Global Migration
Migration patterns changed dramatically throughout this period, and the numbers of migrants increased significantly. These changes were closely connected to the development of transoceanic empires and a global capitalist economy. In some cases, people benefited economically from migration, while other people were seen simply as commodities to be transported. In both cases, migration produced dramatically different societies for both sending and receiving societies, and presented challenges to governments in fostering national identities and regulating the flow of people.
I. Migration in many cases was influenced by changes in demography in both industrialized and unindustrialized societies that presented challenges to existing patterns of living.
- Changes in food production and improved medical conditions contributed to a significant global rise in population.
- Because of the nature of the new modes of transportation, both internal and external migrants increasingly relocated to cities. This pattern contributed to the significant global urbanization of the nineteenth century.
II. Migrants relocated for a variety of reasons.
- Many individuals chose freely to relocate, often in search of work.
- Manuel laborers
- Specialized professionals
- The new global capitalist economy continued to rely on coerced and semi-coerced labor migration.
- Slavery
- Chinese and Indian indentured servitude
- Convict labor
- While many migrants permanently relocated, a significant number of temporary and seasonal migrants returned to their home societies.
- Japanese agricultural workers in the Pacific
- Lebanese merchants in the Americas
- Italians in Argentina
III. The large-scale nature of migration, especially in the nineteenth century, produced a variety of consequences and reactions to the increasingly diverse societies on the part of migrants and the existing populations.
- Due to the physical nature of the labor in demand, migrants tended to be male, leaving women to take on new roles in the home society that had been formerly occupied by men
- Migrants often created ethnic enclaves in different parts of the world which helped transplant their culture into new environments and facilitated the development of migrant support networks.
- Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, South America, and North America
- Indians in East and southern Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia
- Receiving societies did not always embrace immigrants, as seen in the various degrees of ethnic and racial prejudice and the ways states attempted to regulate the increased flow of people across their borders.
- The Chinese Exclusion Acts
- The White Australia Policy