Gender and the “Laws of Migration”
Ernest George Ravenstein’s influential “laws of migration” argued that short-distance and within-country moves were typically dominated by women. We use census microdata to take a fresh look at the relationship between gender and internal migration in late nineteenth-century Europe and North America...
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0145553200011779 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0145553200011779 |
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crcambridgeupr:10.1017/s0145553200011779 2024-03-03T08:47:06+00:00 Gender and the “Laws of Migration” A Reconsideration of Nineteenth-Century Patterns Alexander, J. Trent Steidl, Annemarie 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0145553200011779 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0145553200011779 en eng Cambridge University Press (CUP) https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Social Science History volume 36, issue 2, page 223-241 ISSN 0145-5532 1527-8034 Social Sciences (miscellaneous) History journal-article 2012 crcambridgeupr https://doi.org/10.1017/s0145553200011779 2024-02-08T08:28:36Z Ernest George Ravenstein’s influential “laws of migration” argued that short-distance and within-country moves were typically dominated by women. We use census microdata to take a fresh look at the relationship between gender and internal migration in late nineteenth-century Europe and North America. We argue that there was a significant flaw in Ravenstein’s key finding on gender and that this flaw has implications for more recent scholarship of the long-term “feminization of migration.” The apparent overrepresentation of women among internal migrants was due not to their higher propensity to move but to the much higher rate at which male migrants left the population, through either death or emigration. Men were just as likely to make internal moves as women were; the difference was that men did not remain in the population to be counted when the decennial census was conducted. Like Ravenstein’s “laws of migration,” this article relies primarily on data from the 1881 census of England and Wales. Whereas Ravenstein’s work was constrained by the contents of tables published by the UK Census Office in the 1880s, we are able to ask new questions by analyzing individual-level data files recently made available by the North Atlantic Population Project. Article in Journal/Newspaper North Atlantic Cambridge University Press Social Science History 36 2 223 241 |
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Cambridge University Press |
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English |
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Social Sciences (miscellaneous) History |
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Social Sciences (miscellaneous) History Alexander, J. Trent Steidl, Annemarie Gender and the “Laws of Migration” |
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Social Sciences (miscellaneous) History |
description |
Ernest George Ravenstein’s influential “laws of migration” argued that short-distance and within-country moves were typically dominated by women. We use census microdata to take a fresh look at the relationship between gender and internal migration in late nineteenth-century Europe and North America. We argue that there was a significant flaw in Ravenstein’s key finding on gender and that this flaw has implications for more recent scholarship of the long-term “feminization of migration.” The apparent overrepresentation of women among internal migrants was due not to their higher propensity to move but to the much higher rate at which male migrants left the population, through either death or emigration. Men were just as likely to make internal moves as women were; the difference was that men did not remain in the population to be counted when the decennial census was conducted. Like Ravenstein’s “laws of migration,” this article relies primarily on data from the 1881 census of England and Wales. Whereas Ravenstein’s work was constrained by the contents of tables published by the UK Census Office in the 1880s, we are able to ask new questions by analyzing individual-level data files recently made available by the North Atlantic Population Project. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Alexander, J. Trent Steidl, Annemarie |
author_facet |
Alexander, J. Trent Steidl, Annemarie |
author_sort |
Alexander, J. Trent |
title |
Gender and the “Laws of Migration” |
title_short |
Gender and the “Laws of Migration” |
title_full |
Gender and the “Laws of Migration” |
title_fullStr |
Gender and the “Laws of Migration” |
title_full_unstemmed |
Gender and the “Laws of Migration” |
title_sort |
gender and the “laws of migration” |
publisher |
Cambridge University Press (CUP) |
publishDate |
2012 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0145553200011779 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0145553200011779 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Social Science History volume 36, issue 2, page 223-241 ISSN 0145-5532 1527-8034 |
op_rights |
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0145553200011779 |
container_title |
Social Science History |
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36 |
container_issue |
2 |
container_start_page |
223 |
op_container_end_page |
241 |
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1792503245141180416 |