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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.

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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