Exploratory analysis of the integration of educated young adult migrants in the cities of Montréal (Québec) and Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
In the context of an exploratory study on internal migration among educated young people, our research examines the processes involved in their integration within unfamiliar metropolitan areas and analyzes them to identify patterns in the real and symbolic strategies they adopt to integrate successfully into the environments they have moved to. For some young migrants, moving to a metropolis creates feelings of apprehension. Others view their integration into the city as an enriching experience and an opportunity for social and cultural development. Our observations about the process of integration into metropolitan areas are drawn from a corpus of interviews with educated young adult migrants from Brazil (20 interviews) and from Québec (20 interviews). The study documents the challenges faced by the interviewees, the strategies they adopted and the support they received in the course of their integration process.