in their new country. This explicit resistance to assimilation generated considerable attention and concern in the U.S. over many years.... We look at the convergence in the educational attainment of French Canadian immigrants across generations relative to native English-speaking New Englanders and to other immigrants....Additionally, we show that military service was a very important factor contributing to the assimilation process through a variety of related channels, namely educational attainment, language assimilation, marrying outside the ethnic group, and moving out of New England. Finally, when we compare Franco-Americans to French-speaking Canadians of the same generations, it is clear that Franco-Americans substantially upgraded their educational attainment relative to what it would have been if they had not emigrated."

2005-06

en

Journal Article

1860-2005; New England