The Age of Mass Migration

Book excerpt: About 55 million Europeans migrated to the New World between 1850 and 1914, landing in North and South America and in Australia. This mass migration marked a profound shift in the distribution of global population and economic activity. In this book, Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G. Williamson describe the migration and analyze its causes and effects. Their study offers a comprehensive treatment of a vital period in the modern economic development of the Western world. Moreover, it explores questions that we still debate today: Why does a nation's emigration rate typically rise with early industrialization? How do immigrants choose their destinations? Are international labor markets segmented? Do immigrants "rob" jobs from locals? What impact do migrants have on living standards in the host and sending countries? Did mass migration make an important contribution to the catching-up of poor countries on rich? Did it create a globalization backlash? This work takes a new view of mass migration. Although often bold and controversial in method, it is the first to assign an explicitly economic interpretation to this important social phenomenon. The Age of Mass Migration will be useful to all students of migration, and to anyone interested in economic growth and globalization.