The Early History of Migration Research Revisited

This paper provides a history of the early contributions to the scientific study of migration. We begin with Ravenstein (1880s) and also feature the work of D.S. Thomas (1930s). Moreover, the development of the gravity model as applied to migration research (1930s and 1940s) is discussed. We discuss the historical reasons for interest in various migration phenomena, and we briefly treat the development of migration data sources. Although internal migration has been a common aspect of human behavior, the scientific study of such migration has been fairly recent. Ravenstein's papers in 1880s provide the earliest examples of what can be called scientific studies of internal migration. However, not until the 1930s did migration research " take off " as a subject of widely based social scientific inquiry. Data limitations were certainly a factor in discouraging the study of internal migration, but such limitations could not have been the sole factor. Lifetime migration data similar to those studied by Ravenstein were available in the 1850 U.S. Census and in the 1851 Census of the United Kingdom, and yet it was not until over 30 years later that Ravenstein conducted his work, and no immediate follow-up to his research appears to have occurred, with the possible exception of Welton (1911). The phenomenon most responsible for initial interest in migration as a field of scientific study appears to have been urbanization. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not only did U.S. and Western European urban areas grow rapidly, but also the percentage of the population of the various nations living in urban areas (urbanization) grew rapidly. Urban growth and urbanization were fueled by rural-to-urban migration. (In the United States, immigration from abroad also encouraged urban growth because most of the immigrants settled in cities.) Issues of rural depopulation and the adjustments of rural-to-urban migrants to life in the city were prominent. An important subtopic in the United States was the movement of African Americans, as well as whites, out of the South to northern cities. Questions relating to rural-to-urban migration and South-to-North migration were the focus of what attention was directed to internal migration in the United States during the 1920s. A second societal force that encouraged interest in migration research was the Great Depression. The importance of the Depression in this respect should not be underestimated, as 3 issues concerned with the Depression dovetailed with those regarding rural-to-urban migration. During …