Michaël Boissonneault wasn’t destined to become a demographer. “My parents didn’t go to university, and neither did my brothers and sisters,” recalled the expert, newly hired as a professor in Université de Montréal’s Department of Demography.
“I didn’t really have any role models or preconceived plans. I just followed my instincts.”
That led Boissoneault into uncharted waters, academically. “In high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” he recalled. “I knew I wanted to go on to CEGEP, but I didn’t have anything specific in mind.”
Today, Boissonneault aims to improve people's understanding of social dynamics. His research interests range from charting the aging of the population to preserving endangered languages and analyzing migration flows.
He stumbled on demography early on in life, during a meeting with a high school guidance counselor.
"I was interested in statistics and the humanities, so she asked me if I’d ever thought about studying demography. I knew the aging of the population was an issue, but nothing more.”
From then on, he jumped at every opportunity in high school and CEGEP to do demographics-related projects and research. “That’s how I made demography my own and learned to love it,” he said.
'Central to two concerns'
Boissonneault went on to specialize in population aging. "It's a topic that particularly interests me because it is central to two concerns: scientific and societal,” he said.
Newly hired as a research assistant, he landed a contract on the subject and immersed himself in what would become his research speciality, from his master’s thesis through to his doctoral dissertation on the health and labour implications of aging.
“The question that most interests me is whether people are healthy enough to continue working and to postpone retirement,” he said. “Many countries are raising the retirement age but the health challenges of aging make this transition difficult for many.”
When Boissonneault started working on his dissertation, his initial conclusion was positive: “Most people are healthy enough to continue working for a reasonable number of additional years,” he recalled thinking. “If we were to raise the legal retirement age from 65 to, say, 67, it wouldn’t be a problem for many people.”
Digging deeper, however, he found some major caveats.
“We’re finding that people are indeed working longer,” he explained. “The age at which people stop working is gradually increasing, but more and more people are working in spite of having health problems.”
This observation raises new questions: “Are people working longer but taking more sick leave? Is their job satisfaction lower?” he asked. He has no definite answers yet.
'A big disadvantage'
Socioeconomic disparities add another dimension to this trend.
“People with high school diplomas are at a big disadvantage in the labour market, especially when it comes to retirement,” Boissonneault observed. “They often have to work as long as or longer than people with advanced degrees but are in poorer health, which is a liability.”
There are also differences in difficulty across occupational groups.
“Manual workers, whose jobs are more physically demanding, are at a particular disadvantage,” he noted. “It’s not just a matter of being healthy enough in general but of being healthy enough to do the job. It’s much harder for people with physically demanding jobs to extend their careers.”
Alongside his research on aging, Boissonneault discovered a passion for languages and became a self-taught polyglot. “I learned German, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch on my own,” he said. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in the Netherlands.
His interest in languages has led him into uncharted territory: the application of demographic methods to the study of languages, particularly Indigenous languages.
“Interestingly, the statistics we often see about disappearing languages are based on very little evidence,” he observed. To fill the gap, he set about developing demographic projections to shed light on the future of Indigenous languages in Canada.
His current research project uses census data to estimate the rate at which languages are disappearing.
“I want to contribute to improving estimation methods in order to produce a more precise picture of the state of the world’s languages,” he said. Ultimately, he hopes this work will inform language policy and help protect the most endangered languages.
Exploring the dynamics of migration
In addition to his work on languages and aging, Boissonneault has explored the dynamics of migration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he participated in a European project to develop migration scenarios for Europe.
Population movements are difficult to forecast because of the many factors involved, he noted. Unlike other demographic indicators, such as mortality or fertility rates, migration trends cannot be easily projected from past data.
“For example, the Syrian refugee crisis that began in 2011 showed how a conflict can abruptly alter global migration patterns,” Boissonneault said. “Migration fluctuations are affected by a wide variety of factors, from government policies to armed conflicts, economic conditions and even climate change.”
Boissonneault and his research team have taken an innovative approach to this issue by developing migration scenarios based not on historical trends but on predictions of future social and environmental conditions.
Boissonneault and a colleague have designed surveys to gather expert opinion on the potential impact of various social change scenarios on migration, for instance.
“Suppose that in the future, the economy deteriorates sharply or the political situation becomes unstable: how will this affect migrations?” he said.
The answer to that and other questions will help policymakers in their decision-making, he added.
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