Barry Edmonston

Ph.D. (Michigan, 1974)
Adjunct Professor

Barry Edmonston has had a long-standing interest in Canadian demographic issues. He has been an active member of the Canadian Population Society and has taken the lead to organize joint Canadian-U.S. forums at the annual meetings of professional population societies. He co-authored a chapter on international migration, featuring analysis of Canadian and U.S. data for the second edition of the classic Methods and Materials of Demography. He has been working with researchers in Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia about plans to develop and fund a research project focusing on the adaptation of immigrants settling initially in small towns and rural areas. This is an important research topic because national immigration policy has recently tried to address the geographic imbalance of immigrant settlement and several provinces have special programs that attempt to direct immigrants to new destinations. During the next year, he plans to organize a research team to initiate several pilot studies in smaller towns in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia. His current research includes a comparative study of homeownership attainment by immigrants in Australia, Canada, and the United States, the resettlement of immigrants who initially settle in small towns and rural areas in Canada, and co-editing (with Eric Fong) a volume on the current demographic situation in Canada.

Areas of interest

Internal and international migration
Population distribution
Human ecology
Social epidemiology (especially infant and childhood mortality)
Nutritional surveillance

Selected publications

Barry Edmonston and Jeffrey S. Passel (editors), Immigration and Ethnicity: The Integration of America's Newest Arrivals. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press, 1994.

James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston (editors), The New Americans: Economic, Fiscal, and Demographic Effects of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997.

"International Migration," in Henry Shryock, Jacob Siegel, and David Swanson (editors), The Methods and Materials of Demography, Second Edition. New York: Academic Press, 2004. (with Margaret Michalowski).

"Measuring the Effect of Immigration on Population Growth," in Thomas Saltzmann, Barry Edmonston, and James Rayner (editors), The Demography of Migration. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Spring-Verlag Publishing, 2010.

Barry Edmonston and Eric Fong (editors), Canada's Population Situation. McGill-Queens University Press. Forthcoming.