Mass_Migration,_Causes_and_Consequences.

Mass migration, causes and consequences. We usually distinguish between two types of mass migration: forced and voluntary mass migration. Slavery trade is an example of the forced type. However, we are going to focus here on the voluntary mass migration to the New World during the 19th century. A huge number of Europeans lift their homes and decided to immigrate into the New World during the 19th century. In their book, Globalization and History, the authors wrote that “about 60 million Europeans set sail for the resource-abundant and labor-scarce in the New World in the century following 1820”. Three fifths went to the US though there were significant flows to South America after the mid 1880s, led by Argentina and Brazil, and to Canada after the turn of the century. Many moved to escape religious or political persecution, but most moved to escape European poverty. Most of them moved under their own initiative. Then, declining time and financial costs of passage, augmented family resources generated by economic development at home, and financial help from previous emigrant’s remittances would all serve to change these conditions as the century progressed. Early 1800 migrant streams were often led by farmers and rural artisans, traveling in family groups, intent on acquiring land and settling permanently at the New World. Nevertheless, in the late 19th century emigrants were increasingly drawn from urban areas and non agricultural occupations. Migrants were typically young adults dominated by individual males. Thus the migrants carried very high labor force participation rates to the New World. The typical migrant was unskilled because they were young which reflected his limited schooling and training in skilled trades. It appears that those who emigrated had more to gain from the move than the population as a whole, and they were likely to be more responsive to labor market conditions. This could be explained by explaining the determinants of emigration. The real wage gap between the home country and foreign destinations remained the most powerful explication of the emigration at least during the 19th century. As O’Rourke mentioned in his book, home wages were substantially below destination wages except for Belgium. Therefore, the real wage gap between source and destination countries had a powerful influence on emigration rates: the higher the real wage was at home, the lower the emigration rate. However, the real wage gaps were not sufficient by themselves to explain the reasons of emigration, O’Rourke and Williamson give considerable importance to other factors such as the rate of natural increase lagged twenty years had a powerful effect on emigration rates. This demographic effect stimulated emigration directly by raising the share of the population in the prime emigration age group, rather than only indirectly by lowering the domestic wage, raising unemployment, or both. In addition, the rising remittances from previous emigrants was a determinant factor to take the decision and emigrate to the New World. Ireland, for example, in late 1814s when remittances of previous emigrants who finance the moves of poor latecomers. Furthermore, the impact of friends and relatives abroad, their letters that contain information about prospects in destination countries are likely to have reinforced the decision to emigrate. Also, events in the past, like famines and revolutions, were likely to have a strong effect on emigration in the present. Last but not least, persistence and path dependence also imply that labor markets in the Atlantic economy were becoming integrated through time, an evolution toward truly global labor markets that must have been reinforced by the decline in transport costs. As we can see in the figure 7.1 “O’Rourke and Williamson, 128”, country emigration rates rose steeply at first from very low levels, then they began to slow until they reach a peak then they fell off. In preindustrial episode, we observe low migration rates and low wages. The costs of migration are too high to most of the workers. Industrialization and other events then serve both raise the emigration and real wages. So, more and more workers find it possible to finance the move. When the migration cost constraint no longer binding, further increase in the real wage cause the emigration rate to decline from the peak. The rightward shift in emigration function is due to the convergence of wage ratios in the Old World to those in the New Word. The continued fall in the wage gap between home and destination areas finally caused emigration rates to drop off. A second explanation is about the process of diffusion. We refer to the experience of latecomers to mass migration, such as Italy and Hungary, where the within-country regional variance in emigration rates diminished over time. Mass emigrations within Europe and between it and the New World had a significant impact on labor markets at home, raisin real wages, improving living standards, and eroding poverty. Mass migrations have had a significant impact on labor markets abroad. Is it always the case today'