An economics and business expert, Ludovic Comeau Jr. is an associate professor at DePaul University. Also an expert in the Haitian diaspora, Ludovic Comeau Jr. chaired a task force on recommendations for the Haitian Diaspora Forum and served as a research advisor to diaspora research.
A diaspora is defined as a large-scale movement of people away from their ancestral homes. Haiti has experienced a mass outflow of residents in recent years, with 329,000 living in the Dominican Republic, nearly 100,000 in Canada and France, and nearly 30,000 in the Bahamas. In addition, the Haitian population in the United States has grown from 92,000 in 1980 to nearly 670,000 in 2015.
Over the years, a wide range of economic and natural events have prompted the mass migration of Haitians. The first large numbers of migrants began in the 1980s with the destruction of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship in Haiti. Since that time, the country has experienced further political instability, extreme poverty, and natural disasters such as a major earthquake in 2010. All of these events are thought to have encouraged the ongoing movement of Haitians to new areas.
