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There is a baffling puzzle in international migration: why are there so many few migrants from so many places and so many from only a few places? On the one hand, there is relative immobility — only a very small percentage of potential migrants are moving abroad. Most persons migrate domestically, and an even greater share never move considerable distances for extended periods of time at all. And, on the other hand, we can undeniably speak of international chain migration. Once migration processes have started, more and more people move. With these types of cases, a process of chain reaction unfolds which sometimes leads to mass migration, involving a large part of the population in specific regions of an emigration country.

This chapter sets up the context of departure from Ireland for the migranting Irish and illustrates how migration to Britain became the established route for those who had lost any hope in the ability of the independent Irish state to provide jobs and economic security. The massive exodus from Ireland had its roots in the dismal economic environment there that existed up to the early 1960s, and leaving was rationalized as a temporary expedient until things improved at home. Individuals were also responding to changing values and attitudes that emphasized individual wellbeing and personal aspirations. Migrating to Britain allowed for repeated visits home, and thousands regularly travelled back and forth across the Irish Sea, in a pattern more akin to seasonal migration than the finality of a permanent departure.

The greater part of the research on international migration has dealt with the question of why people migrate and, to a lesser extent, the dynamics of migration, such as chain migration in migrant networks. This chapter appraises both micro- and macro-level theories about the volume of international South-North movement. In addition, it considers network of meso-level theories concerning the dynamics of migration. The goal of this chapter is to disclose the unsatisfactory features of existing migration theories regarding the puzzles of relative immobility and mass migration. The analysis is divided into three parts. It first elaborates a familiar and ideal-typical distinction. Second, the literature review moves from micro to macro and macro to micro. The third section helps to identify the theoretical gap in the meso-analysis.

This chapter considers how the remapping of Central Europe after the Second World War was radical not so much in terms of changes in national borders, as in the broadscale shifting of settlement boundaries. The borders had already been altered after the First World War and new countries created upon the ruins of the fallen Central and Eastern European empires. Prolonged mass migrations also ensued at that time. Many people did not want to live in the countries they found themselves in after the political map was redrawn, or they fled growing discrimination against ethnic minorities. After the Second World War, the Allied powers abandoned the principles to which they committed themselves in 1918. They wanted the territory between Germany and the Soviet Union to be made up of homogeneous nation-states that were no longer burdened by the existence of ethnic minorities.

With unchecked emissions of pollutants, global warming is projected to increase to 1.5⁰C within 15 years; to 2⁰C within 35 years and 4⁰C by 2100. These projections are central values with a small (<5%) probability that warming by 2100 can exceed 6⁰C with potentially catastrophic impacts on every human being, living and yet unborn. Climate is already changing in perceptible ways through floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves and sea level rise, displacing communities and catalyzing migration. Climate migration describes the voluntary and forced movement of people within and across habitats due to changes in climate. While estimates vary from 25 million to as many as one billion climate change migrants by 2050, achieving reliable quantitative estimates of future climate migration faces forbidding obstacles due to: 1) a wide range of projected warming due to uncertainties in climate feedbacks; 2) the lack of a settled definition for climate migration; and 3) the causal complexity of migration due to variability in non-environmental factors such as bioregion, culture, economics, politics and individual factors. But waiting for reliable estimates this creates unacceptable ethical risks. Therefore, we advocate a probabilistic approach to climate migration that accounts for both central and low probability warming projections as the only ethical response to the unfolding crisis. We conclude that in the absence of drastic mitigation actions, climate change-induced mass migration can become a major threat during the latter half of this century.

This chapter addresses how Europe became a mass society in the fin de siècle (1870–1914). Explosive population growth gave rise to major metropolises whose residents were divided by rank and religion, gender and class. The new conditions of the fin de siècle, mass migration from eastern Europe, and the rise of the new organized political anti-Semitism propelled Jews across Europe and in the United States to establish social welfare and civil defense organizations. The former practiced solidarity on a grand scale; the latter intervened to protect equality. The organizations' promotion of emancipation was predicated on Jews being a confession or religious group: by functioning under the guise of “welfare” and “civil defense,” they deliberately eschewed political claims. From the 1890s, new forms of mass Jewish politics emerged that contested that basic assumption.

This chapter illustrates that the globalization of world markets has been of prime economic importance in two key eras: the age of mass migration, which rose to a crescendo between 1850 and 1913; and the era of “constrained” mass migration of the last fifty years. The focus is on intercontinental migrations: from Europe to the New World and from parts of Asia to other areas around the globe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and primarily from the third world to the first world and the Persian Gulf in the late twentieth century. The chapter begins by mapping out the different eras of international migration and labor mobility over the last four centuries, and then examines the underlying forces that drove mass migration in the two eras of globalization. Next, it considers the effects of migration on sending and receiving countries, and the impact of these economic effects on what has been dubbed the “policy backlash.” Although the fundamentals driving international migration were similar in the two periods, the nature, direction, and consequences of the flows reflect changes in the structure and integration of the international economy. The effects of international migration are conditioned both by structural changes in the world economy and by changes in policy regimes. In turn, the policy regimes have evolved in response to changing economic structures, political developments, and migration itself. The chapter concludes with an overview of migration flows and policy in the past, and with speculation about the future. A commentary is also included at the end of the chapter.

This chapter concentrates on developing ideas which are particularly relevant to the reasons families migrate from Poland, the experiences of Poles in England, and the factors that shape their thoughts about how long to stay. It notes that the research interviews suggest that Polish families do not usually arrive in the UK intending to settle and explores why people make certain decisions which have a bearing on whether they stay or return, instead of asking directly how long they will stay and then producing statistics about the answers. It notes that mass migration by polish families to the UK, and to European Union (EU) countries in general, is a new phenomenon.

From the mid-nineteenth century through to the First World War, the Jewish world was re-shaped by mass migration resulting from a combination of factors—demographic and economic as well as the impact of persecution and discrimination. It was a part of a wider global shift in population from south to north and east to west that reflected the (uneven) impact of a new economic age and the forces of modernity that accompanied it. Britain, in spite of the large numbers settling there, has not featured prominently in Jewish historiography. Within the capital itself the focus has been largely on the East End at the expense of communities that developed in the West End and south of the river. This chapter provides alternative and critical narratives, thereby challenging those who limit Jewish migration to particular times and places. The dynamics of Jews on the move between and within countries and continents are far too multi-layered and intensive to be encapsulated in one story, even if as epic as the Lower East Side. It is only by incorporating the impact of Jewish migration where and when it is, perhaps, least expected that its full complexity and scope can be appreciated.

This chapter argues that prior to the mass migration and globalisation of the nineteenth century, an earlier era of mass migration can be identified in the North Sea region between 1600 and 1950. It offers a quantitative analysis of Northwest Europe’s first major waves of internationalisation. It provides and analyses emigration rates and mobility patterns throughout the period, and seeks to determine the causes of increased migration within the region spanning Scotland, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. It identifies two main waves of migration, occurring between 1550-1800 and 1850-1950 respectively. In exploring migration patterns, it defines four phases of movement: introductory, growth, saturation, and regression. Chain migration, industrialisation, the growth of urban populations, and the needs of the labour market are all considered, before concluding that the populace of the pre-industrialisation North Sea region was fairly mobile, linked to the supply of labour across the region, and statistically similar to the age of mass migration that followed later.

This Interlude is written by a former managing editor for news at the Chicago Tribune who is currently head of communications at the Inter-American Development Bank, and it offers an instructive personal reflection on three decades of journalism starting as a cub reporter in Chicago. The author's career embodies the very transformations that define how journalism continues to struggle with writing immigration. While at the manifest level immigration is driven by labor, demographic, and economic variables (among other things, segmented labor markets and wage differentials), at the latent level immigration's enduring root is the family. The children of immigrants are the fruit borne of immigration. In the United States, approximately one quarter of all youth are of immigrant origin, and it is projected that by 2050 over a third of all children will be growing up in immigrant households. The long-term consequences of mass migration, embodied in the lives of the children of immigrants, are a neglected problematique in the field of migration studies.

This chapter locates mass migration from Poland in the broader Irish labour market context at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It shows how an unprecedented economic boom in conjunction with an open labour market policy in 2004 triggered large-scale migration from Poland and elsewhere. Ireland’s ‘goldrush’ labour market was able to integrate large-scale migrant flows without leading to major displacement of local workers. However, in the context of ‘light’ labour market regulation, incidents of migrant worker underpayment occurred which became an issue of concern in particular for the Irish trade union movement. In 2008, the country was hit by an unprecedented economic crisis and rising unemployment. However, in spite of the dramatically changed economic circumstances, Ireland is still host to a substantial foreign population as the mass migration that ensured post-2004 is likely to leave a lasting impact on the workplace and wider society.

This chapter focuses on black and Asian migration into a post-imperial country on the look-out for invaders. When the battle had been critical, the British had faced unconvinced invaders, and military intelligence had known by October that that was the case. Mass immigration from the colonies and former colonies began in the late 1940s.

This section is a brief introduction to the remainder of the journal, outlining how mass migration became a big business during the transition from sail to steam technology between 1870 and 1914. It also states that records from the Holland-America Line form the majority of the sources for the subsequent chapters.