It should be obvious from all the cases that Paul has just cited that no
unitary explanation of the history of migration is possible.  My shorthand
take on the general problem is that the majority of migrants are economic
migrants while a minority are ideological:  religious in the early modern
era and political in the modern era.  This latter category contains chiefly
people whose economic situation in their place of origin is satisfactory but
there are other push factors. i.e. ideological oppression that forces them
to choose migration.  These are all push factors.
    The pull factors I think chiefly motivate (as Doug Deal has already
noted)  where people migrate not if they migrate.
    But as I say, this is just my shorthand hypothesis and while I teach it
as an hypothesis.  I don't insist on its full explanatory power.  There are
exceptions.

    As to the cases that Paul brings up, first the Irish.  At least a
million Irish had migrated to Br. North America and the US BEFORE the potato
famine of the 1840s.  That is, political oppression of the British regime
against Catholics in Ireland had already pushed many Irish out;  those
staving from the famine followed an established line of migration to the US.
Two million more at least were to follow after 1850.
    Southern Italy was at the heights of the first phase of the demographic
transition (first drop in death rates, continued high birth rate;  second,
birth rate drops to level population growth.)  Migration from the Italian
north preceeded that from the south, but the migration from the south of
Italy was massive because there were just too many mouths to feed.  It is
important also to note that people fleeing a country experiencing massive
population growth that is not absorbed through intensifying agriculture or
industrial expansion, not only do themselves a favor by migrating but help
the people they leave behind by aiding in real wage growth by making labor
more scarce.
    Remember what was going on in China in the 1850s:  the Taiping Rebellion
(1852-1864) the most devastating war in terms of lives lost in the 19th
century.  The push factor for Chinese in the 1850 and 1860s is obvious.  The
pull factor was the demand for labor on the Pacific Coast of the US.

    Doug Deal is right to doubt that migrants are failures.  They are rather
victims of circumstances.  Australia is a great test case.  People
undesireable in the UK were shipped as unwilling migrants to the ends of the
earth.  Given immense land resources, these unwanted Irish and English
developed a rich agricultural society in the 19th century and an industrial
power in the 20th century.
    But love of place seems to be a universal.  Why else do we talk so
fondly of Virginia?  I imagine that planning to leave one's home place
forever was never an easy decision so some amount of desperation must have
figured into the calculation.

Harold S. Forsythe
Visiting Fellow (2005-2006)
Program in Agrarian Studies
Yale University
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Finkelman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2005 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: explaining migration


> like the Irish in the 1840s? or Southern Italians  and Eastern European
> Jews in the late 19th century?  Or the Chinese in the 1850s?  Or even
> the Cubans after 1959? They lost a civil war (revolution) and left.
>
> Paul
>
> J. Douglas Deal wrote:
>
>>There are indeed "push" (why leave place A) and "pull" (why go to place B)
>>factors involved in any and every act of migration. But the suggestion
>>that we were a magnet for people who had failed miserably somewhere else
>>and had no other options just doesn't ring true. It could be said instead
>>that people who migrate are risk-takers, adventurers, and enterprisers
>>looking for opportunities that match their talents and aspirations. The
>>key is how people adapt to failure or any other adversity, wherever they
>>are. Sure, there will always be an admixture of restless misfits among
>>those on the move, but my reading of our history and my observations of
>>out-migration from today's "rust belt" (the people leaving are young,
>>talented, ambitious--not failures at all) lead me to think that migration
>>is a positive selection process (adaptation via drastic change in
>>environment--which change always entails a rocky period of "adjustment"),
>>not a negative one. Failures and "losers" typically stay put, tethered by
>>inertia or genuine lack of options.
>>
>>Douglas Deal
>>Professor of History and Chair of History Department
>>State University of New York at Oswego
>>Oswego, NY 13126
>>[log in to unmask]
>>(315)-312-5632
>>
>>To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
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>>
>>
>
> --
> Paul Finkelman
> Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
> University of Tulsa College of Law
> 3120 East 4th Place
> Tulsa, OK   74104-3189
>
> 918-631-3706 (office)
> 918-631-2194 (fax)
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
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>

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