World Migration in the Long Twentieth Century

Introduction

The exploration of forces explaining global migration helps understand paradoxes in Earth's history and provides continuity amidst cataclysmic breakpoints.

Chapter 1: World Migration in the Long Twentieth Century

Migration is a fundamental aspect of the human species, a mechanism of human evolution alongside mutation and natural selection.
Primate movements in central Africa led to the emergence of hominids approximately 5 million years ago.
Migration enabled the appearance of every hominid species, including Homo sapiens around 150,000 years ago.
The spread of Homo sapiens from Africa populated every significant area of the planet since 50,000 B.P. (Before Present).
Migratory currents have linked continents since 1500 C.E., shaping the world's political, social, and ethnic structures.
Premodern societies were not static.
Mass movement, akin to mass reproduction, production, trade, transportation, communication, consumption, and culture, is a modern phenomenon.
Mass migration is integral to global processes shaping the modern world.
The period since 1840 has seen dramatic increases in:
- Human population.
- Industrial and agricultural production.
- Global trade, shifting to non-luxury goods.
- International capital flows.
- Transcontinental economic integration.
- Transportation and communication technology.
- Movement of people.
These increases, though regionally uneven, incentivized long-distance migration.
Modern migration is marked by unprecedented volume and temporal concentration.
- Less than 3 million Europeans migrated to the New World during over three centuries of colonial rule (1492-1820s).
- Over 55 million Europeans migrated during the eight decades between the mid-19th century and the Great Depression (1930).
- The US received more immigrants in 1907 (1.3 million) than in the 170 years between the English settlement of Jamestown (1607) and US independence.
- Buenos Aires received more Europeans in the three years before World War I than the Spanish Empire during three centuries of colonial rule.
- Singapore saw nearly 2 million Chinese immigrants between 1925 and 1930, equaling or exceeding the total Chinese migration to mainland Southeast Asia in the three centuries before 1820.
- Total per capita migration in Europe (emigration, urbanization, colonization, seasonal migration) increased from 6.5% of the population (1750-1800) to over 30% (1850-1900).
Global migration patterns:
- Increased dramatically from the 1840s to the 1870s.
- Slowed during the depression from 1873 to the early 1890s.
- Reached new peaks until 1914.
- Decreased during World War I.
- Revived during the 1920s.
- Contracted during the Great Depression and World War II (except for internal migrations and refugees).
- Increased after 1950, gaining momentum in the 1980s until the 2008-2009 recession.
The second wave of migration (post-WWII) saw approximately three times more migrants than the first wave.
International migration peaks in the 1990s and 2000s were similar to those of the early 1910s and late 1920s in per capita terms.
All forms of mobility surpassed historical precedents; for instance, 130 million Chinese moved to coastal provinces since 1990.
900 million people annually leave their homes for more than 24 hours for leisure, business, or other purposes, as defined by the World Tourism Organization.
The expansion of trade, colonization, and labor movements has been ongoing for centuries but has recently exploded in quantity.
Migrations were linked to urbanization, population growth, industrial production, global markets, wage labor, food and resource extraction, transportation technologies, and the nation-state system.
Cities became the epicenters of transformation and migration magnets.
- The population in the world's ten largest cities grew from 6 million in 1800 to over 200 million by 2000.
- European town and city dwellers increased from 19 million to 108 million during the 19th century.
- The global urban population rose from 3% in 1800 to 14% a century later, and to 30% in 1950.
- Currently, over half the world's population lives in cities.
The first mass migration wave (1840s-1920s) transformed remote areas into integral parts of the global economy.
Migrants extracted resources that fueled urban factories and provided food for growing city populations.
Growing mass production and markets shaped migration patterns.
High labor demands and low frontier populations led to higher wages and job opportunities.
Commercialization influenced rural relations, necessitating wage labor through migration.
Commercial agriculture and rural industry spurred seasonal rural-to-rural migration.
- This type of migration in Europe increased tenfold between 1800 and 1900, while the overall population only doubled.
- At least 90% of the over 50 million migrants to Southeast Asia before 1940 moved to rural areas.
Mass transportation and communication facilitated mass movement after the mid-19th century.
Migrants built railroad lines (increasing worldwide from 8,000 kilometers in the 1840s to over a million by 1914) and steamers, increasing tonnage twentyfold over the same period.
Transportation advances enabled the movement of heavy commodities.
The flows of goods and people moved in tandem relying on communication systems.
Migrations became notably freer after these transformations, particularly in the Atlantic and western Eurasia.
- From 1500 to 1820, two-thirds of westward and eastward migrations out of Europe were coerced.
- Coercion was complete for the 1-3 million Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians traded in the Crimean Tartar slave traffic during the seventeenth century.
- The largest migrations before the mid-19th century involved 10 million African slaves across the Atlantic and a similar number across the Sahara and Indian Ocean.
Long-distance migration after the mid-19th century was largely free.
- The transatlantic African slave trade ended by the 1850s.
- Westward-bound European indentured servitude ended decades earlier.
- Eastward-bound movement declined, with only one in eight of the 6 million Russians moving to northern Asia between 1850 and 1914 as serfs.
- Long-distance mobility made up by soldiers declined from more than half (1500-1850) to less than a sixth during the second half of the nineteenth century.
- Migration of Asians indentured to Europeans was small, peaking by the 1870s.
Free global mobility corresponded with reduced state controls.
The rise of nation-states (from a few before the Napoleonic Wars to over 190 by the early twenty-first century) occurred alongside increased integration and mobility.
Early in this system, liberal and laissez-faire mobility prevailed, with a decline in coerced labor and mobility controls.
By the 1860s, European nations dropped exit, domestic movement, and passport controls.
The authority to manage mobility shifted from localities to central governments.
Revolutionary France guaranteed freedom of movement in its 1791 constitution but also invented the standardized passport.
Trends toward liberal migration reversed with Asian exclusion from white settler nations (after the 1880s), medical inspections, and systematic immigration laws after World War I.
Restrictions on international migration in the 1920s led to economic isolation.
The revival of global liberalism (after 1950) did not halt migration controls.
Neoliberalism promoted free movement of goods, capital, technologies, information, and culture, but not people.
Border consolidation and national space purification produced millions of refugees.
Migration became inseparable from migration control and evasion.
Historiography of migration is built around nation-centered themes.
Social science literature evaluates immigration and emigration effects on national economies, political participation, social structures, and national demography.
Recent work explores transnationalism, diaspora, and migrant networks, often without challenging nation-centered migration history.
Migration control has many unintended consequences and faces difficulty in counteracting migrant networks or economic forces.
Migrant experiences are understood through categories like guest worker, permanent resident, asylum seeker, refugee, illegal, etc.
A global perspective on twentieth-century migration history involves:
- A broad view of migrations embedded in shared global processes.
- Specific attention to ties between localities and people, rather than just nation-to-nation flows.
These perspectives are complementary, with the global context informing migrant networks and migrant flow histories fleshing out broad processes.

First Wave of Modern Migration, 1840s-1930s

Estimating migration numbers is challenging due to incomplete records.
Long-distance migration records are more available than short-distance but frequently incomplete.
Authorities sometimes lacked interest or capacity, while migrants avoided being recorded.
Return and repeated migration often went unrecorded, and emigration/immigration numbers varied.
Overland migration data are scarce.
Estimates of overland and domestic migration rely on census data, missing short-term travelers.
Movements of nomadic and itinerant peoples are hard to count due to unfixed residences.
Despite limitations, data show large-proportions of long-distance migration between 1840 and 1940.
Firm data are based on port statistics, censuses, and research, while wider ranges rely on estimates/guesses.
Transoceanic and transcontinental flows came from Europe, with 73 million emigrants.
The European exodus was a major redistribution of humans, shaping the modern world's geography.
Most Europeans (96%) migrated to sparsely populated frontiers in temperate belts.
- 13 million migrated overland across the Urals to Siberia.
- 57 million migrated across oceans to temperate America, Australia/New Zealand, and southern Africa.
Cuba was the only significant tropical destination for European inflow.
The global population transfer was significant: European ethnic origin outside Europe increased from less than 4% in 1800 to one-third by 1940.
Over 22 million Chinese migrated from Guangdong and Fujian, mainly to Southeast Asia.
- Up to 11 million went to Singapore and Penang, with over a third transshipping to the Dutch Indies, Borneo, and Burma.
- Another 8-10 million traveled to other Southeast Asian destinations.
- Approximately 7% (1.5 million) went beyond Southeast Asia to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific/Indian Ocean islands.
- Only 3% (750,000) of Chinese migrants were indentured to Europeans.
Most Chinese migrants were free, financed by family or merchants.
Over 30 million Chinese migrated to Manchuria, joining Russians, Koreans, and Japanese.
Migration to Manchuria and Siberia increased after 1900, peaking in the 1930s.
2.5 million Koreans migrated to Japan, primarily in the 1930s.
Over 2 million Japanese moved to Korea and Manchuria, with 0.5 million crossing the Pacific.
Migration from India involved both domestic and overseas movement due to the proximity of Ceylon and Burma.
Most Indian migrants went to tropical destinations around the Indian Ocean, largely within the British Empire (Malaya, Burma, Ceylon).
About a million Indians, mostly indentured laborers, traveled beyond the eastern Indian Ocean.
1 million merchants from northwest and south India traveled worldwide.
Millions of migrants within India worked on tea plantations, in weaving districts, and on southern plantations.
Migrations within Asia and Africa are challenging to estimate due to nomadic patterns.
Infrastructures facilitated some migration but limited mobile groups due to state expansion and taxes.
Millions of workers migrated to plantations and mines in southern/central Africa and coastal cities in western/eastern Africa.
Colonial governments mobilized African labor as soldiers/workers on public projects.
The Suez Canal and new irrigation projects in Egypt created migration.
Up to 500,000 Javanese migrated to plantations in Sumatra and Southeast Asian mainland.
Over 300,000 Pacific Islanders worked on plantations as seamen.
Millions of Christians moved from the Ottoman Empire to Greece and the Balkans, and Muslims moved into Asia Minor.
1 million Armenians were expelled from Turkey after 1915.
Merchant diasporas flourished including Lebanese, Hadramis, and Omanis.
Over 20 million people participated in the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Migrations within Europe and the Americas are better documented with most being short distance.
Significant changes occurred in long-distance moves to agricultural, urban, commercial, and industrial regions.
$10 million$ Italians crossed the Alps, and $2 million$ moved north from Mezzogiorno.
$2 million$ Irish moved to England, and $10 million$ workers moved within the United Kingdom.
$6 million$ Poles moved westward.
The Ostflucht carried $3 million$ migrants from Prussia to the Ruhr.
$1 million$ Spaniards moved to industrial areas.
Overlapping migrations occurred within North America.
$13 million$ North Americans moved to western frontiers.
$3 million$ Canadians and $2 million$ from Mexico/Caribbean moved to the United States.
$8 million$ Americans left the South for industrial centers.
The US had high mobility rates with $20-25$ % of the native population born in another state.
$1 million$ West Indians moved within the Caribbean.
Migrants moved down from the Andes and within the southern cone.
Data organization is based on three major migration systems:
- $55-58 million$ European migrants to the Americas.
- $48-52 million$ Indians and southern Chinese to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.
- $46-51 million$ northern Chinese, Russians, Koreans, and Japanese into central and northern Asia.
This excludes some regions but highlights migration's role in population shifts toward frontier areas.
Populations in receiving frontiers grew twice as fast as world population.
Sending regions grew more slowly than world population.
The data demonstrates the global scope of migration.
Southeast Asia (4.08 million square kilometers) received $35 million$ from 1870-1930, while the United States (9.8 million square kilometers) received $39 million$ migrants.
Emigration rates in specific European nations and Chinese provinces were similar.
Atlantic and Southeast Asian migrations had a similar timing, with North Asian migrations starting four decades later.
Mass communication, transportation, global markets, industrialization, and frontier expansion reinforced each other in a snowball effect.
Global migration had a North Atlantic core.
The world was connected but with inequalities.
European emigration (including Siberia) was at least 15% of the total population in 1900, while Chinese and Indian outflows were 7-13%.
When considering all forms of migration within the North Atlantic core, approximately a quarter of the world's population produced one-third to half of the migration.
Variations in migration rates were small compared to gaps in industrialization and urbanization.
In 1851, the UK census revealed more people lived in towns than in the countryside.
By the early 1900s, several European countries and the European diaspora reached this mark.
China's urban population was 5% in 1800 and 4% a century later, while India's was 11% in 1800 and 1921.
In 1800, three of the world's top ten cities were in the North Atlantic; by 1900, nine were, Tokyo being the tenth.
Some Asian cities grew rapidly, but did not match the size of megacities like Chicago, New York, and London.
Many Asian cities remained stagnant or declined over the nineteenth century.
In 1800, China and India produced 53% of the world's manufacturing output, and Europe produced less than a third; by 1900, their share had dropped to 8%, while Europe's had risen to 60%.
By the early twentieth century, industry accounted for the bulk of the economy and employment in many European regions.
China and India's GDP share dropped as precipitously as their share of manufacturing and had remained stagnant in absolute terms.
Urbanization, industrialization, and transportation infrastructure produced dynamic patterns of emigration in Europe spreading like a contagion.
Emigration appeared first in communication/trade channels diffusing to hinterlands. It spread unevenly due to relatives informing of opportunities overseas. "Emigration fever" spread from northwestern Europe to the continent/Levant in less than half a century.
In Asia, emigration began and intensified in particular regions without spreading. Most Indian emigration came from southern areas, and most Chinese emigration came from Guangdong/Fujian. Chinese migration to Manchuria came from Shandong/Hebei.
In 1955, European emigrants/descendants outnumbered Chinese and Indians four to one.
Several factors affected these numbers including environments, occupations, social structures, return rates, female migration, and European wealth/power.
Most Asian emigrants moved to tropical areas with established native/colonial states, while Europeans moved to sparsely populated temperate areas.
Most Asians moved into rural wage labor, while European tended to small farms or cities.
Female migration rates were lower for Asians until the 1930s.
Chinese and Indian migrants had higher return rates than Europeans before 1900, converging in the twentieth century.
Caribbean had more descendants from Indian in 1960 because returns were lower, female proportions among emigrants were higher.
nearly 50 million Chinese resided in Manchuria by 1953, 4.5 times the number that could be found abroad.
The United States and Manchuria started with populations of about 6 million in 1800 and received similar numbers of migrants over the following 140 years, yet this produced a population of 134 million people of European descent in the United States by 1955.
Europeans dominated temperate frontiers using wealth, power and the ability to exclude.

Global Migration and Global Inequalities

An interconnected world grew in tandem with an unequal world.
Global migration resulted from, reversed, produced, and diminished inequalities.
Differences in Atlantic and Asian migration patterns are linked to wage gaps and the relationships between the movement of people, goods, and money.
When broken down by destination, migration flows are associated with socioeconomic development, reversing inequalities.
All migrants participated in an industrializing, interconnected world, but their incorporation varied significantly.
The effects of migration on socioeconomic development in the Western Hemisphere are especially clear.
Before 1800, colonial success was based on indigenous labor, precious minerals, African slaves, and cash crops.
By the 1800s, temperate America became a resource due to the raw amount abundance of coal, and arable plains.
The European population and urbanization explosions created a demand for its fruits, trains and steamers provided transportation, and European immigrants provided labor.
By 1910, the cities with immigrants what had been the most marginal regions in the temperate northern and southern ends of the hemisphere had become the site of the wealthiest countries on the globe.
What had been marginal regions in the temperate northern and southern ends of the hemisphere had become the site of the wealthiest countries on the globe.
Migration helped create regional inequalities beyond the Western Hemisphere.
A wide wealth gap developed between global exporters by 1930.
GDP per capita in Europe became six times higher than India's and eight times higher than China's.
Economies of India and China stagnated, while Europe's grew by a factor of 2.56.
A similar gap opened between main receivers of immigrants.
Southeast Asian economies performed better than China and India, but still below average, and way below Anglo and Latin European immigration countries.
Beneficial movement between industrializing continent and frontiers for labor and resources
Land-to-labor ratios in American agriculture was four to ten times higher than European countries, and output per agricultural worker was twice that of Germany and four times that of Italy and Spain.
High wages with upward economic mobility
High nutritional intake: the children of immigrants became on average two inches taller than their parents
Mortality rates lowered, higher water usage, abundant and inexpensive grains and beef
Intense circulation contributed to holistic system and a truly integrated zone that the "immigrant Atlantic" became
However, heavy taxation and little convergence resulted in the end to this Atlantic economic boom
Like the transatlantic outflow, small families with lots of kin in proximity experienced significant economic growth
Singapore, Taiwan, and Manchuria had small populations as Asian backwaters which slowly boomed with immigrants that increased their job demands
Main Asian regions migrated, migrated to rural areas with some transition from agriculture to industry
*Europeans capital took Asian peoples under their influence.
In an open frontier migration is affected by colonial torn rather than being self-governing.

Migrant Networks

Migrants moved through specific, personalized networks organized locally that lead to family and kinship relations.
Migration was based on family to argument the families resource
Transregional families helped spread the word of mouth
There was often recruitment military drafts, imperial bureaucracies, churches, politi- cal parties or groups, padroni (employment agents), and local governments
However, masses moved from sponsorship with family
Individuals changed ideas with family. Migrant families can be compared to an investment portfolio, sending children and spouses to a variety of diversified places and occupations in the hope that one would provide a return on the investment
The migrants made there decisions with family for what status they wanted
The networks were often institutionalized as businesses, mutual aid or- ganizations, and other associations that helped channel aid and exploit more migrants.
The networks linked them to jobs, with many similarities to families to keep the legacy going.
Migrants were well known of location more than markets near them, as they were always travelling outside countries to find the best deal.
established network to access new job opportunities and new destinations, even if only rudimentary new skills were necessary
One village can be all about emigration even if they all are same age. Aggregate models and economic approaches are also hard-pressed to explain why migrants chose to travel to one location when wages and opportunities were clearly superior elsewhere.
However, social networks emphasis difficulties explaining decline of migration flows.
These networked spaces make up a world of complex and overlapping flows and nodes, none of which can be entirely captured within a single national or regional history.
The means of recruitment, institutions established by previous migrants, are all aspects of migration not reducible to a single location.
Migration can get tricky by legal rights, obstacles, and boundaries.

The Second Wave, 1950 to the Present

International migration began to grow steadily again after World War II as the population became loser and restrictions made it hard to stay liberal.
Due to the spread of law, it's harder to count migrants.
Counting such people at the border is often impossible because many migrants change their status after arrival or overstay their visas illegally.
The United Nations prefers to define mi- grants as those who plan to stay abroad for a year or more.
international organizations have resorted to counting migrant stock rather than migration itself, basing their numbers on foreign-born peoples counted in national censuses.
Some census count foreign but others have racism