Migration, Family, and Gender : A Longitudinal Analysis of French-Canadian Immigrants in Lowell, Massachussetts, 1900-1920

Takai, Yukari

From Takai: "'Migration, Family, and Gender: A Longitudinal Study of French-Canadian Immigrants in Lowell , Massachusetts , 1900-1920,' explores migration from French Canada to a New England urban centre of the textile industry, Lowell, Massachusetts. During the period under study, both Québec and New England underwent significant socioeconomic transformation. This work analyses the impact of these changes on the process of migration and settlement. It also sheds light on the diverse ways in which French-Canadian men, women, and children responded to new realities in an urban industrial society. In order to investigate these issues, it is necessary to consider this migration as a phenomenon which consisted of a series of processes and not as a linear progression towards inevitable assimilation or Americanization. It is also crucial to emphasize the importance of introducing a gendered perspective in order to recognize the diversity of strategies devised by immigrant men and women as well as the cooperation and tensions they experienced in the process of migration and settlement....This thesis joins recent scholarship in criticizing a perspective that has described all immigrant behaviour as necessarily reflecting one set of culturally predetermined norms and customs. Contrary to the stereotyped image of French Canadians as immobile and fatalistic habitants, evidence from this study shows that they were a highly mobile people for whom migration was a pondered response to the structural changes that were radically reshaping Québec and New England societies. It is argued that the behaviour of Lowell's French-Canadian immigrants in the early twentieth century did not merely reflect the cultural transplantation of habitant values, but also the attempts of working-class immigrant families to survive and cope with significant socioeconomic transformation occurring to both Québec and New England. The diversity in the recorded patterns of movements on the part of French Canadians is indicative of their strategic autonomy and flexibility in adjusting to new socioeconomic realities....This study also seeks to redress a major gender imbalance in the historical studies of immigrants by devoting considerable attention to women. Not only did women's lives differ from those of their male counterparts; there was also great variation in the extent to which women assumed financial and domestic tasks. Such diversity, I assert, in the patterns of women's paid work was defined not only by age or marital status, but also by a combination of factors such as household organization, living arrangements, and the availability of child care. Immigrant families harboured complex interpersonal dynamics where different and, at times, conflicting interests had to be negotiated in not necessarily equal terms, but in accordance to each member's power and authority within the family and the larger society."

Montréal, Québec

1999

en

Thesis/Dissertation

1900-1920; Lowell, Massachusetts