Measuring Internal Migration Among the Foreign-Born: Insights from Canadian Data

As the most important avenue of spatial population change and redistribution, how migration events are defined alters the empirical measurement and the derived conclusions. Using the foreign-born population as an example and drawing upon recent Canadian census files, this paper explores two related issues. First, the problems and fallacies of attempting to extrapolate temporal trends from period-specific measures are highlighted. Second, measurement issues associated with the length of the migration interval are evaluated by defining return and onward migrations within the foreign-born population based upon one-and five-year migration measures.