RAYMOND F. CURRIE AND SHIVA S. HALLI MIXED MOTIVATIONS FOR MIGRATION IN THE URBAN PRAIRIES: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH* (Received 10 March, 1988) ABSTRACT. Two Canadian Prairie cities, with populations of about 600000 each, have experienced dramatically different growth patterns in the last twenty years because of quite different economic bases. Edmonton has been a fast growth city based on the gas and oil boom. Winnipeg has experienced very slow growth with a very diversified economy. Through the vehicles of the Edmonton and Winnipeg Area Studies, an analysis of migration to the two cities is possible. It is a study of mixed motivation. Not only are single motives rarely expressed by respondents, but the relative strength of economic and family motives in particular is somewhat unexpected in the two cities. Finally, while return migration accounts for 50 percent of migrants to the slow growth city, it is not as detached from economic motives as appears to be the case in other Canadian research on return migration. INTRODUCTION A Canadian Manpower and Immigration publication suggests that Canadian internal migrants are moving from smaller to medium sized cities and from medium sized to larger cities (Manpower and Immigra- tion, 1975). A Statistics Canada publication adds "people tend to move to the larger urban complexes because of greater economic oppor- tunities" (1980: 6). From 1981 data we can see that inter-metropolitan migration is also a significant trend. At least half of the in-migrants to metropolitan areas had moved from other CMA's in Canada. The larger centres such as Toronto and Vancouver are especially attractive (Shaw, 1985; McGahan, 1986: 82). In the Prairie region, the two cities of Winnipeg and Edmonton have been greatly affected by these population movements, particularly in the 1970s and early 1980s. At the turn of the Century, the population of Edmonton was only 2626 compared to 48488 of Winnipeg. Edmonton is now the largest prairie metropolitan centre, having surpassed Winnipeg in 1979. In the 30 year period from 1951 to 1981, Edmonton grew from 193547 to 657057. This was a growth of 239 Social Indicators Research 21:481--499, 1989. 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.