The Recruitment and Migration of Canadian Social Scientists: Presidential Address Delivered at Ottawa on June 7, 1967, at the Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association

Abstract

This paper presents some information about the two disciplines which have hitherto composed our association. It is largely a by-product of a series of studies in which I have been collaborating on the international migration of scientists and engineers. My paper arises from our research because, as I hope to suggest, many of the particular characteristics of the collectivity of political scientists and economists in Canada arise from its uncertainty about its geographical reference. This in turn is a consequence of the dependence of Canadian academic departments, and of other employers, on sources outside Canada for the training of new recruits.The subject is by no means new. At least part of my theme was put before this association almost twenty years ago by Professor H. F. Angus in his 1949 presidential address “Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences,” in which much consideration was given to advanced study abroad. In 1952 Professor J. E. Hodgetts reviewed three contemporary reports (by Professors Dawson, Watkins and Keirstead, and Macpherson) on the teaching of political science in Canada; they make gloomy reading today. We have also had the advantage of a series of papers on research in the social sciences, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council of Canada, by Messrs. Ostry, Dawson, Clark, and others.