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The Great Migration in Comparative Perspective

Interpreting the Urban Origins of Southern Black Migrants to Depression-Era Pittsburgh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

J. Trent Alexander
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Extract

Sociologists, demographers, and historians of the last few decades have pieced together a dramatically new understanding of the meaning of past migrations. The old story held that industry pulled recently dispossessed rural people to the city, where—along with deskilled artisans—they became part of a growing urban industrial proletariat. For migrants from rural areas, the process was thought to be catastrophic, requiring a total and often impossible adjustment to an urban world that was different in just about every imaginable way. Recent scholars have distanced themselves from this framework.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 22 , Issue 3: Migration and Labor Markets , Fall 1998, pp. 349 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1998 

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