Abstract
Second Promised Land has a modest billing: “an important contribution to migration literature.” It is much more. University of Calgary sociologist Harry Hiller has written a detailed, nuanced, empirically exacting study guided by a multidisciplinary methodology. Second Promised Land has problems, but it is one of the “must read” books of Canadian social science. Hiller’s study explores Canadian internal—that is, inter-provincial—migration, looking at the factors drawing people to Alberta, a western province that is the centre of Canada’s massive oil industry. Through fifteen chapters, a preface, conclusion, and a long methodological and statistical appendix, Hiller charts the history of Canadian western migration, the demographic and economic growth of Alberta, the shifting political economy of Canadian federalism and, most expansively, the dynamics of movement to Alberta over the last decade. Hiller’s scholarship is transparent. His careful methodological explanations, for example, allow readers to assess the heuristic and empirical basis on which his conclusions rest.
Hiller’s key insights are twofold, with one related to the other. First, Second Promised Land is about social and political-economic change. More specifically, it is about the rise of what other scholars have called the “new west” and its implications for Canadian federalism and demographics. Regional discontent is nothing new in Canada. Indeed, old-style “western alienation” based in the prairie agricultural economy was a defining feature of twentieth-century Canada. The new west is different. It is characterized by the growth of large cities (Calgary and Edmonton), the movement of corporate head offices from the Pacific or Central Canada, shifting regional metropoles, and rural depopulation. Where Winnipeg once served as the gateway to the prairies and its economic center, Calgary—with its oil industry and head offices migrated from other locations—is the power center of the new west. If traditional modes of protest were characterized by populism; neo-liberalism is the hallmark of the new. In effect, Hiller argues, Canada is in transition: the west is no longer a disaffected hinterland but a new regional center of political and economic power in its own right. He does not say this, but his assessment helps explain the shifting dynamics of Canadian politics, particularly the shift from central Canadian-based liberalism to an Americanesque “neo-conservatism” rooted intellectually and politically in Calgary. The rise of the new west reorganized the fault lines of Canadian politics. Demographically, Alberta’s powerhouse economy drew Canadians from every region of the country, expanding cities and the provincial population.
Second, Canadian public discourse usually treats internal migration as an economic matter: people move from regions of low to high employment. Hiller’s study shows not that this conclusion is false, but simplistic. It is the product of a methodological bias of macro-level data analysis that infers motivation from behavior. Micro-level data (specifically personal interviews) show a more complex picture. People move across provincial boundaries for a range of reasons: family connections, a xenophobic flight from regions that draw international immigrants, youthful adventurism, and politics. The right-wing pro-business character of Albertan politics, for example, attracts those who are not enamored of the more centrist or left wing politics of other provinces. The most important motivation is social marginalization. Macro-level analysis, Hiller argues, disguises an important consideration: not everyone migrates. The differences between those who do and those who do not relates to one’s sense of their position in their home community. Lack of employment is a key cause of marginalization, but others—frustration with family, a sense of stultification, blocked career prospects, differing social or political values—are also present. Inter-provincial migration is not simply an employment strategy. It is a social strategy designed to reconstruct status, to de-marginalize, as it were. The same consideration works in reverse. Migration becomes a success and hence permanent to the degree that this strategy succeeds. Those for whom it does not work are almost pre-determined to become part of a return migration wave at some point in the future.
The only time Hiller runs into problems is when he breaks from his carefully considered methodology and narrative. His discussion of migrant “encounters” with Alberta is the key example. In this chapter he contrasts migrants views of Alberta with those of their province of origin, but treats these views as if they were fact. Originating communities are described as plagued by employment nepotism, culturally “pessimistic,” risk adverse, and politically “apathetic.” One can easily agree that marginalized individuals might view their communities in this way, but is this actually the case? Are Atlantic Canadians (a source of Albertan migrants), any more politically apathetic than Albertans? On the basis of his interviews, Hiller suggests that this is the case. But, those interviews cannot provide evidence for this conclusion because they are necessarily the perception of a select group. Other sources of data—say, voter turnout rates, which do tell a different story—would be needed to make this case. It is odd that such a careful scholar did not make use of this source and drew conclusions from, at best, a very tentative evidentiary base. Using a different data source would only add to Hiller’s analysis. For example, it would have helped to separate out migrant perceptions and realities.
Second Promised Land is scholarship; it was not written to influence policy but it should be required reading for civil servants mandated to address internal migration. In the last decade, politicians in provinces experiencing population losses have promised policies to maintain the population base. By and large, these focus on job creation. Hiller’s study suggests that this approach will have little effect since employment is not, in-and-of-itself, the key to leaving home. Counter-acting out-migration will be much more difficult because it will run against the grain of changes in national political economy and community dynamics, both of which are beyond the ability of provinces to control. One should not, of course, become a fatalist but good scholarship should give us reason to question public policy. Second Promised Land is good scholarship.