Migration Mobility And Modernization

For almost a hundred years the academic study of migration concentrated on evolving standardised models of migration behaviour based on data from censuses or the registration of births, marriages and deaths. More recently, it has been realised that such models fail to take into account the decision-making behind migration and that better understanding will come from study of the behaviour of individuals as well as aggregate numbers. In this book the imaginative use of alternative sources – for example, apprentice books, guild and craft records, legal and court documents, diaries and biographies – gives fresh insights into the processes of movement to reveal much more complex circulatory behaviour than the standard models derived from census and registration sources alone have suggested.The first chapter confronts the issue of rural mobility in post-famine Ireland and is followed by a study centred on Alpine rural families which built impressive networks across pre-industrial Western Europe. Two chapters focus on the particular characteristics of worker groups: mining families of south Lancashire during the period of rapid increase in coal production in the eighteenth century; and the organised mobility of skilled labour in nineteenth-century central Europe. Next, an imaginative and rigorous deployment of the techniques of family reconstruction and record linkage embracing a variety of sources (vital event registers, wills, port books, apprentice records) teases out the migration histories of those who settled in eighteenth-century Liverpool. There are two chapters on female migrant behaviour, drawing attention in the case of eighteenth-century Rheims to the opportunities and restrictions on the life of migrant women at different points in their lifecycles; and showing how poor women struggled to survive in nineteenth-century Dublin. The final chapter uses family histories assembled by numerous genealogists and family historians to challenge the orthodox view of direct stepwise migration from a smaller to a larger town in the urban hierarchy.

For almost a hundred years the academic study of migration concentrated on evolving standardised models of migration behaviour based on data from censuses or the registration of births, marriages and deaths. More recently, it has been realised that such models fail to take into account the decision-making behind migration and that better understanding will come from study of the behaviour of individuals as well as aggregate numbers. In this book the imaginative use of alternative sources DS for example, apprentice books, guild and craft records, legal and court documents, diaries and biographies DS gives fresh insights into the processes of movement to reveal much more complex circulatory behaviour than the standard models derived from census and registration sources alone have suggested.The first chapter confronts the issue of rural mobility in post-famine Ireland and is followed by a study centred on Alpine rural families which built impressive networks across pre-industrial Western Europe. Two chapters focus on the particular characteristics of worker groups: mining families of south Lancashire during the period of rapid increase in coal production in the eighteenth century; and the organised mobility of skilled labour in nineteenth-century central Europe. Next, an imaginative and rigorous deployment of the techniques of family reconstruction and record linkage embracing a variety of sources (vital event registers, wills, port books, apprentice records) teases out the migration histories of those who settled in eighteenth-century Liverpool. There are two chapters on female migrant behaviour, drawing attention in the case of eighteenth-century Rheims to the opportunities and restrictions on the life of migrant women at different points in their lifecycles; and showing how poor women struggled to survive in nineteenth-century Dublin. The final chapter uses family histories assembled by numerous genealogists and family historians to challenge the orthodox view of direct stepwise migration from a smaller to a larger town in the urban hierarchy.

Demonstrates that traditional beliefs about migration are really modern myths

Mobility and Modernity uses voluminous German data on migrations over the past two centuries to demonstrate why conventional assumptions about the relationship between mobility and modernity must be revised. Thus far the changing total volume of migration has not been traced over a long period for any country. Unique migration registration statistics, both detailed and broadly geographical in coverage, allow the precise plotting of migration rates in Germany since 1820. Steve Hochstadt combines careful quantitative methods, easily understood numerical data, and social analysis based upon broad reading in German social history to show that current beliefs about the direction and timing of changes in German mobility, which have been based on late nineteenth-century anxieties about urbanization and industrialization, do not match the data. Migration rates in Germany rose continuously throughout the nineteenth century, and have fallen during the twentieth century. Mobility, Hochstadt argues, was not an unprecedented accompaniment to industrialization, but a traditional rural response to specific economic changes. Hochstadt's more precise analysis of urban in- and outmigration shows the mechanism of urbanization to have been the migration of families rather than the much greater, but also more circular, migration of single men and women. Hochstadt demonstrates the importance of examining historical behavior, powerfully justifying the methods of historical demography as a path to social understanding. The data and specific conclusions are German, but the methods and reinterpretaion of migration history have much wider application, both to other modern European nations and to currently developing countries. Those who study the modern social history of Europe, the mechanisms that formed urban working classes, and the methods of historical demography will be interested in Hochstadt's work.

Based on the premise that the dynamics caused by modernization, globalization, migration and social change affect the structuring of social fabric and space, this book examines the interrelations between social and spatial mobilities in terms of inequality and space.

In recent years, Mediterranean agriculture has experienced important transformations which have led to new forms of labour and production, and in particular to a surge in the recruitment of migrant labour. The Mediterranean Basin represents a very interesting arena that is able to illustrate labour conditions and mobility, the competition among different farming models, and the consequences in terms of the proletarianization process, food crisis and diet changes. Migration and Agriculture brings together international contributors from across several disciplines to describe and analyse labour conditions and international migrations in relation to agri-food restructuring processes. This unique collection of articles connects migration issues with the proletarianization process and agrarian transitions that have affected Southern European as well as some Middle Eastern and Northern African countries in different ways. The chapters present case studies from a range of territories in the Mediterranean Basin, offering empirical data and theoretical analysis in order to grasp the complexity of the processes that are occurring. This book offers a uniquely comprehensive overview of migrations, territories and agro-food production in this key region, and will be an indispensable resource to scholars in migration studies, rural sociology, social geography and the political economy of agriculture.

This open access book provides insight on current patterns of migration in Switzerland, which fall along a continuum from long-term and permanent to more temporary and fluid. These patterns are shaped by the interplay of legal norms, economic drivers and societal factors. The various dimensions of this Migration-Mobility Nexus are investigated by means of newly collected survey data: the Migration-Mobility Survey. The book covers different aspects of life in the host country, including the family dimension, the labour market and political participation as well as social integration. The book also takes into account the chronological dimension of migration by considering the migrants’ arrival, their stay, and their expectations regarding return. Through applying conclusions drawn from the Swiss context to the migration literature on other European and high-income countries, this book contributes to new knowledge on current migration processes in high-income countries. As such it will be a valuable reference work to scholars and students in migration, social scientists and policy makers.