| This thesis uses available quantitative historical data on German migration to trace changes in total mobility since 1400, demonstrating that many accepted assumptions about levels and patterns of mobility need correction. Empirical work on long-term historical trends in total volume of mobility is rare. Recent research shows that premodern Europe had considerable migration, while temporary circulation was common in 19th-century Europe and 20th-century Third World. Yet modernizationist assumptions still dominate the literature: preindustrial societies were immobile; industrialization created permanent rural-urban mobility; modern societies have unprecedented mobility. In fact, migration in preindustrial Germany was commonplace, increasing with decreasing social status in city and countryside, covering large distances. Where migration rates can be estimated, they are higher than today. After 1800 mobility increased steadily, peaking just before 1914, with urban and rural migration rates near 20% yearly. This migration was mainly temporary and circulatory: only a tiny proportion of urban migrants were permanent, connecting mobility only tangentially with urbanization. After 1918 migration rates fell dramatically and have continued to decline to about 30% of their 1910 level. Simple links between industrialization and mobility do not explain this evidence. Migration rose after 1800 because of a widening gap between rural population and employment, due to population growth, end of cottage industry, and rural deindustrialization. Migration was temporary because agricultural innovation demanded a growing seasonal work force. The urban "proletariat" was largely a temporary work force with rural roots even after 1900. Mobility declined after 1918 as its rural sources disappeared. Population growth slowed, temporary jobs in agriculture dwindled, poor peasants received land through settlement schemes. Increased mobility is not the result of "modern attitudes" or industrialization, but of specific processes which destroyed rural economic structures without creating permanent alternatives in cities. The great increase in temporary circulatory mobility caused by industrial growth occurred elsewhere in 19th-century Europe and America, as well as in the Third World today. |
