Intragenerational Ethnic Mobility of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: Results from the 2001 and 2006 Census Record Linkage

Éric Caron Malenfant, Statistics Canada
Simon Coulombe, Statistics Canada
Andre Lebel, Statistics Canada
Éric Guimond, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada

The goal of the proposed paper is to present an analysis of the intragenerational ethnic mobility of Aboriginal peoples using a new database, which allows direct estimation of the phenomenon in Canada for the first time: a record linkage between the microdatabases of the 20% samples of the 2001 and 2006 censuses. Intragenerational ethnic mobility, or changes in self-reporting of Aboriginal identity over the life course, was a key factor of population growth for the Métis and, to a lesser extent, for the North American Indians over the recent period, but no dataset provided a direct measure of the phenomenon up to now. The dataset used for the proposed analysis will allow to present a direct estimate of ethnic mobility flows between Métis, North American Indians and non-Aboriginal persons, and to analyze determinants of these changes in identity, using both descriptive and multivariate methods.