migration history essay

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World history

Course: world history   >   unit 3, causes and effects of human migration.

• Key concepts: Human Migration
• Focus on causation: Human migration
• Migration is the movement of people from one place to another with the intent to settle
• Causes: In preindustrial societies, environmental factors, such as the need for resources due to overpopulation, were often the cause of migration
• Effects: As people migrated, they brought new plants, animals, and technologies that had effects on the environment

Causes of migration

• (Choice A)   Temporary movement that follows seasonal weather patterns A Temporary movement that follows seasonal weather patterns
• (Choice B)   Movement to a new region with the intent to settle there B Movement to a new region with the intent to settle there
• (Choice C)   Continuous movement to follow resources C Continuous movement to follow resources

Causes of migration in Africa

Causes of migration in the pacific.

• (Choice A)   Iron farming tools and weapons A Iron farming tools and weapons
• (Choice B)   Long-term food preservation techniques B Long-term food preservation techniques
• (Choice C)   Types of canoes that could sail in the open ocean C Types of canoes that could sail in the open ocean

Effects of migration

• (Choice A)   Rats eating eggs and greatly reducing the bird population A Rats eating eggs and greatly reducing the bird population
• (Choice B)   Intense storms that altered the landscape of the island B Intense storms that altered the landscape of the island
• (Choice C)   Human activity, such as hunting and cutting down trees C Human activity, such as hunting and cutting down trees
• Jerry Bentley, et al, Traditions and Encounters , Vol. 1 (New York: McGraw Hill, 2015), 284.
• Douglas L. Oliver, Polynesia in Prehistoric Times (Honolulu: Bess Press, 2002), 32-35.
• Oliver, 232, 239.

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The Past, Present, and Future of Human Migration

Thursday, June 29, 2017

By Abigail Meisel Illustrations by Chris Gash

Displacement. Poverty. Persecution. Economic opportunity. These are some of the many reasons that people migrate to countries thousands of miles from their ancestral homelands. In modern history, major demographic transitions have included the influx of immigrants to the U.S. from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century; the flow of humanity at the end of World War II, when tens of millions of people, particularly in Europe, were sundered from their native countries by years of violent conflict; and the movement of more than 17 million Africans within their continent in the 21st century. Today, more than 200 million people—most from Latin America, South Asia, and Africa—are migrants both within and across continents.

“Migration is now a big part of the global economy and of global society,” says Hans-Peter Kohler, Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography and a Research Associate in the Population Studies Center.

Although migration is a complex story, many Americans and Europeans see it in simplistic terms, according to Tukufu Zuberi, Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations and Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies: There are “natives,” who belong, and “foreigners,” who do not. New cultures, languages, and economic demands of immigrants have roiled Western societies in the past decade, making migration a new locus of international concern. 

To better understand the mass movement of populations across the globe, Penn social science faculty are interpreting data, analyzing the effect of immigration on sending and receiving countries, and untangling the many complexities of immigration today. Their work offers new perspectives on how mass migration shapes our world.

Unwelcoming Neighbors

When Zuberi studied the response of largely white Washington, D.C. neighborhoods to an influx of migrants, the results surprised him. 

“When there is more diversity, whites are less tolerant of those of other races,” Zuberi said. “We used to think exactly the opposite. It made sense that the more diverse a city was, the less segregated it would be. That turns out not to be true.”  

Zuberi, a demographer whose primary interest is in the African diaspora, published his findings in  Sociology of Race and Ethnicity  in 2015. 

Putting the rise of segregation in D.C. into global context, Zuberi looks at larger social changes afoot in the U.S. and in Western Europe.

On a worldwide level, he explains, dramatic immigration shifts are going to create radical changes in the identity of populations. The influx of nonwhite groups into the U.S. and Europe—particularly the U.S., France, the U.K., and Germany—has whites there “singing an anti-immigrant note.” 

“Whites have regarded themselves as a nation’s ‘first-class’ citizens, but immigration is increasingly challenging this view as nonwhite communities continue to grow,” Zuberi says.  

Demographic studies show that the U.S. will become a “minority majority” population in the 21st century, meaning that nonwhites will comprise the majority of the U.S. population.

According to Zuberi, this is just the latest chapter in a long, and often violent, history of demographic shifts on the North American continent.

“White Europeans displaced the indigenous peoples here and also brought in a large group of enslaved individuals. And now whites are being displaced,” he said. 

He sees the recent presidential election as “the reaction of white people to their own demographic demise,” and added, “Race is  the  problem in America and in the Western world now.”

Melding into Society

Michael Jones-Correa, Professor of Political Science, examines the opinions, behavior and policy preferences of Latino immigrants to the U.S. He served as co-principal investigator of the 2006 Latino National Survey, a national state-stratified survey of Latinos in the U.S.

Jones-Correa sees our era as the “end of consensus, both in the U.S. and Europe, that immigration is necessarily a good thing.” Immigration, he feels, was a central value to Western society, and it was a given that letting immigrants in was beneficial for the society and the economy—and that it enabled displaced families to reunify and rebuild their lives.

“I think all those principles are, at the very least, being questioned,” Jones-Correa says. He adds that in the U.S. and Europe, “[we] are seeing the rise of these openly anti-immigrant parties that are willing to pay fairly high costs—in the case of the U.K., actually pulling back out of the EU—in order to, as they would put it, regain control of their borders.”

More recently, he has been looking at “immigrants in the suburbs, specifically how suburban native-born Americans respond to immigration,” he says, and at relations among immigrants and the U.S.-born in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Looking at individual communities can give a bigger picture of the relationships among white and African Americans and migrant groups. A lack of contact among individuals in neighborhoods and workplaces, for example, can lower U.S.-born residents’ tolerance for migrants and lead to support for policies like those hardening the border, restricting immigration into the U.S.

Yet, most Americans do not realize that there has been a net-zero flow of undocumented migration across the U.S. border from Mexico since 2008. And half of all those who are in the U.S. illegally are here because of visa overstays, not because they cross the border without papers. 

 “A lot of what building a physical wall would do is already accomplished,” says Jones-Correa. He adds that much of the border is already heavily fenced, except in the desert and mountains. This is where people cross over—and where the building of a wall would be, architecturally, a near impossibility. 

“Addressing the situation of undocumented workers in ways other than deportation is a policy imperative not just for the undocumented workers themselves, but also for the United States, and the workers’ receiving communities.”

"Crimmigation"

The path to deportation can begin with a minor legal infraction. This is because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) relies on criminal justice agencies, such police and sheriff’s departments, to identify immigrants for deportation, no matter how minor the crime.

“Mundane violations, such as fishing without a license, running a stop sign while riding a bike, and driving with a broken taillight, have all resulted in undocumented immigrants’ arrest by local police and subsequent removal by federal authorities,” says Amada Armenta, Assistant Professor of Sociology.

In her forthcoming book,  Protect, Serve, and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement , Armenta analyzes how local police are pivotal actors in the immigration enforcement system although they do not technically enforce immigration laws.

“We call this the ‘crimmigration system’ because it’s a blurring of the line between law enforcement and immigration enforcement,” Armenta says.

In her book, she focuses on the immigrant community in Nashville, Tennessee’s Davidson County. Between 2007 and 2012, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office participated in an experimental immigration enforcement program called 287(g), which empowered the agency to enforce immigration laws. The sheriff’s employees became de facto immigration officers, screening arrestees for immigration violations. The result? Over 10,000 immigrants were identified for deportation by local authorities. The U.S. government scaled back the program in 2012 because it was deemed ineffective in identifying dangerous criminals for deportation.

“President Trump wants this program not only reinstated but expanded,” Armenta says. 

The problem, in her view, is that the broadening of police powers to include deportation erodes the trust between police and the community they serve.

“I study how Latino immigrants perceive safety, and if they feel comfortable reporting crimes of victimization,” she says. “It’s important for the community to feel that they trust the police and vice versa.” 

The Other One Percent

The image of the immigrant as a poor person from Mexico who lacks education stands in direct contrast to the reality of the second-largest group of immigrants to the U.S.: Asian Indians. The most educated and highest-income immigrants to the U.S., they began entering the country in number following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (also known as the Hart-Celler Act).

“Seventy percent of Indian immigrants to the U.S. have professional degrees, in comparison to 20 percent of the American population,” says Devesh Kapur, Professor of Political Science, who is the Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India and serves as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India.

In his new book,  The Other One Percent: Indians in America , he examines the migratory journey of Indian immigrants as well as Americans of Indian descent. The book, co-authored with two of Kapur’s colleagues in the field, has been reviewed in such prestigious periodicals as  The Economist  and  The Financial Times . 

“If the U.S. is going to put a cap on migration into the country, what is the optimal mix of legal immigrants in terms of public policy? Those who are young and skilled and ‘fiscally attractive’? Those who are fleeing persecution and come in seeking asylum or as refugees fleeing wars and conflict? Those who are coming in as family reunification or family sponsorship?” Kapur asks. “These are contentious choices and pose difficult trade-offs—and those won’t be easy conversations,” he says.

A Bimodal Trend

Emilio Parrado, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, describes immigration to the U.S. as a “bimodal history.” Immigration was high at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, declined during the interwar period, and increased again in recent decades. The bimodal trend presents two different images of the U.S. 

Chair of the Department of Sociology, Parrado does research focusing on migration, both within and across countries, as a significant life-course event with diverse implications for the migrants themselves, for their families, and for the sending and receiving areas and countries. 

“What is it that we look at when we evaluate immigration today?” he asks. “Is it really high, out of control immigration, or is it just back to a more normal level after a decline that ended primarily in the 1980s?” He added, “If we were so successful at incorporating immigrants before, why is Mexican immigration perceived as a burgeoning threat?”

There are two critical issues to consider when discussing immigration from Latin America to the U.S., he explains. The first is the flow of immigrants, the number of people coming in and out of the U.S.; the second is what is called the immigrant “stock,” the foreign-born population residing in the U.S. 

We make a “rigid distinction between immigrants and Americans, and between immigrants and U.S. residents, and that distinction is not as clear as one might think,” Parrado explains. 

For example, what is the rightful status of children brought into the U.S. as infants, the “DREAMers,” children who have little connection with Mexico as their homeland? The only difference that separates them from U.S. citizens is place of birth, Parrado says. Moreover, as a group they have been very successful at completing high school, attending college, and securing employment.

Deporting them would be not only a terrible outcome for the immigrants themselves, but also a loss of significant human capital for the U.S., Parrado argues. 

But the problem is not only for DREAMers. “Addressing the situation of undocumented workers in ways other than deportation is a policy imperative not just for the undocumented workers themselves, but also for the U.S. and the workers’ receiving communities,” he says.

Parrado claims that the revitalization of local areas and cities depends on a dynamic immigrant population. He calls it “disheartening” to see what is happening to the children of immigrants in the U.S. when they and their families are threatened with deportation. He points out that many of those being forced out of the country are the spouses, parents, and children of U.S. citizens.

“Do we really want to tear apart the families of U.S. citizens because we don’t want to regularize the situation of foreign-born workers?” he asks.

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The Great Human Migration

Why humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonize the world

Guy Gugliotta

Seventy-seven thousand years ago, a craftsman sat in a cave in a limestone cliff overlooking the rocky coast of what is now the Indian Ocean. It was a beautiful spot, a workshop with a glorious natural picture window, cooled by a sea breeze in summer, warmed by a small fire in winter. The sandy cliff top above was covered with a white-flowering shrub that one distant day would be known as blombos and give this place the name Blombos Cave.

The man picked up a piece of reddish brown stone about three inches long that he—or she, no one knows—had polished. With a stone point, he etched a geometric design in the flat surface—simple crosshatchings framed by two parallel lines with a third line down the middle.

Today the stone offers no clue to its original purpose. It could have been a religious object, an ornament or just an ancient doodle. But to see it is to immediately recognize it as something only a person could have made. Carving the stone was a very human thing to do.

The scratchings on this piece of red ocher mudstone are the oldest known example of an intricate design made by a human being. The ability to create and communicate using such symbols, says Christopher Henshilwood, leader of the team that discovered the stone, is "an unambiguous marker" of modern humans, one of the characteristics that separate us from any other species, living or extinct.

Henshilwood, an archaeologist at Norway's University of Bergen and the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa, found the carving on land owned by his grandfather, near the southern tip of the African continent. Over the years, he had identified and excavated nine sites on the property, none more than 6,500 years old, and was not at first interested in this cliffside cave a few miles from the South African town of Still Bay. What he would find there, however, would change the way scientists think about the evolution of modern humans and the factors that triggered perhaps the most important event in human prehistory, when Homo sapiens left their African homeland to colonize the world.

This great migration brought our species to a position of world dominance that it has never relinquished and signaled the extinction of whatever competitors remained—Neanderthals in Europe and Asia, some scattered pockets of Homo erectus in the Far East and, if scholars ultimately decide they are in fact a separate species, some diminutive people from the Indonesian island of Flores (see "Were 'Hobbits' Human?"). When the migration was complete, Homo sapiens was the last—and only—man standing.

Even today researchers argue about what separates modern humans from other, extinct hominids. Generally speaking, moderns tend to be a slimmer, taller breed: "gracile," in scientific parlance, rather than "robust," like the heavy-boned Neanderthals, their contemporaries for perhaps 15,000 years in ice age Eurasia. The modern and Neanderthal brains were about the same size, but their skulls were shaped differently: the newcomers' skulls were flatter in back than the Neanderthals', and they had prominent jaws and a straight forehead without heavy brow ridges. Lighter bodies may have meant that modern humans needed less food, giving them a competitive advantage during hard times.

The moderns' behaviors were also different. Neanderthals made tools, but they worked with chunky flakes struck from large stones. Modern humans' stone tools and weapons usually featured elongated, standardized, finely crafted blades. Both species hunted and killed the same large mammals, including deer, horses, bison and wild cattle. But moderns' sophisticated weaponry, such as throwing spears with a variety of carefully wrought stone, bone and antler tips, made them more successful. And the tools may have kept them relatively safe; fossil evidence shows Neanderthals suffered grievous injuries, such as gorings and bone breaks, probably from hunting at close quarters with short, stone-tipped pikes and stabbing spears. Both species had rituals—Neanderthals buried their dead—and both made ornaments and jewelry. But the moderns produced their artifacts with a frequency and expertise that Neanderthals never matched. And Neanderthals, as far as we know, had nothing like the etching at Blombos Cave, let alone the bone carvings, ivory flutes and, ultimately, the mesmerizing cave paintings and rock art that modern humans left as snapshots of their world.

When the study of human origins intensified in the 20th century, two main theories emerged to explain the archaeological and fossil record: one, known as the multi-regional hypothesis, suggested that a species of human ancestor dispersed throughout the globe, and modern humans evolved from this predecessor in several different locations. The other, out-of-Africa theory, held that modern humans evolved in Africa for many thousands of years before they spread throughout the rest of the world.

In the 1980s, new tools completely changed the kinds of questions that scientists could answer about the past. By analyzing DNA in living human populations, geneticists could trace lineages backward in time. These analyses have provided key support for the out-of-Africa theory. Homo sapiens , this new evidence has repeatedly shown, evolved in Africa, probably around 200,000 years ago.

The first DNA studies of human evolution didn't use the DNA in a cell's nucleus—chromosomes inherited from both father and mother—but a shorter strand of DNA contained in the mitochondria, which are energy-producing structures inside most cells. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother. Conveniently for scientists, mitochondrial DNA has a relatively high mutation rate, and mutations are carried along in subsequent generations. By comparing mutations in mitochondrial DNA among today's populations, and making assumptions about how frequently they occurred, scientists can walk the genetic code backward through generations, combining lineages in ever larger, earlier branches until they reach the evolutionary trunk.

At that point in human history, which scientists have calculated to be about 200,000 years ago, a woman existed whose mitochondrial DNA was the source of the mitochondrial DNA in every person alive today. That is, all of us are her descendants. Scientists call her "Eve." This is something of a misnomer, for Eve was neither the first modern human nor the only woman alive 200,000 years ago. But she did live at a time when the modern human population was small—about 10,000 people, according to one estimate. She is the only woman from that time to have an unbroken lineage of daughters, though she is neither our only ancestor nor our oldest ancestor. She is, instead, simply our "most recent common ancestor," at least when it comes to mitochondria. And Eve, mitochondrial DNA backtracking showed, lived in Africa.

Subsequent, more sophisticated analyses using DNA from the nucleus of cells have confirmed these findings, most recently in a study this year comparing nuclear DNA from 938 people from 51 parts of the world. This research, the most comprehensive to date, traced our common ancestor to Africa and clarified the ancestries of several populations in Europe and the Middle East.

While DNA studies have revolutionized the field of paleoanthropology, the story "is not as straightforward as people think," says University of Pennsylvania geneticist Sarah A. Tishkoff. If the rates of mutation, which are largely inferred, are not accurate, the migration timetable could be off by thousands of years.

To piece together humankind's great migration, scientists blend DNA analysis with archaeological and fossil evidence to try to create a coherent whole—no easy task. A disproportionate number of artifacts and fossils are from Europe—where researchers have been finding sites for well over 100 years—but there are huge gaps elsewhere. "Outside the Near East there is almost nothing from Asia, maybe ten dots you could put on a map," says Texas A&M University anthropologist Ted Goebel.

As the gaps are filled, the story is likely to change, but in broad outline, today's scientists believe that from their beginnings in Africa, the modern humans went first to Asia between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago. By 45,000 years ago, or possibly earlier, they had settled Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. The moderns entered Europe around 40,000 years ago, probably via two routes: from Turkey along the Danube corridor into eastern Europe, and along the Mediterranean coast. By 35,000 years ago, they were firmly established in most of the Old World. The Neanderthals, forced into mountain strongholds in Croatia, the Iberian Peninsula, the Crimea and elsewhere, would become extinct 25,000 years ago. Finally, around 15,000 years ago, humans crossed from Asia to North America and from there to South America.

Africa is relatively rich in the fossils of human ancestors who lived millions of years ago (see timeline, opposite). Lush, tropical lake country at the dawn of human evolution provided one congenial living habitat for such hominids as Australopithecus afarensis . Many such places are dry today, which makes for a congenial exploration habitat for paleontologists. Wind erosion exposes old bones that were covered in muck millions of years ago. Remains of early Homo sapiens , by contrast, are rare, not only in Africa, but also in Europe. One suspicion is that the early moderns on both continents did not—in contrast to Neanderthals—bury their dead, but either cremated them or left them to decompose in the open.

In 2003, a team of anthropologists reported the discovery of three unusual skulls—two adults and a child—at Herto, near the site of an ancient freshwater lake in northeast Ethiopia. The skulls were between 154,000 and 160,000 years old and had modern characteristics, but with some archaic features. "Even now I'm a little hesitant to call them anatomically modern," says team leader Tim White, from the University of California at Berkeley. "These are big, robust people, who haven't quite evolved into modern humans. Yet they are so close you wouldn't want to give them a different species name."

The Herto skulls fit with the DNA analysis suggesting that modern humans evolved some 200,000 years ago. But they also raised questions. There were no other skeletal remains at the site (although there was evidence of butchered hippopotamuses), and all three skulls, which were nearly complete except for jawbones, showed cut marks—signs of scraping with stone tools. It appeared that the skulls had been deliberately detached from their skeletons and defleshed. In fact, part of the child's skull was highly polished. "It is hard to argue that this is not some kind of mortuary ritual," White says.

Even more provocative were discoveries reported last year. In a cave at Pinnacle Point in South Africa, a team led by Arizona State University paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean found evidence that humans 164,000 years ago were eating shellfish, making complex tools and using red ocher pigment—all modern human behaviors. The shellfish remains—of mussels, periwinkles, barnacles and other mollusks—indicated that humans were exploiting the sea as a food source at least 40,000 years earlier than previously thought.

The first archaeological evidence of a human migration out of Africa was found in the caves of Qafzeh and Skhul, in present-day Israel. These sites, initially discovered in the 1930s, contained the remains of at least 11 modern humans. Most appeared to have been ritually buried. Artifacts at the site, however, were simple: hand axes and other Neanderthal-style tools.

At first, the skeletons were thought to be 50,000 years old—modern humans who had settled in the Levant on their way to Europe. But in 1989, new dating techniques showed them to be 90,000 to 100,000 years old, the oldest modern human remains ever found outside Africa. But this excursion appears to be a dead end: there is no evidence that these moderns survived for long, much less went on to colonize any other parts of the globe. They are therefore not considered to be a part of the migration that followed 10,000 or 20,000 years later.

Intriguingly, 70,000-year-old Neanderthal remains have been found in the same region. The moderns, it would appear, arrived first, only to move on, die off because of disease or natural catastrophe or—possibly—get wiped out. If they shared territory with Neanderthals, the more "robust" species may have outcompeted them here. "You may be anatomically modern and display modern behaviors," says paleoanthropologist Nicholas J. Conard of Germany's University of Tübingen, "but apparently it wasn't enough. At that point the two species are on pretty equal footing." It was also at this point in history, scientists concluded, that the Africans ceded Asia to the Neanderthals.

Then, about 80,000 years ago, says Blombos archaeologist Henshilwood, modern humans entered a "dynamic period" of innovation. The evidence comes from such South African cave sites as Blombos, Klasies River, Diepkloof and Sibudu. In addition to the ocher carving, the Blombos Cave yielded perforated ornamental shell beads—among the world's first known jewelry. Pieces of inscribed ostrich eggshell turned up at Diepkloof. Hafted points at Sibudu and elsewhere hint that the moderns of southern Africa used throwing spears and arrows. Fine-grained stone needed for careful workmanship had been transported from up to 18 miles away, which suggests they had some sort of trade. Bones at several South African sites showed that humans were killing eland, springbok and even seals. At Klasies River, traces of burned vegetation suggest that the ancient hunter-gatherers may have figured out that by clearing land, they could encourage quicker growth of edible roots and tubers. The sophisticated bone tool and stoneworking technologies at these sites were all from roughly the same time period—between 75,000 and 55,000 years ago.

Virtually all of these sites had piles of seashells. Together with the much older evidence from the cave at Pinnacle Point, the shells suggest that seafood may have served as a nutritional trigger at a crucial point in human history, providing the fatty acids that modern humans needed to fuel their outsize brains: "This is the evolutionary driving force," says University of Cape Town archaeologist John Parkington. "It is sucking people into being more cognitively aware, faster-wired, faster-brained, smarter." Stanford University paleoanthropologist Richard Klein has long argued that a genetic mutation at roughly this point in human history provoked a sudden increase in brainpower, perhaps linked to the onset of speech.

Did new technology, improved nutrition or some genetic mutation allow modern humans to explore the world? Possibly, but other scholars point to more mundane factors that may have contributed to the exodus from Africa. A recent DNA study suggests that massive droughts before the great migration split Africa's modern human population into small, isolated groups and may have even threatened their extinction. Only after the weather improved were the survivors able to reunite, multiply and, in the end, emigrate. Improvements in technology may have helped some of them set out for new territory. Or cold snaps may have lowered sea level and opened new land bridges.

Whatever the reason, the ancient Africans reached a watershed. They were ready to leave, and they did.

DNA evidence suggests the original exodus involved anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 people. Scientists do not agree on the time of the departure—sometime more recently than 80,000 years ago—or the departure point, but most now appear to be leaning away from the Sinai, once the favored location, and toward a land bridge crossing what today is the Bab el Mandeb Strait separating Djibouti from the Arabian Peninsula at the southern end of the Red Sea. From there, the thinking goes, migrants could have followed a southern route eastward along the coast of the Indian Ocean. "It could have been almost accidental," Henshilwood says, a path of least resistance that did not require adaptations to different climates, topographies or diet. The migrants' path never veered far from the sea, departed from warm weather or failed to provide familiar food, such as shellfish and tropical fruit.

Tools found at Jwalapuram, a 74,000-year-old site in southern India, match those used in Africa from the same period. Anthropologist Michael Petraglia of the University of Cambridge, who led the dig, says that although no human fossils have been found to confirm the presence of modern humans at Jwalapuram, the tools suggest it is the earliest known settlement of modern humans outside of Africa except for the dead enders at Israel's Qafzeh and Skhul sites.

And that's about all the physical evidence there is for tracking the migrants' early progress across Asia. To the south, the fossil and archaeological record is clearer and shows that modern humans reached Australia and Papua New Guinea—then part of the same landmass—at least 45,000 years ago, and maybe much earlier.

But curiously, the early down under colonists apparently did not make sophisticated tools, relying instead on simple Neanderthal-style flaked stones and scrapers. They had few ornaments and little long-distance trade, and left scant evidence that they hunted large marsupial mammals in their new homeland. Of course, they may have used sophisticated wood or bamboo tools that have decayed. But University of Utah anthropologist James F. O'Connell offers another explanation: the early settlers did not bother with sophisticated technologies because they did not need them. That these people were "modern" and innovative is clear: getting to New Guinea-Australia from the mainland required at least one sea voyage of more than 45 miles, an astounding achievement. But once in place, the colonists faced few pressures to innovate or adapt new technologies. In particular, O'Connell notes, there were few people, no shortage of food and no need to compete with an indigenous population like Europe's Neanderthals.

Modern humans eventually made their first forays into Europe only about 40,000 years ago, presumably delayed by relatively cold and inhospitable weather and a less than welcoming Neanderthal population. The conquest of the continent—if that is what it was—is thought to have lasted about 15,000 years, as the last pockets of Neanderthals dwindled to extinction. The European penetration is widely regarded as the decisive event of the great migration, eliminating as it did our last rivals and enabling the moderns to survive there uncontested.

Did modern humans wipe out the competition, absorb them through interbreeding, outthink them or simply stand by while climate, dwindling resources, an epidemic or some other natural phenomenon did the job? Perhaps all of the above. Archaeologists have found little direct evidence of confrontation between the two peoples. Skeletal evidence of possible interbreeding is sparse, contentious and inconclusive. And while interbreeding may well have taken place, recent DNA studies have failed to show any consistent genetic relationship between modern humans and Neanderthals.

"You are always looking for a neat answer, but my feeling is that you should use your imagination," says Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef. "There may have been positive interaction with the diffusion of technology from one group to the other. Or the modern humans could have killed off the Neanderthals. Or the Neanderthals could have just died out. Instead of subscribing to one hypothesis or two, I see a composite."

Modern humans' next conquest was the New World, which they reached by the Bering Land Bridge—or possibly by boat—at least 15,000 years ago. Some of the oldest unambiguous evidence of humans in the New World is human DNA extracted from coprolites—fossilized feces—found in Oregon and recently carbon dated to 14,300 years ago.

For many years paleontologists still had one gap in their story of how humans conquered the world. They had no human fossils from sub-Saharan Africa from between 15,000 and 70,000 years ago. Because the epoch of the great migration was a blank slate, they could not say for sure that the modern humans who invaded Europe were functionally identical to those who stayed behind in Africa. But one day in 1999, anthropologist Alan Morris of South Africa's University of Cape Town showed Frederick Grine, a visiting colleague from Stony Brook University, an unusual-looking skull on his bookcase. Morris told Grine that the skull had been discovered in the 1950s at Hofmeyr, in South Africa. No other bones had been found near it, and its original resting place had been befouled by river sediment. Any archaeological evidence from the site had been destroyed—the skull was a seemingly useless artifact.

But Grine noticed that the braincase was filled with a carbonate sand matrix. Using a technique unavailable in the 1950s, Grine, Morris and an Oxford University-led team of analysts measured radioactive particles in the matrix. The skull, they learned, was 36,000 years old. Comparing it with skulls from Neanderthals, early modern Europeans and contemporary humans, they discovered it had nothing in common with Neanderthal skulls and only peripheral similarities with any of today's populations. But it matched the early Europeans elegantly. The evidence was clear. Thirty-six thousand years ago, says Morris, before the world's human population differentiated into the mishmash of races and ethnicities that exist today, "We were all Africans."

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History Resources

• Immigration and Migration

by Hasia Diner

• The Development of the West
• Populism and Agrarian Discontent
• The Gilded Age
• Empire Building

The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles, machines, steel, oil, rubber, and tools, among other finished products. They also ate foods grown in American soil and relied upon America’s iron ore, coal, and lumber, all transported from the hinterlands to the great shipping ports by American-built railroads. This frenzy of production transformed the United States in the decades following the Civil War, making it the most dynamic economic engine in the world.

None of this could have happened without a work force that sewed the clothing, dug the coal, forged the steel, operated the railroads, and stoked the fires of the many thousands of factories, mills, mines, and workshops that spread over the United States. The industrialization of America stimulated the vast expansion of its own domestic business and agricultural sectors as well. Workers in factories and mines needed food, housing, and a range of consumer goods. As factory employment grew and the population expanded, businesses responded by selling their wares to the workers, enabling them to then go out and work and keep the economy on its course. Not limited to the Northeast, which had been the center of industry earlier in the nineteenth century, industrialization transformed America, in no small measure as a result of massive immigration.

Those newcomers came primarily from Europe and constituted the bulk of the laborers who made industrialization possible. Statistics tell part of the story. In the decade from 1871 until 1880 more than 2,800,000 arrived, while the following ten-year period brought in over 5,000,000. In the subsequent two decades well over thirteen million arrived, with the period from 1901 to 1910 being the single largest decade of immigration. Clearly with numbers like this immigration was a serious issue in American life and became the focus of much political debate and contention. These numbers have to be thought of in percentage terms as well. As a point of contrast, in 1850, the foreign born made up 9.7 percent of the American population; by 1890 that figure stood at 14.7 percent.

The story of immigration to the United States in the industrial era also should be thought of in terms of where the immigrants came from. In the 1870s migration tended to come primarily from central and northern Europe, the countries of Scandinavia, Germany, England, Ireland (which although part of Great Britain had a unique and separate immigration history), and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By 1900 migration gradually shifted to the east and the south and most immigrants hailed from Italy, the Czarist empire, Roumania, and other places in southern and eastern Europe. Catholics predominated, with a significant influx of Eastern Orthodox also adding to America’s religious diversity. Immigration of the industrial era also saw the size of America’s Jewish population grow exponentially. In 1870 about 250,000 Jews lived in the United States, but the new migration that extended into the 1920s brought in an additional 3,000,000 Jews.

Not only Europeans made their way to the United States in these decades. Immigrants from Mexico, even from its more remote regions, began to arrive in the late nineteenth century, primarily to work on the railroads, and they created small enclaves as far north as Chicago before the beginning of the twentieth century. Women and men from Syria and Lebanon, mostly Christians, also arrived in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Few of them flocked to industrial work, but as peddlers and small shopkeepers they provided consumer goods to industrial workers and farmers, both native born and immigrant. Immigrants from the Punjab region, primarily Sikhs, arrived in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s as well, and they joined railroad crews and logging camps. Some became farmers. Small numbers of immigrants also came from the Philippines, Japan, and various islands of the Caribbean.

The two largest non-European immigrant groups in this period included French Canadians, streaming south into New England from Quebec and the Maritime Provinces, and the Chinese. The two groups resembled each other in some ways. They each gravitated to a specific geographic region in the United States, the former to New England with its textile industry and the latter to California, and formed visible ethnic enclaves. But they had very different histories in the United States. French Canadian immigration was never restricted and even after the imposition of quotas in the 1920s, they could come and go as they chose across a largely porous border.

The Chinese story followed a very different course. The Chinese in fact were the only immigrants to ever be excluded specifically by nationality. When Congress enacted across-the-board immigration restriction in the 1920s, it did not exclude any one group. When Japanese immigration came to an end in 1908, it happened through a diplomatic agreement known as the Gentlemen’s Agreement.

The history of the Chinese stands in a class of its own. Between the end of the Civil War and 1882, about 300,000 Chinese immigrants had entered the United States. Anti-Chinese sentiment had been running high in California since the 1850s, and in 1882 the United States Congress passed the first piece of immigration restriction, of any kind, in the history of the nation. The Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese immigrants from coming to the United States, although there were a few exempted categories, including students, merchants, and the children of naturalized citizens. The imposition of such a restriction ushered in a new era in American history, one in which the federal government moved, slowly, toward curtailing the uncapped flood of newcomers from abroad.

To many native-born Americans the influx of so many millions of foreigners, mostly Catholics and Jews, and most relatively poor and speakers of myriad languages, seemed threatening to the way of life they considered authentically American. A quick summary of the major developments of the years from the middle of the 1870s until 1900 shows how much the concern over immigration came to dominate national politics.

The trend toward government action vis-à-vis immigration may be said to have started with a US Supreme Court case in 1875, Henderson v. the Mayor of New York , as the opening salvo in a debate that raged in America over immigration. In that case the Court ruled that the various states could not regulate immigration individually from abroad as they chose, but that this power lay in the hands of Congress. Thus, the long-established practice of leaving immigration to the states it was overturned. Congress soon passed the first act of restriction, banning convicts and prostitutes from entering the United States. The first, and only, restriction of a specific group on the basis or national origin or race came in 1882 with the passage of a temporary Chinese Exclusion Act, which became permanent in 1900 by congressional act. In 1885 Congress passed the Foran Act, which prohibited the migration of contract labor, that is, women and men hired abroad and whose fare had been paid by an American employer. In order for these restrictions and regulations to work Congress had to create a bureaucracy and in 1891, under the aegis of the Treasury Department, it founded the Bureau of Immigration. So, too, in 1892 the immigrant-receiving station at Ellis Island opened its doors (with smaller stations in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Galveston, and San Francisco) making visible the regulatory process.

The 1890s saw not only the march toward regulation coordinated by the government, but also the emergence of organized citizen action against immigration. In 1895 a group of elite women and men in Boston founded the Immigration Restriction League with the goal of preserving the historic ethnic make-up of America—as defined by this group. They pushed for a literacy test, which passed in Congress in 1896, although President Grover Cleveland vetoed the measure. In the early twentieth century during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, a few more categories of potential immigrants got added to the list of the undesirables, including the "feeble-minded," "imbeciles," carriers of various diseases, and anarchists.

This last category, anarchists, had a very specific origin, and tells us much about the rise of industrial America. In 1901 Leon Czolgosz, the son of immigrants and an anarchist, assassinated President William McKinley. This shocking event stoked American fears about political turbulence and radicalism, which they saw as a threat to the basic stability of the nation, and one associated with foreigners. As more and more Americans worked for industrial employers who could force their employees to endure whatever conditions the boss wanted, at whatever rate of pay the market could bear, more and more workers sought forms of action and organization to address their plight.

One event from each decade of this era can demonstrate the escalation of labor and radical action. In 1877—dubbed "the year of violence"—tens of thousands of workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, and elsewhere shut down the rail system for more than forty days in the Great Railway Strike. Local police across the strike regions used force to quell the strikes, and President Rutherford B. Hayes called in the Army to assist in this effort. A decade later, on May 4, 1886, a gathering in Haymarket Square in Chicago ended when a bomb was tossed into a group of police officers trying to break up the crowd. The police fired into the crowd and in the process created a group of martyrs to the cause of labor. In 1892 a strike at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel mills of Carnegie Steel pitted the police and armed Pinkerton detectives against workers who had taken over the plant.

While immigrants alone did not participate in these strikes and in the labor and radical movements, many Americans in fact equated the two, and growing numbers of them and their political representatives were convinced that continued immigration harmed the country, threatening the coherence and stability of the nation.

Not all Americans, however, put the blame on the immigrants; some saw unbridled capitalism as the source of the social unrest. While some in the Progressive movement harbored anti-immigrant sentiment, many in the movement believed that the fault lay with the system and not with the women and men who had come to the United States to make a living and who fueled the nation’s industrial output and made its wealth possible.

In 1890 a New York journalist, himself an immigrant from Denmark, Jacob Riis, castigated the greed of landlords and employers for immiserating the lives of the city’s cigar workers, garment shop employees, and other laborers. His expose How the Other Half Lives , on conditions among the poor in New York City, complete with photographs, was widely read and led to legislative action in New York . A year earlier two women in Chicago, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, had opened up a settlement house, Hull House, in the packinghouse district where large numbers of Polish, Italian, and eastern European Jews lived and labored. Starr and Addams experimented with various ways to both improve the lives of the immigrant poor and advocate for them. Settlement houses like Hull House sprang up in Boston, Baltimore, New York, Buffalo, Milwaukee, and in all the large cities to which immigrants had gone, drawn by the magnet of the jobs available in American industry. Those immigrant workers and the others across the country played a pivotal role in providing the labor necessary to create industrial America.

Hasia Diner is the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History and director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University. Among her publications are From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the US in a Global Age (2007) and We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (2009).

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An Introduction to Migration Studies: The Rise and Coming of Age of a Research Field

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• First Online: 04 June 2022

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• Peter Scholten 2 ,
• Asya Pisarevskaya 3 &
• Nathan Levy 3  

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Migration studies has contributed significantly to our understanding of mobilities and migration-related diversities. It has developed a distinct body of knowledge on why people migrate, how migration takes place, and what the consequences are of migration in a broad sense, both for migrants themselves and for societies involved in migration. As a broadly-based research field, migration studies has evolved at the crossroads of a variety of disciplines. This includes disciplines such as sociology, political science, anthropology, geography, law and economics, but increasingly it expands to a broader pool of disciplines also including health studies, development studies, governance studies and many more, building on insights from these disciplines.

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Changing Perspectives on Migration History and Research in Switzerland: An Introduction

15 Internal Migration

Introduction: Contemporary Insights on Migration and Population Distribution

Migration is itself in no way a new phenomenon; but the specific and interdisciplinary study of migration is relatively recent. Although the genesis of migration studies goes back to studies in the early twentieth century, it was only by the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century that the number of specialised master programmes in migration studies increased, that the number of journal outlets grew significantly, that numerous specialised research groups and institutes emerged all over the world, and that in broader academia migration studies was recognised as a distinct research field in its own right. By 2018 there were at least 45 specialised journals in migration studies (Pisarevskaya et al., 2019 , p. 462). The field has developed its own international research networks, such as IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe), NOMRA (Network of Migration Research on Africa), and the global more policy-oriented network Metropolis. Students at an increasingly broad range of universities can study dedicated programs as well as courses on migration studies. Slowly but gradually the field is also globalising beyond its European and North American roots.

Migration studies is a research field, which means that it is not a discipline in itself with a core body of knowledge that applies to various topics, but an area of studies that focus on a specific topic while building on insights from across various disciplines. It has clear roots in particular in economics, geography, anthropology and sociology. However, when looking at migration publications and conferences today, the disciplinary diversity of the field has increased significantly, for instancing bringing important contributions from and to political sciences, law, demography, cultural studies, languages, history, health studies and many more. It is hard to imagine a discipline to which migration studies is not relevant; for instance, even for engineering studies, migration has become a topic of importance when focusing on the role that social media play as migration infrastructures. Beyond being multidisciplinary (combining insights from various disciplines), the field has become increasing interdisciplinary (with its own approach that combines aspects from various disciplines) or even transdisciplinary (with an approach that systematically integrates knowledge and methods from various disciplines).

1 A Pluralist Perspective on Migration Studies

Migration studies is a broad and diverse research field that covers many different topics, ranging from the economics of migration to studies of race and ethnicity. As with many research fields, the boundaries of the field cannot be demarcated very clearly. However, this diversity does also involve a fair degree of fragmentation in the field. For instance, the field features numerous sub-fields of study, such as refugee studies, multicultural studies, race studies, diversity studies, etc. In fact, there are many networks and conferences within the field with a specific focus, for instance, on migration and development. So, the field of migration studies also encompasses, in itself, a broad range of subfields.

This diversity is not only reflected in the topics covered by migration studies, but also in theoretical and methodological approaches. It is an inherently pluralistic field, bringing often fundamentally different theoretical perspectives on key topics such as the root causes of integration. It brings very different methods, for instance ranging from ethnographic fieldwork with specific migrant communities to large-n quantitative analyses of the relation between economics and migration.

Therefore, this book is an effort to capture and reflect on this pluralistic character of field. It resists the temptation to bring together a ‘state of the art’ of knowledge on topics, raising the illusion that there is perhaps a high degree of knowledge consensus. Rather, we aim to bring to the foreground the key theoretical and methodological discussions within the field, and let the reader appreciate the diversity and richness of the field.

However, the book will also discuss how this pluralism can complicate discussions within the field based on very basic concepts. Migration studies stands out from most other research fields in terms of a relatively high degree of contestation of some of its most basic concepts. Examples include terms as ‘integration’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘cohesion’ but perhaps most pertinent also the basic concept of ‘migration.’ Many of the field’s basic concepts can be defined as essentially contested concepts. Without presuming to bring these conceptual discussions to a close, this book does bring an effort to map and understand these discussions, aiming to prevent conceptual divides from leading to fragmentation in the field.

This conceptual contestation reflects broader points on how the field has evolved. Various studies have shown that the field’s development in various countries and at various moments has been spurred by a policy context in which migration was problematised. Many governments revealed a clear interest in research that could help governments control migration and promote the ‘integration’ of migrants into their nation-states (DeWind, 2000 ). The field’s strong policy relevance also led to a powerful dynamic of coproduction in specific concepts such as ‘integration’ or ‘migrant.’ At the same time, there is also clear critical self-reflection in the field on such developments, and on how to promote more systematic theory building in migration studies. This increase of reflexivity can be taken as a sign of the coming of age of migration studies as a self-critical and self-conscious research field.

An introduction to migration studies will need to combine a systematic approach to mapping the field with a strong historical awareness of how the field has developed and how specific topics, concepts and methods have emerged. Therefore, in this chapter, we will do just that. We will start with a historical analysis of how the field emerged and evolved, in an effort to show how the field became so diverse and what may have been critical junctures in the development of the field. Subsequently, we will try to define what is migration studies, by a systematic approach towards mapping the pluralism of the field without losing grip of what keeps together the field of migration studies. Therefore, rather than providing one sharp definition of migration studies, we will map that parts that together are considered to constitute migration studies. Finally, we will map the current state of the research field.

To provide a comprehensive overview of such a pluralist and complex field of study, we employ a variety of methods. Qualitative historical analysis of key works that shaped the formation and development of the field over the years is combined with novel bibliometric methods to give a birds-eye view of the structure of the field in terms of volume of publications, internationalisation and epistemic communities of scholarship on migration. The bibliometric analysis presented in this chapter is based on our previous articles, in which we either, used Scopus data from 40 key journals (Pisarevskaya et al., 2019 , or a complex key-word query to harvest meta-data of relevant publications from Web of Science (Levy et al., 2020 ). Both these approaches to meta-data collection were created and reviewed with the help of multiple experts of migration studies. You can consult the original publications for more details. Our meta-data contained information on authors, years of publication, journals, titles, and abstracts of articles and books, as well as reference lists, i.e. works that were cited by each document in the dataset.

In this chapter you will see the findings from these analyses, revealing the growth trends of migration specific journals, and yearly numbers of articles published on migration-related topics, number and geographical distribution of international co-authorships, as well as referencing patterns of books and articles – the “co-citation analysis”. The colourful network graphs you will see later in the chapter, reveal links between scholars, whose writings are mentioned together in one reference list. When authors are often mentioned together in the publications of other scientists, it means that their ideas are part of a common conversation. The works of the most-cited authors in different parts of the co-citation networks give us an understanding of which topics they specialise in, which methods they use in their research, and also within which disciplinary traditions they work. All in all, co-citation analysis provides an insight on the conceptual development of epistemic communities with their distinct paradigms, methods and thematic foci.

In addition, we bring in some findings from the Migration Research Hub, which hosts an unprecedented number of articles, book chapters, reports, dissertation relevant to the field. All these items are brought together with the help of IT technologies, integration with different databases such as Dimensions, ORCID, Crossref, and Web of Science, as well as submitted by the authors themselves. At the end of 2020, this database contains around 90,000 of items categorised into the taxonomy of migration studies, which will be presented below.

2 What Is Migration Studies?

The historical development of migration studies, as described in the next section, reveals the plurality of the research field. Various efforts to come up with a definition of the field therefore also reflect this plurality. For instance, King ( 2012 ) speaks of migration studies as encompassing ‘all types of international and internal migration, migrants, and migration-related diversities’. This builds on Cohen’s ( 1996 , p. xi–xii) nine conceptual ‘dyads’ in the field. Many of these have since been problematised – answering Cohen’s own call for critical and systematic considerations – but they nonetheless provide a skeletal overview of the field as it is broadly understood and unfolded in this book and in the taxonomy on which it is based:

Individual vs. contextual reasons to migrate

Rate vs. incidence

Internal vs. international migration

Temporary vs. permanent migration

Settler vs. labour migration

Planned vs. flight migration

Economic migrants vs. political refugees

Illegal vs. legal migration

Push vs. pull factors

Therefore, the taxonomy provides the topical structure—elaborated below—by which we approach this book. We do not aim to provide a be-all and end-all definition of migration studies but rather seek to capture its inherent plurality by bringing together chapters which provide a state-of-the-art of different meta-topics within the field.

The taxonomy of migration studies was developed as part of a broader research project, led by IMISCOE, from 2018 to 2020 aimed at comprehensively taking stock of and providing an index for the field (see the Migration Research Hub on www.migrationresearch.com ). It was a community endeavour, involving contributors from multiple methodological, disciplinary, and geographical backgrounds at several stages from beginning to end.

It was built through a combination of two methods. First, the taxonomy is based on a large-scale computer-based inductive analysis of a vast number—over 23,000—of journal articles, chapters, and books from the field of migration studies. This led to an empirical clustering of topics addressed within the dataset, as identified empirically in terms of keywords that tend to go together within specific publications.

Secondly, this empirical clustering was combined with a deductive approach with the aim of giving logical structure to the inductively developed topics. Engaging, at this stage, with several migration scholars with specific expertise facilitated a theory-driven expansion of the taxonomy towards what it is today, with its hierarchical categorisation not only of topics and sub-categories of topics, but also of methods, disciplines, and geographical focuses (see Fig. 1.1 below).

The structure of the taxonomy of migration studies

In terms of its content, the taxonomy that has been developed distinguishes various meta-topics within migration studies. These include:

Why do people migrate ? This involves a variety of root causes of migration, or migration drivers.

How do people migrate ? This includes a discussion of migration trajectories but also infrastructures of migration.

What forms of migration can be distinguished ? This involves an analytical distinction of a variety of migration forms

What are major consequences of migration , and whom do these consequences concern? This includes a variety of contributions on the broader consequences of migration, including migration-related diversities, ethnicity, race, the relation between migration and the city, the relation between migration and cities, gendered aspects of migration, and migration and development.

How can migration be governed ? This part will cover research on migration policies and broader policies on migration-related diversities, as well as the relation between migration and citizenship.

What methods are used in migration studies ?

All the topics in the taxonomy are grouped into several branches: Migration processes, Migration Consequences, Migration governance and Cross-cutting. In Fig. 1.2 below you can see how many journal articles, books, book chapters and reports can be found in the migration research hub just for the period of the last 20 years. The number of items belonging to each theme can vary significantly, because some of them are broader than others. Broader themes can be related to larger numbers of items, for instance ‘migration forms’ is very broad, because it includes many types and forms of migration on which scientific research in this field chooses to focus on. On the contrary, the theme of ‘governance processes’ is narrower because less studies are concerned with specific processes of migration management, such as criminalisation, externalisation or implementation.

Distribution of taxonomy branches in the Migration Research Hub

The various chapters in this book can of course never fully represent the full scope of the field. Therefore, the chapters will include various interactive links with the broader literature. This literature is made accessible via the Migration Research Hub, which aims to represent the full scope of migration studies. The Hub is based on the taxonomy and provides a full overview of relevant literature (articles, chapters, books, reports, policy briefs) per taxonomy item. This not only includes works published in migration journals or migration books, but also a broader range of publications, such as disciplinary journals.

Because the Hub is being constantly updated, the taxonomy—along with how we approach the question of ‘what is migration studies?’ in this book—is interactive; it is not dogmatic, but reflexive. As theory develops, new topics and nomenclature emerge. In fact, several topics have been added and some topics have been renamed since “Taxonomy 1.0” was launched in 2018. In this way, the taxonomy is not a fixed entity, but constantly evolving, as a reflection of the field itself.

3 The Historical Development of Migration Studies

3.1 an historical perspective on “migration studies”.

A pluralist perspective on an evolving research field, therefore, cannot rely on one single definition of what constitutes that research field. Instead, a historical perspective can shed light on how “migration studies” has developed. Therefore, we use this introductory chapter to outline the genesis and emergence of what is nowadays considered to be the field of migration studies. This historical perspective will also rely on various earlier efforts to map the development of the field, which have often had a significant influence on what came to be considered “ migration studies ”.

3.2 Genesis of Migration Studies

Migration studies is often recognised as having originated in the work of geographer Ernst Ravenstein in the 1880s, and his 11 Laws of Migration ( 1885 ). These laws were the first effort towards theorising why (internal) migration takes place and what different dynamics of mobility look like, related, for instance, to what happens to the sending context after migrants leave, or differing tendencies between men and women to migrate. Ravenstein’s work provided the foundation for early, primarily economic, approaches to the study of migration, or, more specifically, internal or domestic migration (see Greenwood & Hunt, 2003 ; Massey et al., 1998 ).

The study of international migration and migrants can perhaps be traced back to Znaniecki and Thomas’ ( 1927 ) work on Polish migration to Europe and America. Along with Ravenstein’s Laws , most scholars consider these volumes to mark the genesis of migration studies.

The Polish Peasant and the Chicago School

The Polish Peasant in Europe and America —written by Florian Znaniecki & William Thomas, and first published between 1918 and 1920—contains an in-depth analysis of the lives of Polish migrant families. Poles formed the biggest immigrant group in America at this time. Thomas and Znaniecki’s work was not only seminal for migration research, but for the wider discipline of sociology. Indeed, their colleagues in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, such as Robert Park, had a profound impact on the discipline with their groundbreaking empirical studies of race and ethnic relations (Bulmer, 1986 ; Bommes & Morawska, 2005 ).

Greenwood and Hunt ( 2003 ) provide a helpful overview of the early decades of migration research, albeit through a primarily economic disciplinary lens, with particular focus on America and the UK. According to them, migration research “took off” in the 1930s, catalysed by two societal forces—urbanisation and the Great Depression—and the increased diversity those forces generated. To illustrate this point, they cite the bibliographies collated by Dorothy Thomas ( 1938 ) which listed nearly 200 publications (119 from the USA and UK, 72 from Germany), many of which focused on migration in relation to those two societal forces, in what was already regarded as a “broadly based field of study” (Greenwood & Hunt, 2003 , p. 4).

Prior to Thomas’ bibliography, early indications of the institutionalisation of migration research came in the US, with the establishment of the Social Science Research Council’s Committee on Scientific Aspects of Human Migration (see DeWind, 2000 ). This led to the publication of Thornthwaite’s overview of Internal Migration in the United States ( 1934 ) and one of the first efforts to study migration policymaking, Goodrich et al’s Migration and Economic Opportunity ( 1936 ).

In the case of the UK in the 1930s, Greenwood and Hunt observe an emphasis on establishing formal causal models, inspired by Ravenstein’s Laws . The work of Makower et al. ( 1938 , 1939 , 1940 ), which, like Goodrich, focused on the relationship of migration and unemployment, is highlighted by Greenwood and Hunt as seminal in this regard. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics regards Makower and Marschak as having made a “pioneering contribution” to our understanding of labour mobility (see also the several taxonomy topics dealing with labour).

3.3 The Establishment of a Plural Field of Migration Studies (1950s–1980s)

Migration research began to formalise and expand in the 1950s and 1960s (Greenwood & Hunt, 2003 ; Pedraza-Bailey, 1990 ). A noteworthy turning point for the field was the debate around assimilation which gathered pace throughout the 1950s and is perhaps most notably exemplified by Gordon’s ( 1964 ) typology of this concept.

Gordon’s Assimilation Typology and the Problematisation of Integration

Assimilation, integration, acculturation, and the question of how migrants adapt and are incorporated into a host society (and vice versa), has long been a prominent topic in migration studies.

Gordon ( 1964 ) argued that assimilation was composed of seven aspects of identification with the host society: cultural, structural, martial, identificational, behavioural, attitudinal, and civic. His research marked the beginning of hundreds of publications on this question of how migrants and host societies adapt. The broader discussions with which Gordon interacted evolved into one of the major debates in migration studies.

By the 1990s, understandings of assimilation evolved in several ways. Some argued that process was context- or group-dependent (see Shibutani & Kwan, 1965 ; Alba & Nee, 1997 ). Others recognised that there was not merely one type nor indeed one direction of integration (Berry, 1997 ).

The concept itself has been increasingly problematised since the turn of the century. One prominent example of this is Favell ( 2003 ). Favell’s main argument was that integration as a normative policy goal structured research on migration in Western Europe. Up until then, migration research had reproduced what he saw as nation-state-centred power structures. It is worth reading this alongside Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2003) to situate it in broader contemporary debates, but there is plenty more to read on this topic.

For more on literature around this topic, see Chaps. 19 , 20 , and 21 of this book.

Indeed, these debates and discussions were emblematic of wider shifts in approaches to the study of migration. The first of these was towards the study of international (as opposed to internal) migration in the light of post-War economic dynamics, which also established a split in approaches to migration research that has lasted several decades (see King & Skeldon, 2010 ). The second shift was towards the study of ethnic and race relations, which continued into the 1970s, and was induced by the civil rights movements of these decades (Pedraza-Bailey, 1990 ). These two shifts are reflected in the establishment of some of the earliest journals with a migration and diversity focus in the 1960s—the establishment of journals being an indicator of institutionalisation—as represented in Fig. 1.3 . Among these are journals that continue to be prominent in the field, such as International Migration (1961-), International Migration Review (1964-), and, later, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (1970-) and Ethnic & Racial Studies (1978-).

Number of journals focused on migration and migration-related diversity (1959–2018). (Source: Pisarevskaya et al., 2019 , p. 462) ( R&C Race & Class, IM International Migration, IMR International Migration Review, SE Studi Emigrazione, PP Patterns of Prejudice, JBS Journal of Black Studies, JEMS Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, PDR Population and Development Review, IJIR International Journal of Intercultural Relations, ERS Ethnic & Racial Studies, JIS Journal of Intercultural Studies, RSQ Refugee Survey Quarterly, REMI Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, MW Migration World, JRS Journal of Refugee Studies, LCC Language, Culture, and Curriculum, APMJ Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, HM Hommes et Migrations, Id . Identities, PSP Population, Space, and Place, CDEMP Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, IMIS IMIS-Beitrage, EH Ethnicity & Health, CS Citizenship Studies, JSIE Journal of Studies in International Education, REE Race, Ethnicity, and Education, EJML European Journal of Migration and Law, JIMI Journal of International Migration and Integration, NJMR Norwegian Journal of Migration Research, Ethn . Ethnicities, GN Global Networks, JIRS Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, ML Migration Letters, ZAA Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht und Ausländerpolitik, IJMHSC International Journal of Migration, Health, and Social Care, LS Latino Studies, FJEM Finnish Journal of Ethnicity and Migration, Mob . Mobilities, JDHE Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, NJMR Nordic Journal of Migration Research (merger of NJMR and FJEM), IZAJM IZA Journal of Migration, CEEMR Central and Eastern European Migration Review, MS Migration Studies, CMS Comparative Migration Studies, Mov . Movements, JMH Journal of Migration History, M&S Migration & Society. For more journals publishing in migration studies, see migrationresearch.com )

By the 1970s, although several new journals of migration studies had emerged and the field was maturing in terms of theory-building, there remained a lack of interdisciplinary “synthesis” (Kritz et al., 1981 ; King, 2012 ). This is reflected in the research of Levy et al. ( 2020 ). Based on citation data showing who migration researchers cited over the years, Fig. 1.4 maps the embryo-like development of migration studies every half-decade from 1975 to the present day. In the early decades it shows distinct “epistemic communities” (represented by colours) clustered together based on disciplines in migration research. For example, the earlier decades show economists focused on development (sky blue); economic sociologists analysing the labour market behaviour of migrants (royal blue); demographers (green); and sociologists studying the assimilation topic (red) mentioned above. By the late 1980s, a new cluster of social psychologists (yellow) emerged, with a combination of demographers and economists clustering (pink) in the 1990s. The figure shows an increasing coherence to the field since then, as the next section elaborates, but the 1970s and 1980s was a period of disciplinary differentiation within migration studies.

Co-citation clusters of authors cited in migration studies literature 1975–2018. (From Levy et al., 2020 , p. 18)

Although the field may not have been interdisciplinary in the 1980s, it was indeed multi disciplinary, and research was being conducted in more and more countries: This period entailed a “veritable boom” of contributions to migration research from several disciplines, according to Pedraza-Bailey ( 1990 ), along with a degree of internationalisation, in terms of European scholarship “catching up” with hitherto dominant North American publications, according to Bommes & Morawska, ( 2005 ). English-language migration research was still, however, dominated by institutes based in the global North and the ‘West’.

Interdisciplinarity and Internationalisation in Migration Studies: Key Readings

There have been several publications dealing with the development of migration studies over the years. These readings identify some of the key points related to interdisciplinarity in the field, and how the field has evolved internationally.

Brettell, C. B., & Hollifield, J. F. (2000). Migration theory: Talking across disciplines (1st ed.). Abingdon: Routledge; 2 nd ed. (2008); 3 rd ed. (2015).

Talking Across Disciplines has been used as a standard textbook in migration studies for several years. It represents the first effort towards highlighting the key ideas of the multiple disciplines in the field. It offers an introduction to the contributions these disciplines, as well as critical reflections on how those disciplines have interacted.

Bommes, M., & Morawska, E. (2005). International migration research: Constructions, omissions and the promises of Interdisciplinarity. Farnham: Ashgate.

International Migration Research is one of the first attempts to explore and synthesise migration studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this book, scholars from multiple disciplines provide a state of the art of the field which illuminates the contrasts between how these disciplines approach migration studies. It is one of the first works in which migration studies is understood to be an institutionalised field of study.

Thränhardt, D., & Bommes, M. (2010). National Paradigms of migration research. Osnabrück: V&R.

In this book, readers are introduced to the idea that migration studies developed as a policy-driven field in several countries in the twentieth century. Not only did this entail diverse policy priorities, but also diverse “paradigms” of knowledge production in terms of terminology, concepts, and measures. This diversity reflects different national science policies. There are chapters reflecting on these processes from multiple continents, and from both “old” and “new” immigration countries.

In the decades before the 1990s—with a heavy reliance on census and demographic data—quantitative research abounded in migration studies (Greenwood & Hunt, 2003 ). But by the beginning of the 1990s, a “qualitative turn”, linked more broadly to the “cultural turn” in social sciences, had taken place (King, 2012 ). In other words, migration studies broadly shifted from migration per se, to migrants. King notes the example of geographical research: “human geography research on migration switched from quantitatively inclined population geography to qualitatively minded cultural geographers […] this epistemological shift did not so much re-make theories of the causes of migration as enrich our understanding of the migrant experience ” (King, 2012 , p. 24). Indeed, this is also reflected in how Pedraza-Bailey ( 1990 , p. 49) mapped migration research by the end of the 1980s into two main categories: (i) the migration process itself and (ii) the (subjective) processes that follow migration.

Even though it is clear that migration studies is made up of multiple communities—we have already made the case for its pluralist composition—it is worth re-emphasising this development through the changing shape and structure of the ‘embryos’ in Fig. 1.4 above. The positioning of the clusters relative to each other denotes the extent to which different epistemic communities cited the same research, while the roundness of the map denotes how the field can be considered an integrated whole. We clearly see that in the period 1975–1979, the disciplinary clusters were dispersed, with loose linkages between one another. In the 1980s through to the mid-1990s, while some interdisciplinarity was emerging, several clusters, such as demographers and psychologists, were working largely within their own disciplines. In other words, in the 1970s and 1980s, authors working on migration referred to and were cited by other scholars primarily within their own disciplinary traditions. In this time, although a few migration journals had been established, this number was small compared to today. Without many scientific journals specialised in their topic, migration scholars were largely reading and publishing in disciplinary journals. By today—particularly in Europe—this has changed, as the increasing roundness of the maps demonstrate and as the rest of this chapter substantiates.

3.4 Expansion of Migration Studies Since the Turn of the Century

In the 2000s the expansion of migration studies accelerated further (see Fig. 1.5 ). In 1975, there were just under 350 articles published on migration; there were 900 published in 2000; in 2017, over 3000 articles were published. This growth not only involved a diversification of the field, but also various critical conceptual developments and the rise of an increasingly self-critical approach to migration studies. One of these critical developments involved a move beyond a strong focus on the national dimension of migration and diversities, for example in terms of understanding migration as international migration, on integration as a phenomenon only within nation-states, and on migrants as either being connected to the ‘home’ or ‘host’ society.

Number of articles, per year, in migration studies dataset based on advanced query of Web of Science for Migration Research Hub, 12 March 2019. (Based on Levy et al., 2020 , p. 8)

Several key publications marked this important turn. Wimmer and Glick-Schiller ( 2002 ) refer to “ methodological nationalism ” and critique the notion of taking the nation-state as a given as if it were a natural entity. In fact, for Wimmer and Glick Schiller, this way of understanding reality helps contribute to nation-state building more than it enhances scientific knowledge. In a similar contribution, Favell ( 2003 ) critiques the concept of ‘integration’ as naturalising the nation-state in relation to migration. Favell’s main argument was that integration as a normative policy goal structured research on migration in Western Europe. Up until then, migration research had reproduced what he saw as nation-state-centred power structures. Thranhardt and Bommes ( 2010 ) further substantiate this point by showing empirically how migration studies developed within distinct national context leading to the reification of distinct national models of integration/migration.

Where did this turn beyond methodological nationalism lead to? Several important trends can be defined in the literature. One involves the rise of perspectives that go beyond nation-states, such as transnationalist (Faist 2000 , Vertovec 2009 ) and postnationalist (Soysal & Soyland, 1994 ) perspectives. Such perspectives have helped reveal how migration and migrant communities can also be shaped in ways that reach beyond nation-states, such as in transnational communities that connect communities from across various countries or in the notion of universal personhood that defines the position of migrants regardless of the state where they are from or where they reside.

Another perspective takes migration studies rather to the local (regional, urban, or neighbourhood) level of migration and diversity. Zapata-Barrero et al. speak in this regard of the local turn in migration studies (2010). They show how migration-related diversities take shape in specific local settings, such as cities or even neighbourhoods, in ways that cannot be understood from the traditional notion of distinct national models.

Also, in the study of migration itself, an important trend can be identified since the 2000s. Rather than focusing on migration as a phenomenon where someone leaves one country to settle in another, the so-called “mobility turn” (Boswell & Geddes, 2010 ) calls for a better comprehension of the variation in mobility patterns. This includes for instance variation in temporalities of migration (temporary, permanent, circular), but also in the frequency of migration, types of migration, etc. In this book we will address such mobilities in the forms of different types of migration, frequencies and temporalities by discussing very different migration forms .

3.5 Growing Self-Critical Reflection in Migration Studies

Since the 2000s, there has also been a growing reflexive and self-critical approach within migration studies. Studies like those of Wimmer and Glick-Schiller, Favell, and Dahinden are clear illustrations of this growing conceptual self-consciousness. The field of migration studies has itself become an object of critical reflection. In the context of this book, we take this as a signal of the coming of age of migration studies.

This critical reflection touches upon a variety of issues in the field. One is how the field has conceptualised ethnicity, which was criticised as “ethnic lensing” (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2009 ). This would involve an inherent tendency to connect and problematise a broad range of issues with ethnicity, such as studies on how ethnic communities do on the labour market or the role that ethnicity plays in policies. The core argument to move beyond ethnic lensing is that focusing only on ethnicity risks defying social complexity and the importance of intersectionalities between ethnicity and, for instance, class, citizenship, education, location, cultural, or political disposition, etc. Dahinden ( 2016 ) calls in this context for a “ de-migrantisation ” of migration studies to avoid the naturalisation of migrants in relation to all sorts of issues and problems. Vertovec ( 2007 ) develops the concept “ super-diversity ” in this context to capture the social complexity of migration-related diversities.

Another strand of critical reflection concerns the field’s relationship to policymaking . Studies like those by Scholten et al. ( 2015 ) and Ruhs et al. ( 2019 ) offer critical reflection on the role that the relationship between migration studies and broader policy settings has played in the conceptual and methodological development of the field. On the one hand, the evolution of the field has been spurred on in its policy relevance, for instance in research on migration management or ‘migrant integration’. This relationship has contributed to the co-production of knowledge and key concepts, such as ‘integration’, and impeded the critical and independent development of the field. On the other hand, the field also leaves important gaps in research-policy relations, leaving important areas of knowledge production hardly connected to knowledge utilisation. Such studies have raised awareness of the necessity of research-policy relations for the societal impact of the field, while also problematising the nature of research-policy relations and their impact on the development of the field itself.

Finally, also in the context of growing public awareness on racism, the field has increasingly become self-reflexive in terms of how it deals with issues of discrimination and racism . This includes a growing awareness of institutional racism in the field itself, such as in institutes or training programs. Besides contributing to the broader field, there has been an increase of instances where institutes revise their own management and procedures in order to enhance racial justice. This includes participation of scholars from the global south, but also a proliferation of diversity policies in the field. At the same time, criticism remains on the extent to which the field has acknowledged issues of racial justice, for instance in studies on integration, migration management, or social cohesion.

4 Mapping Migration Studies Today

4.1 co-citation communities.

Nowadays, migration studies has become a more interdisciplinary field. In the last 15 years, as the “embryo” development in Fig. 1.4 shows, it became more oval-shaped without sharp “tails”. This form indicates a cross-disciplinary osmosis ; a growing interlinkage of epistemic communities. Co-referencing of authors from different disciplinary orientations became more common in the twenty-first century. Such developments can be attributed, on one hand, to the rapid digitisation of libraries and journals, as well as the multiplication of migration-focused journals, which accepted relevant contributions to discussion on migration, no matter the discipline. On the other hand, interdisciplinary endeavours were encouraged externally, for instance via grants (see European Union, 2016) and interdisciplinary master programmes created in various universities. It became fashionable to work at the intersection of disciplines, to an extent that nowadays it is often difficult to determine the disciplinary origin of a publication about migration. Whether such developments have yielded any theoretical or empirical breakthroughs is yet to be seen. In any case, it is clear that migration studies moved from being a multi-disciplinary field (with few connections between them) to an interdisciplinary field (with more connections between multiple disciplines) (Levy et al., 2020 ).

Let us now dive into the most recent co-citation clusters. Such clusters are, of course, not only categorised in terms of disciplines. They also have certain topical focuses. Figure 1.6 below zooms in to the data from Fig. 1.4 and shows the co-citation network in the period 2005–2014 in more detail. We can see seven different groups of migration scholarship that are nevertheless rather interlinked, as the oval shape of the network indicates. At 1 o’clock we can see the cluster we have elsewhere called the “Global systems school”, which has developed around such scholars as Vertovec, Soysal, Levitt, Favell, Faist, and Glick-Schiller, who introduced and developed the concept of transnationalism since the late 1990s. Contrasting with longstanding conventions of looking at migration as having an ‘endpoint’ in the countries of reception, they developed a different view of migration as a global, on-going, and dynamic process impacting receiving as well as sending societies, along with the identities, belonging, and ‘sense of home’ of migrants themselves. Nowadays, this cluster includes a very diverse group of scholars with different thematic focuses, such as the migration-development nexus (see also Chap. 18 , this volume) including de Haas, Carling, and Castles; prominent scholars on Asian migration, such as Ong and Yeoh; and many others, Guarnizo, King, Anderson, Sassen, Joppke and Baubock. Yet, the fact that they all belong to one cluster, proves that their work has been cited in the same reference lists, thus constituting an interlinked conversation on migration as global phenomenon.

Co-citation map of authors with 10+ citations in migration research in the period 2005–2014. (From Levy et al. 2020 , p. 17)

Closer to the centre of the network, we find a blue cluster, centred around Portes, a widely-cited founding father of migration studies in the USA. Next to him we also see other leading American scholars such as Waldinger, Alba and Zhou, Waters, Rumbaut, and Putnam, whose primary concern is the (economic) integration of immigrants. This cluster of scholars has elsewhere been understood as the “Michigan-Wisconsin” school of migration research, given the two universities’ success in training migration scholars in the US (cf. Hollifield, 2020 ). Traditionally this scholarship has developed in the USA and has been very prominent in the field for decades. Especially Portes is cited extensively, and widely co-cited across the epistemic communities of the whole field.

This cluster is closely interlinked with the neighbouring (at 4 o’clock) cluster of economists, demographers, and other quantitative social scientists (turquoise). At the centre of it is Massey , another giant of migration studies, who mainly conducted his migration research from a demographic perspective. Here we also see economists such as Borjas, Chiswick, and Stark, who predominantly studied the immigration reality of the USA.

Then, at 6 o’clock, we see a light-green cluster. The highly cited scholars in its core are Williams and Krieger, who study migration- and race-related differences in health. For instance, Williams’ highly-cited paper is about the experiences of racism and mental health problems of African Americans, while Krieger investigated how racism and discrimination causes high-blood pressure. Health is one of the ‘younger’ topics in contemporary migration studies; the amount of research on the intersection of migration and health has increased significantly in the last decade (Pisarevskaya et al., 2019 ).

Closely interlinked with ‘health’ is the cluster of ‘acculturationists’, positioned at 7 o’clock. The cluster is formed around J.W. Berry, a social-psychologist who introduced a theory of immigrant acculturation ( 1997 ). Scholars in this cluster investigate cross-cultural and intercultural communication from the psychological perspective. Other prominent authors in this cluster include Phinney, Pettigrew, Ward and Tajfel who studied cognitive aspects of prejudice, and Stephan famous for their integrated threat theory of prejudice (Stephan & Stephan, 2000 ).

Another significant group of scholars is positioned between 9 and 12 o’clock of the co-citation network. These are scholars focused on the politics of ethnic and race relations; prominent critical sociologists such as Foucault and Bourdieu are frequently co-cited in this cluster. Among the key authors in this group are Hall, Gilroy, Brubaker, Kymlicka, Asante, Du Bois, and Bonilla-Silva.

At 12 o’clock, we can see an orange cluster, positioned between the ethnic/race relations cluster and the “Global systems school” – this is a relatively new cluster of scholars working on the topic of mobility, developed by Urry, Scheller, and T. Cresswell. Other researchers within this loosely connected cluster focus in their research on mobilities from related to work and studies from the perspective of social and economic geography. The focus on mobility has been on the rise; it entered top three most prominent topics in migration studies in the period 2008–2017 (Pisarevskaya et al., 2019 ).

Overall, in the twenty-first century, the scholarship of migration in its variety of approaches and intertwined themes has seemed to move away from “‘ who’- and ‘what’- questions, to ‘how’- and ‘why’-questions”, compared to the early days of this field. Efforts towards quantifying and tracing geographies of migration flows and describing migrant populations in the receiving countries have somewhat declined in academic publications, while research on the subjective experiences of migrants, perceptions of migrants’ identity and belonging, as well as attention to the cultural (super)diversity of societies has become more prominent (ibid. ).

4.2 Internationalisation

Since migration is a global phenomenon, it is important that it is studied in different countries and regions, by scholars with different academic and personal backgrounds, as well as for knowledge to be transferred around the world. Only by bringing together the diversity of perspectives and contexts in which migration is studied we can achieve a truly global and nuanced understanding of migration, its causes, and its consequences.

Over the course of the field’s development, migration studies has internationalised. Even though analysis of internationalisation trends has only been conducted on English-language literature, the trends seem to be rather coherent. The number of the countries producing publications on migration has increased from 47 to 104 in the past 20 years. Publications from non-Anglophone European countries have increased by 15%, to constitute by today almost a third of English-language publications on migration, while the relative share of developed Anglophone countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia) has declined (Pisarevskaya et al., 2019 ). The proportion of migration research that is internationally co-authored has also increased over the past 20 years, from 5% of articles in 1998 to over 20% in 2018 (Levy et al., 2020 ).

Nevertheless, international collaboration is not equally spread across the world. European and North American migration scholars have produced the highest absolute number of international collaborations between 1998 and 2018, though the relative share of collaborations among Europe-based scholars is much higher (36%) than that of their North American colleagues (15%). The suggested reasons behind these trends could be that critiques of national paradigms in migration studies have been taken up in Europe more eagerly than in North America. This has not happened without facilitation by broader science policies , particularly in the European Union, which funded the creation of the IMISCOE Network of Excellence, a network which intensified international collaborations between the research institutes working on migration and integration issues in various European countries.

In the global south, similar initiatives have been established, such as the Network for Migration Research on Africa and the Asia Pacific Knowledge Network on Migration. In these regions, international co-authorships are not uncommon, but the absolute number of publications in English compared to those from the north is small. We have thus observed an “uneven internationalisation” of migration studies (Levy et al., 2020 ); in the case of the gender and migration nexus, for instance, Kofman ( 2020 ) argues that the concentration of institutions and publishers in migration studies headquartered in the north perpetuates such inequalities.

5 An Outlook on This Interactive Guide to Migration Studies

This book is structured so as to provide an overview of key topics within the pluralist field of migration studies. It is not structured according to specific theories or disciplines, but along topics, such as why and how people migrate, what forms of migration are there, what the consequences of migration are, and how migration can be governed. Per topic, it brings an overview of key concepts and theories as well as illustrations of how these help to understand concrete empirical cases. After each chapter, the reader will have a first overview of the plurality of perspectives developed in migration studies on a specific theme as well as first grasp of empirical case studies.

The book is designed as an ‘interactive guide’; it will help connect readers to readings, projects, and reports for the selected themes via interactive links. To this aim, the book outline largely follows the official taxonomy of migration studies at migrationresearch.com . Throughout the text, there will be interactive links to overview pages on the Migration Research Hub, as well as to specific key readings. This marks the book as a point of entry for readers to get to know the field of migration studies.

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Scholten, P., Pisarevskaya, A., Levy, N. (2022). An Introduction to Migration Studies: The Rise and Coming of Age of a Research Field. In: Scholten, P. (eds) Introduction to Migration Studies. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92377-8_1

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U.S. Immigration Timeline

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 23, 2022 | Original: December 21, 2018

The United States has long been considered a nation of immigrants, but attitudes toward new immigrants by those who came before have vacillated over the years between welcoming and exclusionary. Thousands of years before Europeans began crossing the vast Atlantic by ship and settling en masse, the first immigrants arrived in North America from Asia. They were Native American ancestors who crossed a narrow spit of land connecting Asia to North America at least 20,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age .

By the early 1600s, communities of European immigrants dotted the Eastern seaboard, including the Spanish in Florida, the British in New England and Virginia, the Dutch in New York, and the Swedes in Delaware. Some, including the Pilgrims and Puritans, came for religious freedom. Many sought greater economic opportunities. Still others, including hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans, arrived in America against their will.

Below are the events that have shaped the turbulent history of immigration in the United States since its birth.

White People of 'Good Character' Granted Citizenship

January 1776: Thomas Paine publishes a pamphlet, “ Common Sense ,” that argues for American independence. Most colonists consider themselves Britons, but Paine makes the case for a new American. “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe,” he writes.

March 1790: Congress passes the first law about who should be granted U.S. citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows any free white person of “good character,” who has been living in the United States for two years or longer, to apply for citizenship. Without citizenship, nonwhite residents are denied basic constitutional protections, including the right to vote, own property, or testify in court.

August 1790: The first U.S. census takes place. The English are the largest ethnic group among the 3.9 million people counted, though nearly one in five Americans are of African heritage.

Irish Immigrant Wave

1815: Peace is re-established between the United States and Britain after the War of 1812 . Immigration from Western Europe turns from a trickle into a gush, which causes a shift in the demographics of the United States. This first major wave of immigration lasts until the Civil War .

Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish —many of them Catholic—account for an estimated one-third of all immigrants to the United States. Some 5 million German immigrants also come to the United States, many of them making their way to the Midwest to buy farms or settle in cities including Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

1819: Many of newcomers arrive sick or dying from their long journey across the Atlantic in cramped conditions. The immigrants overwhelm major port cities, including New York City , Boston , Philadelphia and Charleston. In response, the United States passes the Steerage Act of 1819 requiring better conditions on ships arriving to the country. The Act also calls for ship captains to submit demographic information on passengers, creating the first federal records on the ethnic composition of immigrants to the United States.

1849: America’s first anti-immigrant political party, the Know-Nothing Party forms, as a backlash to the increasing number of German and Irish immigrants settling in the United States.

1875: Following the Civil War, some states passed their own immigration laws. In 1875 the Supreme Court declares that it’s the responsibility of the federal government to make and enforce immigration laws.

Chinese Exclusion Act 

1880: As America begins a rapid period of industrialization and urbanization, a second immigration boom begins. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants arrive. The majority are from Southern, Eastern and Central Europe, including 4 million Italians and 2 million Jews . Many of them settle in major U.S. cities and work in factories.

1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act passes, which bars Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. Beginning in the 1850s, a steady flow of Chinese workers had immigrated to America.

They worked in the gold mines,and garment factories, built railroads and took agricultural jobs. Anti-Chinese sentiment grew as Chinese laborers became successful in America. Although Chinese immigrants make up only 0.002 percent of the United States population, white workers blame them for low wages.

The 1882 Act is the first in American history to place broad restrictions on certain immigrant groups.

1891: The Immigration Act of 1891 further excludes who can enter the United States, barring the immigration of polygamists, people convicted of certain crimes, and the sick or diseased. The Act also created a federal office of immigration to coordinate immigration enforcement and a corps of immigration inspectors stationed at principle ports of entry.

Ellis Island Opens

January 1892 : Ellis Island , the United States’ first immigration station, opens in New York Harbor. The first immigrant processed is Annie Moore, a teenager from County Cork in Ireland. More than 12 million immigrants would enter the United States through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954.

1907 : U.S. immigration peaks, with 1.3 million people entering the country through Ellis Island alone.

Photos: Immigration at Ellis Island

February 1907: Amid prejudices in California that an influx of Japanese workers would cost white workers farming jobs and depress wages, the United States and Japan sign the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Japan agrees to limit Japanese emigration to the United States to certain categories of business and professional men. In return, President Theodore Roosevelt urges San Francisco to end the segregation of Japanese students from white students in San Francisco schools.

1910: An estimated three-quarters of New York City’s population consists of new immigrants and first-generation Americans.

New Restrictions at Start of WWI

1917: Xenophobia reaches new highs on the eve of American involvement in World War I . The Immigration Act of 1917 establishes a literacy requirement for immigrants entering the country and halts immigration from most Asian countries.

May 1924: The Immigration Act of 1924 limits the number of immigrants allowed into the United States yearly through nationality quotas. Under the new quota system, the United States issues immigration visas to 2 percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States at the 1890 census. The law favors immigration from Northern and Western European countries. Just three countries, Great Britain, Ireland and Germany account for 70 percent of all available visas. Immigration from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe was limited. The Act completely excludes immigrants from Asia, aside from the Philippines, at the time an American colony.

1924 : In the wake of the numerical limits established by the 1924 law, illegal immigration to the United States increases. The U.S. Border Patrol is established to crack down on illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican and Canadian borders into the United States. Many of these early border crossers were Chinese and other Asian immigrants, who had been barred from entering legally.

Mexicans Fill Labor Shortages During WWII

1942: Labor shortages during World War II prompt the United States and Mexico to form the Bracero Program , which allows Mexican agricultural workers to enter the United States temporarily. The program lasts until 1964.

1948: The United States passes the nation’s first refugee and resettlement law to deal with the influx of Europeans seeking permanent residence in the United States after World War II.

1952: The McCarran-Walter Act formally ends the exclusion of Asian immigrants to the United States.

1956-1957 : The United States admits roughly 38,000 immigrants from Hungary after a failed uprising against the Soviet Union . They were among the first Cold War refugees. The United States would admit over 3 million refugees during the Cold War.

1960-1962 : Roughly 14,000 unaccompanied children flee Fidel Castro ’s Cuba and come to the United States as part of a secret, anti-Communism program called Operation Peter Pan.

Quota System Ends

1965: The Immigration and Nationality Act overhauls the American immigration system. The Act ends the national origin quotas enacted in the 1920s which favored some racial and ethnic groups over others.

The quota system is replaced with a seven-category preference system emphasizing family reunification and skilled immigrants. Upon signing the new bill, President Lyndon B. Johnson , called the old immigration system “un-American,” and said the new bill would correct a “cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation.”

Over the next five years, immigration from war-torn regions of Asia, including Vietnam and Cambodia , would more than quadruple. Family reunification became a driving force in U.S. immigration.

April-October 1980 : During the Mariel boatlift , roughly 125,000 Cuban refugees make a dangerous sea crossing in overcrowded boats to arrive on the Florida shore seeking political asylum.

Amnesty to Undocumented Immigrants

1986: President Ronald Reagan signs into law the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which grants amnesty to more than 3 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

2001 : U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) propose the first Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would provide a pathway to legal status for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally by their parents as children. The bill—and subsequent iterations of it—don’t pass.

2012 : President Barack Obama signs Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which temporarily shields some Dreamers from deportation, but doesn’t provide a path to citizenship.

2017: President Donald Trump issues two executive orders aimed at curtailing travel and immigration from six majority Muslim countries (Chad, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia) as well as North Korea and Venezuela. Both of these so-called Muslim travel bans are challenged in state and federal courts.

2018: In April 2018, the travel restrictions on Chad are lifted. In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court uphold a third version of the travel ban on the remaining seven countries.

Immigration Timeline, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation . LBJ on Immigration, LBJ Presidential Library . The Nation's Immigration Laws, 1920 to Today, Pew Research Center . 1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Library of Congress .

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2021 Theses Doctoral

Three Essays on International Migration

Huang, Xiaoning

Today, there are about 250 million international migrants globally, and the number is increasing each year. Immigrants have contributed to the global economy, bridged cultural and business exchanges between host and home countries, and increased ethnic, racial, social, and cultural diversity in the host societies. Immigrants have also been overgeneralized about, misunderstood, scapegoated, and discriminated against. Understanding what drives international migration, who migrate, and how immigrants fare in destination has valuable theoretical, practical, and policy implications. This dissertation consists of three essays on international immigration. The first paper aims to test a series of immigration theories by studying immigrant skill-selection into South Africa and the United States. Most of the research on the determinants of immigrant skill selection has been focusing on immigrants in the United States and other developed destination countries. However, migration has been growing much faster in recent years between developing countries. This case study offers insights into the similarities and differences of immigration theories within the contexts of international migration into South Africa and the US. This project is funded by the Hamilton Research Fellowship of Columbia School of Social Work. The second paper narrows down the focus onto Asian immigrants in the United States, studying how the skill-selection of Asian immigrants from different regions has evolved over the past four decades. Asian sending countries have experienced tremendous growth in their economy and educational infrastructure. The rapid development provides an excellent opportunity to test the theories on the associations between emigrants’ skill-selection and sending countries’ income, inequality, and education level. On the other hand, during the study period, the United States has had massive expansion employment-based immigration system, followed by cutbacks in immigration policies. I study the association between immigration patterns and these policies to draw inferences on how the changes in immigration policies have affected the skill selection of Asian immigrants. This research is funded by Columbia University Weatherhead East Asia Institute’s Dorothy Borg Research Program Dissertation Research Fellowship. The third paper centers on the less-educated immigrant groups in the US and investigates the gap in welfare use between less-educated immigrant and native households during 1995-2018, spanning periods of economic recessions and recoveries, changes in welfare policy regimes, and policies towards immigrants. I use “decomposition analysis” to study to what extend demographic factors, macroeconomic trends, and welfare and immigration policy could explain the disparities in welfare participation between immigrants and natives. This paper is co-authored with Dr. Neeraj Kaushal from Columbia School of Social Work and Dr. Julia Shu-Huah Wang from the University of Hong Kong. The work has been published in Population Research and Policy Review (doi.org/10.1007/s11113-020-09621-8).

Geographic Areas

• South Africa
• United States
• Social service
• Immigrants--Economic aspects
• Immigrants--Social conditions
• Race discrimination
• Immigrants--Education

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Article contents

Immigration, migration, and culture.

• Victoria M. Esses Victoria M. Esses Department of Psychology, Western University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.287
• Published online: 28 March 2018

Migration is the movement of people from one location to another, either within a country (internal migration between cities or regions) or between countries (international migration). Migration may be relatively voluntary (e.g., for employment opportunities) or involuntary (e.g., due to armed conflict, persecution, or natural disasters), and it may be temporary (e.g., migrant workers moving back and forth between source and receiving areas) or permanent (e.g., becoming a permanent resident in a new country). The term immigration refers specifically to international migration that is relatively permanent in nature. Immigrants are those individuals who have moved to a new country on a relatively permanent basis. Of importance, refugees are a particular type of immigrant, defined and protected by international law. They are individuals who have been formally recognized as having fled their country of residence because of a well-founded fear of persecution, armed conflict, violence, or war. Until they are recognized as such, these individuals are asylum seekers—individuals who have claimed refugee status and are waiting for that claim to be evaluated. Despite the relative permanence of immigration, advances in transportation and communication mean that immigrants are able to travel to, spend time in, and communicate on a regular basis with their country of origin. As a result, what has been termed transnationalism may result, with individuals holding strong ties with, and actively participating in, both the country of origin and the new receiving country.

Migration often results in two or more cultures coming into contact. This contact is especially likely for international migration where immigrants from one national group (the society of origin) come into contact with members of a different national group (the receiving society). Culture may include specific beliefs, attitudes, and customs, as well as values and behaviors. The term acculturation refers to the changes that may occur when individuals from different cultures come into contact, with possible changes in both immigrants and members of the receiving society. Psychological theory and research suggest that acculturation is bidimensional, with changes potentially taking place along two dimensions—one representing the maintenance or loss of the original culture and the other representing the adoption or rejection of the new culture. This bidimensionality is important because it suggests that acculturation is not linear from original culture to new culture, but instead that individuals may simultaneously participate in the new culture and maintain their original culture. The two cultures may be expressed at different times, in different contexts, or may merge to form cultural expressions that have aspects of both cultures. With voluntary and involuntary migration at historically high levels, understanding the drivers of migration and its consequences for migrants and those with whom they come into contact are essential for global cooperation and well-being.

• immigration
• asylum seeker
• transnationalism
• dehumanization
• acculturation

The Different Forms of Migration

Throughout history, humans have migrated, that is, moved from one location to another. This movement of people has dramatically increased in recent years, however, due to advances in transportation and communication paired with unequal economic opportunities and human security risks among locations (Castles, 2013 ; Lonnback, 2014 ; United Nations, 2016 ). Migration may occur within a country or between countries. Internal migration (within-country migration) is of considerable importance, yet relatively understudied (Castles, 2013 ). The number of internal migrants who are living outside of their region of birth has exceeded 740 million people, with potentially profound social, cultural, and economic consequences (Lucas, 2015 ). This number includes approximately 40 million conflict-related internally displaced persons whose numbers have increased rapidly in the past few years (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre [iDMC], 2017 ). In contrast, though somewhat smaller in magnitude, migration between countries has been the focus of considerable research attention across a variety of disciplines. It is estimated that in 2015 , there were 244 million international migrants, including approximately 20 million refugees (United Nations, 2016 ). The research focus in this area has predominantly been on the drivers and consequences of international migration.

Migration may be relatively voluntary or involuntary. When involuntary, as in the case of individuals who are fleeing conflict and persecution, individuals may be internally displaced persons (IDPs) living within their home country or asylum seekers or refugees outside of their country of birth (IOM, 2017 ; UNESCO, 2017 ). When voluntary, the focus of internal migration tends to be on migrants moving for economic opportunity, and on international migration for economic or family reasons (Castles, 2013 ). Yet this distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration is not as clear as it may seem. For example, temporary labor migrants and migrants from developing countries seeking employment may be viewed as voluntary migrants by others but may themselves see their migration as involuntary, as they do not have the economic opportunities at home required to survive.

Why People Migrate

The question of why people migrate is multipronged, and the literature on this topic often talks about the push-pull factors of migration, that is, what conditions drive people to leave their region or country of origin, and what characteristics attract them to a particular location (Castles, 2013 ; Martin & Zurcher, 2008 ). There is also a growing literature on the personality factors that may play a role in the decision to migrate (Li & Frieze, 2013 ). This research has mainly been focused on international migration across borders.

The literature on the push and pull factors of internal migration is relatively limited. In terms of push factors, internal migration may be driven by poor economic conditions, including loss of rural livelihoods that drive farmers away from rural locations, and poor employment opportunities at home (Castles, 2013 ). Relatedly, push factors for internal migration may include environmental disasters such as drought or extreme weather, forcing people to move away from particular regions (iDMC, 2017 ; Lucas, 2015 ). Internal migration may also be pushed by factors such as conflict, violence, and war (UNHCR, 2017 ). Many of the individuals who move internally migrate to urban areas, which tend to be characterized by the pull of potential economic opportunity (Lucas, 2015 ). This pull may be deceptive, however, in that there is seldom sufficient formal employment for the large number of newcomers to urban areas, which can result in employment in insecure informal sector work and human rights abuse (Castles, 2013 ).

In terms of international migration, both economic and noneconomic push and pull factors may play a role. Major push factors may include life-threatening poverty, natural disasters, environmental degradation, persecution, and war, as well as safety concerns such as high crime rates. Less severe push factors may include relatively poor economic conditions in one’s country of origin such as lack of educational and employment opportunities, low wages, and poor working conditions (Castles & Miller, 2009 ; Martin & Zurcher, 2008 ). Sometimes these push factors are connected to environmental conditions such as drought or flooding that might provide an inhospitable environment per se and may depress wages through crop failure or lead to political instability and a lack of safety (Castles, 2013 ). Other push factors include a culture that encourages migration (such as is evident in the Philippines), low feelings of belonging, and political instability. Economic pull factors include educational and employment opportunities, a high standard of living, and labor recruitment by countries facing demographic challenges (Castles, 2013 ). Noneconomic pull factors include the presence of family and friends, a safe environment, and cultural and political freedoms (Castles, 2013 ). The recruitment of workers by what Castles ( 2013 ) has termed the “migration industry”—including migration agents, labor recruiters, housing brokers, and others—may capitalize on pull factors for migration, making their living by highlighting the pull qualities of a destination.

Global communication networks inform the international community about conditions and opportunities abroad and act as the connector between push and pull factors (Martin & Zurcher, 2008 ). For example, migrants may be motivated to leave their country of origin by high unemployment (push factor) and be encouraged to migrate to a country like Australia by a temporary skilled migration visa program (pull factor). Once this stream of migration is formed, it continues to grow through formal and informal networks of information sharing regarding wages and job opportunities.

Interacting with push and pull factors are the characteristics of migrants themselves. Research on the migrant personality examines why some individuals migrate whereas others living in the same socioeconomic conditions do not (Li & Frieze, 2013 ). This research has shown that personality and motivational factors can play a central role in the desire to migrate. The migrant personality may include resilience to anxiety and insecurity and more dismissing and secure attachment styles. A dismissing attachment style makes an individual more detached from social surroundings and thus more likely to emigrate, whereas a secure attachment style enhances psychological adjustment in the new country. Other aspects of the migrant personality are openness to experience and extraversion, which are positively related to one’s intention to emigrate. Some aspects of personality may promote decisions to emigrate when conditions in the home country are poor. In particular, research has shown that having an internal motivation to compete and achieve (i.e., achievement motivation) and an internal desire for leadership and control over others (i.e., power motivation) may be related to emigration when conditions at home block the fulfillment of these motivations. Alternatively, a desire to form and maintain relationships with others is related to choosing to stay in one’s country of origin.

Transnationalism

Although immigration is defined as international migration that is relatively permanent in nature, it is no longer the case that migrants leave behind their country of birth and move to a new location, expecting to stay there for the rest of their lives. Instead, travel back and forth between two or more locations has become feasible and quite common, facilitated by the ease of global transportation. In addition, migrants are increasingly able to hold citizenship in more than one country and to participate in more than one political process (Bloemraad, 2004 ; Faist & Gerdes, 2008 ). As well, advances in communication technology mean that migrants can easily stay connected with individuals in their home country and with members of the diaspora in other countries (Schuerkens, 2005 ). This development has led to transnationalism, defined as holding strong ties to more than one nation and the ability to stay connected with and participate in both the society of origin and the receiving society (Portes, Guarnizo, & Landolt, 1999 ). Transnationalism is important to consider in the context of the push and pull factors of migration because it changes the immigration process. Through transnationalism, the migration process is no longer unidirectional with push factors driving people to leave their country of origin and pull factors attracting them to their country of settlement. Instead, transnationals may be repeatedly pushed and pulled back and forth between their country of origin and country of settlement. In this context, national borders are less relevant for activities and identity, and individuals can lead multisited lives (IOM, 2010 ).

Research on transnationalism has focused on the social, economic, cultural, and political impact of transnationalism for source and receiving countries (e.g., Ley, 2013 ; Satzewich & Wong, 2006 ; Vertovec, 2009 ). For example, what is the impact on immigrant identity; on perceived loyalty to the two countries; for economic exchanges; and for remittances and investment in the source and receiving countries? Do national policies need to change to accommodate transnationalism? These are only a few of the many questions being researched regarding transnationalism in a variety of fields.

Determinants of Receiving Community Attitudes Toward Immigrants and Immigration

Two important psychologically based theories that have addressed factors influencing attitudes toward immigrants and immigration are the Unified Instrumental Model of Group Conflict, proposed by Esses, Jackson, Dovidio, and Hodson ( 2005b ), and the Integrated Threat Theory of Prejudice, proposed by Stephan and Stephan ( 2000 ). Though quite similar in their perspective on immigrant–nonimmigrant relations, where they differ is in their framing of the factors influencing immigration attitudes—more in terms of competition in the Unified Instrumental Model of Group Conflict and more in terms of threat in the Integrated Threat Theory of Prejudice. Nonetheless, both theories incorporate a variety of factors that may influence immigration attitudes, including economic factors, health and safety, cultural and value-related factors, and national identity.

Perceived Economic Competition and Threat

A recurring debate is whether immigrants contribute economically to their new society or are a drain on resources and compete for jobs with native-born individuals. A specific answer to this question may depend on the immigration policy of the receiving nation, the type of immigrants who are arriving, the form that the receiving country’s economy takes, and demographic and economic characteristics of the receiving country’s economy over time. For example, when economic times are challenging and unemployment rates are higher, the costs of immigration may be seen as greater than the benefits (e.g., Esipova, Ray, Pugliese, & Tsabutashvili, 2015 ; Esses, Brochu, & Dickson, 2011 ).

Irrespective of the actual economic contributions of immigrants, an important factor in determining attitudes toward immigrants and immigration among members of a receiving society is the perceived economic contributions and costs of immigration (e.g., Esses, Jackson, & Armstrong, 1998 ). Immigrants who do not do well economically are likely to be seen as a drain on social services (e.g., welfare), leading to negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. On the other hand, immigrants who do well economically may also be seen as a threat to the economic conditions of the receiving society because their successes may at times be seen as coming at the expense of nonimmigrants. These “zero-sum beliefs”—beliefs that the more immigrants obtain, the less is available for nonimmigrants from a pool of limited resources—lead to negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (Esses et al., 2005b ). These beliefs mean that some members of the receiving society may perceive immigrants negatively regardless of whether immigrants succeed or fail economically. Fundamentally, it is the belief that immigrants are taking resources from members of the receiving society that drives these negative attitudes.

The belief that immigrants are a drain on receiving nation resources may be more or less likely to be part of the dominant discourse within a country, may be more or less likely to be promoted by the media, and may depend on individual difference variables, such as Social Dominance Orientation. Research has shown that individuals who are higher in Social Dominance Orientation (i.e., support inequality in society and believe in group hierarchies) are especially likely to see the world in general, and to see relations with immigrants in particular, as zero-sum in nature. As a result, they are especially likely to hold negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (Esses, Dovidio, Jackson, & Armstrong, 2001 ). There is also evidence that situational factors, such as media representations of immigration, may have profound effects on immigration attitudes (e.g., Sides & Citrin, 2007 ).

Perceived Threats to Health and Safety

In addition to perceptions of economic threat and competition, immigrants may at times be seen as a threat to members of the receiving nations’ health and safety. Concerns that immigrants may carry infectious diseases have influenced immigration policies throughout history and to the present day despite the fact that immigrants are no longer a major vector of disease. Nonetheless, when the association between risk of disease and newcomers is salient in the media, irrespective of whether the risk is genuine, this association may result in negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (Esses, Medianu, & Lawson, 2013 ).

Concerns about threats to safety posed by immigrants have become more prevalent since September 11, 2001 , due to the salient association between immigrants and terrorists, exacerbated by the media (Hodson, Esses, & Dovidio, 2006 ). It is now the case that immigrants, particularly Muslims and those from Near and Middle Eastern countries, are more likely to be viewed with suspicion and hostility. Most recently, many Western nations have been resistant to accepting large numbers of refugees fleeing conflicts in Syria and Iraq because of safety concerns and receiving nations’ fear that they may be harboring terrorists and criminals. These concerns may help explain the rise in anti-Muslim refugee attitudes in various parts of the world and the rise of anti-immigrant groups and political parties.

Perceived Cultural and Value-Related Threat and Competition

In addition to potentially being seen as a threat to tangible resources, health, and safety, immigrants are at times seen as threatening the culture and values of members of the receiving society (Esses et al., 2005b ; Stephan & Stephan, 2000 ). Just as some people may see tangible resources as zero-sum in nature, some individuals may also see more symbolic outcomes as zero-sum. As a result, they may believe that if immigrants are allowed to maintain their practices and values, then the culture and values of the receiving society are weakened. These zero-sum beliefs about culture and values are particularly likely to be held by individuals who are higher in Social Dominance Orientation (more likely to believe in hierarchy and inequality) and lead to negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (Esses et al., 2005b ). Just as with tangible resources, the belief that immigrants threaten the dominant culture and values may be more or less likely to be part of the dominant discourse within a country and may be more or less likely to be promoted by the media. In recent years, the claim that immigrants are a potential threat to the dominant culture and values of receiving countries has become particularly prevalent within European discourse, resulting in increased support for restrictive immigration policies.

National Identity

How national identity is defined within a particular country and by specific individuals within that country plays an important role in determining whether immigrants are seen as inside or outside of the national ingroup, and as a threat. Two important forms of national identity are nativist/ethnonational and civic/cultural national identity. The nativist form is based on descent or long-term residency and sometimes on being a member of the dominant religion. This narrow construal of the national ingroup is closely tied to ethnonational identity, which is defined by kinship bonds and a common ethnic heritage. In contrast, the civic/cultural form of national identity derives from a voluntary commitment to the laws and institutions of the country and on the feeling of being a member of the national group (Esses, Dovidio, Semenya, & Jackson, 2005a ). Countries with a history of promoting a nativist/ethnonational national identity (e.g., the United Kingdom) are more likely to have restrictive immigration policies and to reject immigrants as members of the national ingroup. In contrast, countries that have a history of promoting a civic/cultural national identity (e.g., Canada) are more likely to have relatively open immigration policies and to accept immigrants as members of the national ingroup soon after their arrival.

Definitions of national identity may change over time. For example, it has been demonstrated that in times of national crisis and threat, the psychological boundaries defining the national ingroup tend to narrow and nativist sentiments tend to increase, resulting in more negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (Hodson et al., 2006 ). In addition, large-scale immigration, particularly from new and unfamiliar source countries, can increase concerns about national identity and increase nativist beliefs so that negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration become evident (Grigorieff, Roth, & Ubfal, 2016 ). Thus, narrow definitions of national identity and unfavorable views of immigrants and immigration may be mutually reinforcing. It is also the case that individuals within a nation may have differing views on how national identity should be defined, with those holding more nativist views especially likely to also hold negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (Esses et al., 2005a ).

In addition to construal of national identity, forms of attachment to one’s nation also influence immigration attitudes. In particular, individuals who are higher in nationalism—believing that their nation is superior to all others—hold more negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. In contrast, individuals who are higher in patriotism—expressing pride and love for their nation—do not necessarily hold such attitudes (Esses et al., 2005a ).

Attitudes toward immigrants and immigration among members of a receiving community are important for a variety of reasons. First, they may influence support for immigration policies within a nation, determining the levels of immigrants allowed entry each year, the stringency of immigration policies, and the type of supports offered to new arrivals (e.g., Esses et al., 2005b ; Jackson & Esses, 2000 ). Attitudes may also influence the more general treatment of immigrants among members of the receiving population, and as a result, immigrants’ life outcomes. For example, there is evidence that prejudice against particular groups of immigrants may lead to the discounting of their skills and credentials in the labor market, resulting in their unemployment and underemployment (Esses, Dietz, & Bhardwaj, 2006 ). All of these consequences can ultimately affect the degree of harmony or discord within a nation.

The Dehumanization of Refugees

Despite Western nations’ stated commitment to the protection of refugees under the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, individuals seeking entry into Western countries as asylum seekers are at times viewed with hostility and contempt and are perceived as not deserving of assistance (e.g., Human Rights Watch, 2000 ). What role might dehumanization play in this process? Dehumanization is the tendency to regard members of some groups as less human and, thus, as less worthy of humane treatment than members of other groups (Smith, 2011 ). In recent years, it can be argued that the dominant discourse surrounding refugee claimants in many countries has become increasingly dehumanizing, with political leaders and the media often promoting such perceptions (e.g., Gabrielatos & Baker, 2008 ; Taylor, 2015 ). For example, refugees are at times portrayed in metaphorical terms, described as “swarms” and “marauders” who threaten to “flood” Western countries with the goal of “sponging off the welfare system.” Refugees have been portrayed as “a plague of feral humans” and as “cockroaches” and “parasites.” In this discourse, refugees are depicted as similar to animals and as a significant danger to humankind, inciting anxiety and fear. As a result, Western countries may feel justified in arming themselves with stringent refugee legislation to keep the refugee hordes away.

Recent research demonstrates that this dehumanizing language and these messages about refugees being presented by the media can lead to their dehumanization. In particular, media depictions that portray refugee claimants as bogus, and thus as a threat to the integrity of the refugee system, have been shown to lead to the dehumanization of refugees (Esses, Veenvliet, & Medianu, 2011 ). Of importance, dehumanization is not equivalent to negative attitudes, but instead is relatively independent. This dehumanization has a variety of consequences, however, including creating contempt for refugees and support for more restrictive refugee policies. In addition, media depictions that associate refugees with terrorists and criminals can lead to their automatic dehumanization, with those who read these descriptions becoming significantly more likely to automatically associate refugees with animals than with humans (Medianu, Sutter, & Esses, forthcoming ). Of note, further research has demonstrated that this automatic dehumanization has behavioral consequences, leading to less positive nonverbal behavior toward an individual described as a refugee (Sutter, Medianu, & Esses, 2016 ). These findings suggest that refugees may at times be portrayed in ways that lead to their negative treatment and to justification of this treatment on the basis of the perception that refugees are not quite human.

Acculturation

Acculturation refers to “those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups” (Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits, 1936 , pp. 149–152). Although acculturation is often discussed in terms of the changes that immigrants undergo in a new society, acculturation can also occur in the receiving society. In addition, when considering immigrant acculturation, it is important to note that acculturation preferences involve both immigrants and members of the receiving society. That is, immigrants may have specific preferences for how they wish to fit into their new society, but it is also the case that the receiving society plays a role in terms of allowing or facilitating this acculturation.

The framework of acculturation that has likely been most influential is that of Berry ( 1997 ). According to Berry, two main issues underlie the acculturation strategies that individuals choose. The first is the extent to which individuals wish to maintain their heritage identity and culture (desire for culture maintenance), and the second is the extent to which individuals wish to have contact with those who do not share their heritage identity and culture (desire for contact). Individuals’ preferences regarding these issues result in four acculturation strategies: assimilation, integration, separation, and marginalization (Berry, 1997 ). When immigrants do not wish to maintain their cultural heritage but seek relationships with the receiving society, the acculturation strategy adopted is one of assimilation . On the other hand, when immigrants wish to maintain their cultural heritage but do not seek relationships with the receiving society, the acculturation strategy adopted is one of separation . When immigrants are interested in both maintaining their cultural heritage and seeking relationships with the receiving society, the acculturation strategy adopted is one of integration . Finally, when immigrants are not interested in or able to maintain relationships with either their own cultural group or the receiving society, the acculturation strategy adopted is one of marginalization (Sam, 2006 ).

Acculturation preferences are not static but may vary within individuals, depending on the situation (e.g., being with family vs. out in the community; Noels & Clément, 2015 ), and evolve over time. The acculturation preferences of immigrants may also change across generations. Within the individual, opportunities for immigrants to have contact with members of the receiving community and involvement with the receiving community culture tend to promote positive intergroup relations, leading to a desire for further contact that may increase over time (Asendorpf & Motti-Stefanidi, 2017 ). Although adoption of a receiving community culture may be more likely to occur in public than private domains for first-generation immigrants, this acculturation tends to converge in later generations (Noels & Clément, 2015 ).

The Berry model has been criticized on a number of grounds, including the measure of acculturation utilized and the uncertainty of the causal connection between acculturation and the outcomes to which it has been linked (see Brown & Zagefka, 2011 ). In addition, it is important to note that immigrants are not always free to choose how they relate to the receiving society and to their own cultural group. To illustrate, consider what conditions must exist for immigrants to be able to adopt the integration strategy. First, immigrants must be willing to form relationships with the receiving society. Second, the receiving society must be willing to support the participation of immigrants. For this to occur, the receiving society needs to build a climate promoting cultural diversity and low levels of prejudice toward immigrants (Sam, 2006 ).

Bourhis, Montreuil, Barrette, and Montaruli ( 2009 ) incorporate in their Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM) not only the acculturation orientation of the immigrant group, but also the acculturation preferences of the receiving society (see also Berry, 2008 ; Piontkowski, Rohmann, & Florack, 2002 ). According to Bourhis et al. ( 2009 ), the two main questions facing receiving community members are whether they find it acceptable that immigrants maintain their cultural heritage and whether they accept that immigrants join the receiving society. If receiving society members answer affirmatively to both these questions, then their acculturation orientation is integration. If receiving society members do not want immigrants to join the receiving culture but they do want them to maintain their heritage culture, then their acculturation orientation is segregation. If receiving society members want immigrants to join the receiving culture and do not want immigrants to maintain their heritage culture, then their acculturation orientation is assimilation. If receiving community members do not want immigrants to join the receiving culture and they do not want them to maintain their heritage culture, then their acculturation orientation is either exclusion or individualism. The exclusionist orientation reflects the belief that immigration should be prevented. The individualism orientation reflects the belief that immigrants are individuals and should be treated on an individual basis, based on their personal characteristics (Bourhis et al., 2009 ).

Bourhis et al. ( 2009 ) suggest that the acculturation orientations of immigrant groups must be considered in conjunction with the acculturation orientations of receiving societies. When the acculturation orientation of an immigrant group matches the orientation of the receiving society, the groups are considered to be concordant. In contrast, when the acculturation orientation of an immigrant group does not match (or only partially matches) the orientation of the receiving society, the groups are considered to be discordant. Bourhis and colleagues ( 2009 ) suggest that discordant orientations result in problematic or conflictual relational outcomes including communication breakdowns, discriminatory behaviors, and acculturative stress among members of the immigrant group (see also Brown & Zagefka, 2011 ). Of interest, evidence suggests that it is not only the case that different receiving societies and the individuals within those societies have different views on immigrant acculturation, but also that members of receiving communities may endorse different acculturation orientations toward different immigrant groups within their community (e.g., valued vs. devalued immigrants; Bourhis et al., 2010 ; Montreuil & Bourhis, 2004 ).

Conclusions

It is clear that migration, in its many forms, is having a substantial impact on the global landscape. No longer are people trapped by the circumstances of where they were born. Instead, modern technology means that more people are migrating than ever before, both within and across national boundaries. Push and pull factors play a large role in this process, as does the personality of the migrant him- or herself. Transnationalism means that individuals may lead multisited lives, repeatedly pushed and pulled across borders. Whether members of receiving communities have welcoming or unwelcoming attitudes toward migrants, and the specific acculturation strategies supported by migrants and by members of receiving societies, determine whether migrants and their receiving communities reap the potential benefits that migration poses. Thus, empirical evidence on the factors that drive migration, those that determine the attitudes of receiving communities, and factors influencing the acculturation process is needed more than ever to guide the establishment of policies and practices that ensure that migration is managed and supported effectively for all involved.

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Human migration sparked by wars, disasters, and now climate

Homo sapiens have been on the move from almost their beginnings. Climate-caused floods, drought, and water shortages will likely join the list of reasons to migrate.

Migration is defined as “movement from one country, place or locality to another.” Ever since the earliest humans began to spread from Africa, humans have been on the move. Even today, 3 percent of the world’s population—at least 258 million people— live outside of their country of origin . Whether voluntary or forced, migration has profoundly shaped our world.

First migrants

The earliest migrants were ancient humans who originated on the African continent. Their spread to Eurasia and elsewhere remains a matter of significant scientific controversy. The earliest fossils of recognizable Homo sapiens were found in Ethiopia and are approximately 200,000 years old.

The “out of Africa” theory posits that around 60,000 years ago, Homo sapiens dispersed across Eurasia, where they met and eventually replaced other human ancestors like Neanderthals. However, that theory has been challenged by evidence of migrations from Africa to Eurasia 120,000 years ago. Either way, early humans are thought to have migrated to Asia either across a strait that lies between the Horn of Africa and what is now Yemen, or via the Sinai Peninsula. After spreading to southeast Asia, early humans are thought to have migrated to Australia, which shared a landmass with New Guinea at the time, then to Europe, then to the Americas.

Modern humans migrated out of Africa over 60,000 years ago. This map shows their migration paths.

Those migrations were likely driven by climate, food availability, and other environmental factors. As time passed and cultures became less nomadic, war and colonialism began to fuel migrations, too. The ancient Greeks expanded their dynasty with a laundry list of colonies. Ancient Rome sent its citizens as far north as Britain. Imperial China, too, used its military to expand its borders and house refugees in ever farther-flung borderlands.

Reasons to flee

Migration has long been characterized and complicated by war, enslavement, and persecution. Jews fled their ancestral lands after waves of exile and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., creating a widespread diaspora. At least 12 million African s were enslaved and forced to relocate to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade between 1500 and the 1860s. In the aftermath of World War II in 1945, hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors and other civilians became displaced persons , emigrating to Western Europe, the territory of British-Mandate Palestine that later became Israel, and the United States. And at the end of the Vietnam War, over 125,000 people from Vietnam migrated to the United States in the face of a humanitarian crisis.

They weren’t the last: Migration continues in the 21st century, driven by famine, natural disasters, and human rights abuses. Beginning in 2013, migrants from North Africa and the Middle East began to move in increasingly larger numbers into Europe, seeking to escape poverty and political instability in their homelands. The migrant crisis stretched European resources thin, fueling xenophobia and frustration even in welcoming states. And hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people have been forced to migrate to Bangladesh from Myanmar despite centuries of history in their homeland .


In the future, the changing climate may fuel even more mass movements. A 2018 World Bank report found that more than 143 million people may soon become “climate migrants,” driven from their homes by floods, droughts, and water scarcity. No matter the reasons, migration will likely continue as long as there are humans—and as long as there are places to go.

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American Immigration History Essay

The history of immigration is important in understanding how the different ethnic groups in America relate. However, immigration has been a controversial topic throughout history. This controversy has resulted from the failure to control the number and type of immigration.

Additionally, it is worth noting that America was a colony of Britain. Therefore, America received a significant number of immigrants during the colonial period. However, during this era, the immigration policy did not exist. Nonetheless, the largest wave of immigrants arrived in America in the 20 th century. This essay provides an insight into the History of immigration in America.

The colonial period, in America, lasted from 1607 to 1776. During this period, majority of immigrants were Britons. In fact, by 1790, sixty percent of the population in Jamestown (Virginia) and Plymouth (Massachusetts) was from Britain. Most of these immigrants came to America for economic reasons. However, some arrived in search of religious freedom. The Germans, who began arriving in America around early to mid 1700s, were the second major group to arrive.

However, they lived in rural areas and resisted assimilation by other cultures. Additionally, from the start of the colonial period until the abolition of slave trade, America received many immigrants from Africa. These were slaves meant to work in plantations. Therefore, they were involuntary immigrants. About eleven to twelve million African slaves were shipped to the Americas between the 16 th and 20 th Centuries.

The first large-scale wave of immigrants occurred between 1820 and 1880. In this time, over ten million immigrants arrived in America. The most notable immigrants were the Irish. Three million people migrated from Ireland to the US supposedly to escape the potato famine. Furthermore, the second wave of immigrants took place between 1880 to1930. In this episode alone, America received 27.5 million immigrants.

This group was from Southern and Eastern Europe. Moreover, they were Catholics and did not speak English. The Jewish also migrated to America during this time. However, they were more skilled than the earlier group. For that reason, it was easier for them to settle than the group from Eastern and Southern Europe. Additionally, the first wave of Asian immigrant was between 1840 and 1924.

These were mainly Chinese and Japanese immigrants. The Japanese settled in the rural farms where they worked as agricultural contract workers. On the other hand, the Chinese worked on Hawaiian plantations, mines and railroads. The largest wave of immigrants came after 1965. A significant number of Mexicans entered America during this wave.

Uncontrolled immigration caused a major crisis in the US. Consequently, there was a need to develop restrictive immigration policies. For that reason, a literacy test was developed in 1917. This was followed by the immigration act of 1924 and later the Hart Cellar Act of 1965.

In the immigration act of 1924, the total immigration was restricted to 165,000 people per year while only 2% of all immigrants were to come from the same country. On the other hand, the Hart Cellar Act of 1965 restricted immigration to family unification and employment visas. In addition, the act placed ceilings on immigrants from certain hemispheres.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that America’s immigration history is crucial in understanding the dynamics of the various ethnic groups within it. Additionally, the controversy in the immigration has stood for a long period of time. Therefore, failure to control the number and type of immigration in America is not a new thing.

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IvyPanda. (2018, November 30). American Immigration History. https://ivypanda.com/essays/immigration-history/

"American Immigration History." IvyPanda , 30 Nov. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/immigration-history/.

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1. IvyPanda . "American Immigration History." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/immigration-history/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "American Immigration History." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/immigration-history/.

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Essay: Migration History in Germany

Migration history in germany.

There has never been a more opportune time to reinvestigate the historical development of our society. In 2011, Germany had 80.3 million residents. Of those residents, 15.96 million - almost 19% of the entire population – had a migration background.* In 2005, in comparison, 17.9% of the population had a migration background.

At the same time, Germany's workforce no longer meets the labor demands of today's economy. There are some important parallels to be drawn between the current situation and the era of the so-called economic miracle, which began in the mid-1950s. However, the history of migration in Germany reaches back further than that.

*According to the German Federal Statistics Office: All individuals who have immigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949, all foreign citizens born in Germany, and all children born as German citizens to at least one parent who immigrated or was born in Germany as a foreign citizen are considered to have a migration background.

From a Land of Emigration to a Land of Immigration

Incessant wars, religious conflicts, famines, political grievances and a lack of prospects forced many people to leave Germany over the centuries. The land's relative population loss was enormous. An estimated six million emigrants left Germany between 1820 and 1920. A large portion immigrated to the USA. The tide of emigration only began to ebb, beginning in 1890, as the industrial era brought economic success to the German Empire. From that point on, the number of individuals immigrating to Germany surpassed the number of Germans who left. Foreign laborers found employment, above all, in the booming centers of the coal and steel industries.

The National Socialist Dictatorship and the Post-War Years

The forced employment of foreigners was one visible sign of the national-socialists' regime of injustice. The camps and the daily sight of forced laborers were simply part of everyday life for the local population. They paid little attention to the situation. The callous indifference displayed in the post-war years toward the issue of forced labor reflects how little it was considered a misdeed.

The years after 1945 were shaped by people in motion as well. The forced mobility of diverse groups of people (refugees, people expelled from their homes through territorial exchange and other so-called displaced persons) altered the structure of the German population. Tensions and conflicts with local residents arose with the influx of refugees and expellees. Socio-cultural and confessional differences, in particular, gave rise to disputes. The number of refugees and expellees only first began to decline at the end of the 1940s. Simultaneously, the growing demand for labor soon outstripped the capacity of the labor force. The labor shortage was particularly acute in the fields of agriculture and heavy industry.

"Guest Workers" as "Human Capital"

The economic recovery and subsequent boom in West Germany exceeded even the boldest forecasts. Economic growth rates of up to 12.1% left the land reeling. The unemployment rate shrank dramatically over a relatively short time span, from 11% in 1950 to less than 1% in 1961. In order to offset labor shortages, the federal government turned to a traditional model of recruiting and temporarily employing foreign workers. The first "Agreement on the Recruitment and Placement of Workers" ("Abkommen über Anwerbung und Vermittlung von Arbeitskräften") was negotiated with Italy in 1955. Further contracts soon followed: with Greece and Spain (1960), Turkey (1961), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965) and Yugoslavia (1968). Economic and political actors, as well as the general population, assumed that the "guest workers" would not stay long. Based on that assumption, they did not think it necessary to develop any socio-political or infrastructural concepts to account for longer term residence.

Initially, the recruitment agreement with Italy had little impact, and the number of recruited workers remained relatively low. However, after 1959, the foreign population in Germany rapidly increased. Just a few years later, in 1964, the arrival of the millionth "guest worker," Rodrigues de Sá of Portugal, was celebrated.

During this era, foreign workers were employed primarily as unskilled and semi-skilled laborers in sectors were piece work, shift work and assembly line positions could be found. They took on jobs that German laborers considered unattractive. This made it possible for many West Germans to move up into more favorable or more qualified positions. In this way, foreign workers massively boosted upward mobility among the core workforce, without enjoying the same level of benefit. Although foreign workers were formally considered equal to their German counterparts, lack of training, non-recognition of foreign certifications and language deficits limited the "guest workers" to the lowest wage categories.

The economic crisis of 1966-7 exacerbated the tensions over the recruitment of foreign laborers. West Germans had become accustomed to steady growth through the post-war years. This first post-war recession was a hard blow to the ego of the proud "Republic of the Economic Miracle." In the area of labor market policy, this recession-induced insecurity led to heated and critical debates about the sense in employing foreign workers.

The 1973 Recruitment Ban and its Consequences

The recruitment ban (Anwerbestopp), set forth in a directive on November 23, 1973, marked the end of the era of foreign labor recruitment to West Germany. The ban completely blocked the entry of "guest workers" from lands which were not members of the European Economic Community (EEC). Those seeking to legitimate the decision pointed to the "price shocks" that accompanied the 1973 oil crisis. But in truth, the oil crisis simply proved to be a convenient moment to attempt to shrink the foreign population. However, the hope that the "guest worker issue" would resolve itself, through voluntary return, proved to be very unrealistic. Fearing they would not be able to return to work in Germany, many foreign laborers chose not to leave the country at all. This necessary change in the plans on the part of many "guest workers" transformed their anticipated short-term stay into permanent residence. Through the right to family reunification, many foreign laborers arranged the subsequent immigration of their family members to Germany.

The 1980s and 1990s

While immigration figures remained modest through the 1980s, the numbers rapidly grew again in the early 1990s. At times, they even surpassed the highest rates from the "guest worker" era. The vast geo-political changes of that era led to rising number of migrants, asylum seekers and ethnic Germans returning from former German settlements in Eastern Europe. In particular, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the wars in former Yugoslavia and the human rights crisis in the Kurdish region of Turkey spurred the influx. Simultaneously, xenophobic resentments grew over the course of German reunification. This rising wave of racism and xenophobia culminated in a string of incidences of mob violence (in Hoyerswerda, Rostock, Mölln, Solingen and elsewhere). As immigration rates began to decline again in the mid-1990s, incidences of brazen violence against residents with migration backgrounds also diminished.

One central reason for the shrinking numbers from the mid-1990s is the so-called "Asylum Compromise." Since its implementation in 1993, individuals who have fled lands deemed by the German government to be "free of persecution" and all those who have traveled through "safe third-states" on their way no longer qualify for asylum in Germany. Because it only shares its borders with "safe third-states," it has therefore become impossible for refugees to legally enter Germany overland.

2000: From Heredity to a Territorially Based Right to Citizenship

In the year 2000, dual citizenship became possible in Germany. This change enables children born in Germany to foreign-born permanent residents to hold a German passport as well. This is no small policy shift: it signifies a fundamental transformation of the understanding of German citizenship. Whereas the right to the German nationality was previously only available through hereditary links (ius sanguinis), it is now available to individuals born on German territory (ius soli) too. However, only the children of EU-citizens or parents from states with special agreements with Germany may keep their dual citizenship long-term. All others must choose one of their nationalities upon reaching legal adulthood.

Developments in the new Millennium

The legal frame.

In 2005 the new immigration law (Gesetz zur Steuerung und Begrenzung der Zuwanderung und zur Regelung des Aufenthalts und der Integration von Unionsbürgern und Ausländern) came into effect. With this Germany declared itself as a country of immigration. Integration was defined as a legal duty. The law aimed to simplify the current procedure: many different residence titles for specific purposes, which even experts described as being complicated were simplified into two: the temporary residence permit (befristete“Aufenthaltserlaubnis”) and the permanent settlement permit (unbefristete “Niederlassungserlaubnis”). Furthermore, the law aimed to simplify the corresponding processes. Moreover, it was the first time that language courses became a legal requirement.

The first Integration Summit took place in 2006. The Federal Chancellor, religious representatives and communities, media, unions, sport associations, employers, charitable organisations and migrants took part. The trigger was the results from the PISA study which said that success in the educational system is linked to the origin and the educational background of one’s family. The Integration Summit led to the development of the national integration plan. Here the focus was on creating a dialog with Muslims. As a result there was the first so-called Islam Summit which also took place in 2006. The Government, Muslim associations and individuals participated.

The aforementioned national integration plan was implemented in 2007. In the same year amendments were made to the immigration law because of EU guidelines. A third residence title was introduced: the permission for permanent residence (“Erlaubnis zum Daueraufhalt-EG”). Since then those people that had been tolerated (“Geduldete”) could receive a permanent residence permit, if they fulfilled certain criteria. There were also changes made to the conditions for spouses to follow their partners. The spouses must be of age and be able to prove basic German language skills.

A naturalisation test was introduced on the 1st September 2008. In order to receive German citizenship 17 out of 33 questions must be answered correctly. The test aims to aid integration because it forces the person to occupy themselves with the German language, history, laws, society and culture. Furthermore, a high language level than before is required.

Figures and Structure of Immigration

In the past years the number of people with a migration background has risen. In 2013 there were roughly 16.5 million people, so 20.5% of the population who had a migration background. In 2011 this was 19.5%, whilst in cities 46% of children had a migration background. In 2005 it was 15.3 million people which was 19% of the population. The term “migration background” is disputed. The Statistical Federal Office defines people with a migration background as people “who moved to the present territory of the Federal Republic of Germany after 1949, all foreigners born in Germany and all people born in Germany with German nationality who have at least one parent who immigrated to Germany or is a foreigner who was born in Germany”. The term has been used since 2005. Away from the official definition the question arises of how the person feels; what is the self-perception of the people who fall under this definition?

In 2013 1.2 million people came to Germany. Simultaneously 797,000 people left Germany. This resulted in a plus of 403,000 people. This was the highest plus since 1993. Of the 1.2 million immigrants 755,000 (62%) came from within the EU. The largest country of origin was Poland.

The Blue Card was introduced in 2012. The aim was to simplify the process of receiving a work and residence permit within the EU for highly qualified professionals from outside of the EU. Among other reasons the Blue Card is criticised for having a high minimum wage requirement (66,000 Euros per annum).

A further immigration trend is high potentials coming to Germany from the south of Europe. Due to high unemployment, especially amongst younger people, more and more qualified professionals are coming to Germany. For example in 2011 the number of Greek immigrants rose by 78% and the number of Spanish and Portuguese immigrants by over 50%. Of these immigrants 50-70% have a degree.

Furthermore, Germany is a popular country for studying. In total there are 86,000 students in Germany who have earned their higher education entrance qualification outside of Germany.

The number of asylum applicants has also risen steeply in the last years. Between 2012 and 2013 there was a 70% increase. In total there were 109,580 applications in 2013. Between 2013 and 2014 the figure increased by a further 60%. In 2014 23% of the applicants came from Syria, 10% from Serbia and 8% from Eritrea. In January 2015 24.6% applicants came from Syria, 14% from Kosovo and 9.4% from Serbia. In comparison to other countries such as Lebanon or Turkey Germany offers very few people asylum. Moreover, the cities and communities are often not prepared for the arrival of refugees. The temporary accommodations are overcrowded and turn into semi-permanent solutions.

Prejudices and Stereotypes

De facto Germany is a country of immigration; however, it is not a society of immigration. There are still many prejudices and stereotypes that have a negative impact on living together in society.

One example of a prejudice is that people come to Germany to exploit the welfare system. However the facts paint a different picture: Germany profits from the immigrants. They boost the economy, contribute towards the welfare system and help reduce the lack of professionals.

Citation: Migration history in Germany, https://www.domid.org/angebot/aufsaetze/essay-migrationsgeschichte-in-deutschland

We recommend! Meinwanderungsland: "History of migration in pictures"

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Essay on Migration

Students are often asked to write an essay on Migration in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Migration

Understanding migration.

Migration refers to the movement of people from one place to another. It can be within a country (internal migration) or between different countries (international migration).

Reasons for Migration

People migrate for various reasons. Some move for better job opportunities, while others might move due to conflicts or natural disasters in their home region.

Effects of Migration

Migration can have both positive and negative effects. It can lead to cultural diversity and economic growth, but it can also cause overcrowding and strain on resources.

Migration is a complex issue with many facets. It’s important to understand why people migrate and its impact on societies.

Also check:

• Advantages and Disadvantages of Migration

250 Words Essay on Migration

Introduction.

Migration, an inherent human phenomenon, has shaped societies and cultures since the dawn of civilization. It is a complex process influenced by an intricate interplay of economic, political, social, and environmental factors.

Types of Migration

Migration can be categorized broadly into internal and international. Internal migration involves movement within a country, often from rural to urban areas, driven by the pursuit of better economic opportunities. International migration, on the other hand, involves crossing national borders, often influenced by factors like conflict, persecution, or economic disparity.

The Push-Pull Theory

The push-pull theory provides a framework to understand migration. ‘Push’ factors include poverty, political instability, or environmental disasters that compel people to leave their homes. Conversely, ‘pull’ factors attract individuals to new regions, such as better job opportunities, political stability, or higher living standards.

Impacts of Migration

Migration has profound implications on both the source and destination regions. While it can lead to brain drain and demographic imbalances in the source region, it can also alleviate poverty and foster development. In destination regions, it can stimulate economic growth but may also strain resources and potentially cause social tension.

Migration, an integral part of our globalized world, presents both challenges and opportunities. It is crucial to foster policies that maximize its benefits while mitigating its potential drawbacks. Understanding the dynamics of migration can pave the way for more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable societies.

500 Words Essay on Migration

Migration is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, deeply ingrained in human history. It has been a significant driver of cultural, economic, and social evolution. It is the movement of people from one geographical location to another, either permanently or temporarily. The reasons for migration can vary from political to economic, environmental, or social.

The Driving Forces of Migration

The primary drivers of migration are often classified as push and pull factors. Push factors refer to the conditions that drive individuals to leave their homes, such as poverty, lack of opportunities, political instability, or environmental disasters. Pull factors, on the other hand, are the attractive aspects of the destination, like better economic opportunities, political stability, or higher living standards.

Migration can be categorized into different types based on various parameters. Internal migration refers to the movement within a country, while international migration involves crossing national borders. Migration can also be voluntary, where individuals choose to move, or forced, where individuals are compelled to leave due to circumstances beyond their control.

Migration has profound impacts on both the source and destination regions. For the source region, it can lead to a brain drain if skilled individuals migrate, potentially hindering the development. However, it can also alleviate pressure on resources and lead to remittances that boost the local economy.

For the destination region, migration can lead to an increase in diversity and cultural richness. It can also fill labor gaps, contributing to economic growth. However, if not managed well, it can lead to social tensions.

Migration in the Age of Globalization

In the era of globalization, migration has become more accessible and prevalent. The interconnectedness of economies has led to increased labor mobility. However, it has also exposed the stark inequalities between regions, further motivating migration. The rise of transnational communities, where migrants maintain strong ties with their home countries while integrating into the host society, is another notable trend.

Challenges and Opportunities

Migration presents both challenges and opportunities. The challenges include managing integration, ensuring migrants’ rights, and addressing social tensions. The opportunities lie in harnessing the potential of migrants for economic development, cultural exchange, and fostering global understanding.

In conclusion, migration is an inherent part of human society, driven by a complex interplay of factors. It has far-reaching impacts on individuals, communities, and nations. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the dynamics of migration will continue to evolve, presenting both challenges and opportunities. Understanding and managing migration effectively is crucial to building inclusive, diverse, and prosperous societies.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Research Projects

Online workshop: Global Dress and Migration in History - call for papers

Call for papers deadline: Friday 21 June 2024

Workshop: Friday 29 and Saturday 30 November 2024

Organised by:   Dr Svenja Bethke  (University of Leicester) and Dr Eliza McKee (New York University)

This online workshop will explore the history of migration through the lens of dress in a global dimension.

At the functional and intimate level, dress allows for the protection of the body from changing climate conditions as well as from the gaze of others. At the societal level, dress allows one to express feelings of belonging and identities. What is deemed ‘fashionable’ or ‘suitable’ to wear, depends on the geographical, social, political and cultural context and is subject to change.

During and following migration, significant changes occur. Migrants are confronted with previously unknown climate conditions that require them to dress differently from what they are used to. With dress habits and norms differing between the countries of origin and the new ‘homeland’, dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are often expressed, felt and perceived in the sphere of dress and appearance.

Throughout history and up to contemporary times, people have migrated for a variety of reasons, to seek economic stability, educational and professional opportunities, to accompany their spouses and families, or to flee natural disasters, discrimination, persecution and violent conflicts. Experiences are as diverse as the migrants’ backgrounds and motivations but always marked by hierarchies between the Global North and the Global South, rural and urban spaces, and according to social class, gender, and definitions of race and ethnicity. The migrants’ experiences upon their arrival marked by dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, integration and adaptation are equally diverse and differ along the criteria mentioned. With this workshop, we aim to explore these themes and dynamics through the lens of dress in historical and global perspective.

We invite proposals for paper presentations with a broad geographical and chronological focus on the following themes (but not limited to these):

• Skills and knowledge: How have migrants’ skills and knowledge in the making of dress influenced the design and production of dress?
• Networks and communities: What role have local, transnational and global migrant networks played in the making, distribution and consumption of dress; to what extent have separate and/or integrated infrastructures emerged?
• Experiences: What role have dress and outward appearance played in migrants’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion? How has dress been used to express changing feelings of belonging, social mobility, integration or demarcation?
• (Forced) migration, scarcity and the re-use of dress: which role has the re-use of dress played in the context of migration, for example with regards to clothing aid and/or second-hand clothing?
• Fashion, style and taste: How and which spaces and contexts have migrants influenced, questioned and redefined fashion ideals, style and taste?
• Sources on migrant dress, heritage and memory: How can we make use of material, visual and oral history sources to explore the connection of dress, heritage and memory in the migrants’ experience?

To allow for broad and global participation, this workshop will take place via an online video communication platform on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 November 2024. The workshop will be live streamed and attendance by the public will be possible.

Subject to additional funding, it may be possible for some participants to attend the workshop in person in Leicester, UK.

We plan to publish a selection of the papers as part of an edited volume/special issue and therefore only welcome previously unpublished papers.

Please send us your paper proposals of no more than 300 words and a short bio of no more than 150 words by Friday 21 June 2024 to: [email protected]

Applicants will be informed about their participation by mid-July 2024.

This workshop is a collaboration between Dr Svenja Bethke (University of Leicester) and Dr Eliza McKee (New York University) as part of Svenja Bethke’s AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship on ‘Jewish Dress, Migration and Belonging’, that she is holding between 2023-2025, Project Reference AH/X002950/1.

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