Historical Perspectives on Migration

Session organizer/s: Jonatan Andersson

Gender, migration and labor market: Swedish migration to the US at the turn of the 20th century.

Session: 6

Authors: Marcos Castillo

Co-authors: NA

Abstract: During the Age of Mass Migration (1860-1930), over a million Swedes migrated to the US, with a little over 40% of them being women. While recent advances in digitization and record-linking techniques have allowed researchers to explore different migration dynamics using longitudinal micro-level data, female migration is often missing from these studies due to challenges in linking women across data sources. This is because women changed their last names after marriage and their occupations were often underreported. While economic incentives have been attributed as the main driver for migration, the experience of female migrants was different from that of men due to various factors such as their reliance on migrant networks, limited available occupations, and reluctance to upgrade their occupation in the US. In this paper, I stress the importance of understanding the unique experiences of female migration and explore the occupational trajectories of Swedish women in either the US or Sweden during the period 1886-1910. Specifically, I investigate whether migrant women were less likely to experience occupational changes than stayers, using data from Swedish and US censuses (1890-1910), and the Swedish Emigrant Register (1886-1910). To address the challenges of linking women across data sources, I restrict our analysis to unmarried men and women upon entry into the labor market. I use probabilistic matching methods like the ABE-JW algorithm to link men and women across data sources and to reduce bias introduced by migrant selection, I compare migrant-stayer immigrants coming from the same parish to account for unobserved parish heterogeneity. I expect to find that migrant women were less likely to change their occupations compared to stayers, particularly due to Sweden’s rapid industrialization during this period. By emphasizing the importance of understanding female migration experiences, this paper contributes to the broader literature on migration and gender.

Remaining in the Northern ”Future Country”? Migration patterns among graduates from the technical secondary school in Härnösand, 1901-1971

Session: 6

Authors: Per-Olof Grönberg

Co-authors: Fay Lundh Nilsson

Abstract: In this paper, we study the migration patterns to and from the technical secondary school in Hänösand and the subsequent technical high school from 1901 to 1971, when an educational reform included the school in the new upper secondary school system. The purpose is to understand how a peripheral technical educational institution functioned as a “magnet” of technical studies for the northern regional youth and a provider of educated technicians to a peripheral but developing labour market in the first half of the 20th century.

In light of emerging mid-19th-century industrialisation, Sweden established so-called technical secondary schools (tekniska elementarskolor) in four cities in the southern and central parts of the country. However, discussions about including the Swedish north in this net of intermediate-level technical educational institutions had already begun. Nevertheless, it was only in 1901 that the Parliament decided to establish a similar school in Härnösand. A technical high school (tekniskt gymnasium) replaced the technical secondary school in 1920. We interpret this establishment in the light of the contemporary view of northern Sweden as an industrial “Future Country”. The emerging industrial development in the north of Sweden implied that the Härnösand-based school’s primary purposes were to provide technical education for northern youngsters, who were to serve in northern Sweden upon graduation. Today, visions again point out the Swedish north as an industrial “Future Country” destined to take the lead in the so-called green transition. Sweden’s northernmost country, Norrbotten, envisions around 100.000 new inhabitants in the years to come, whereas Skellefteå municipality in neighbouring Västerbotten aims to increase its population by 25.000 by 2040. The present-day northern regions demand, foremost, educated people. In light of these visions, we consider it essential to study how investments in northern Sweden fell out during earlier periods and how the peripheral region managed to attract and retain an educated workforce

The Urban Premium During Industrialization: Evidence from Rural-Urban Migration in Sweden

Session: 6

Authors: Jonatan Andersson

Co-authors: Jakob Molinder

Abstract: The process of industrialization is typically associated with rural-to-urban migration and a gap in incomes between cities and the countryside. To what extent is the income difference driven by the direct impact on job attainment of moving to an urban area or the result of people with more skilled occupations selecting into cities? In this paper, we make use of exceptional Swedish longitudinal data that allows us to estimate individual fixed-effects event-study models of the impact of rural-to-urban migration on occupational incomes between the 1870s and WW2. Both a yearly panel sample and data on individuals linked across censuses suggests a migration premium of about 10 to 15 percent of yearly occupational income, which accounts for about half of the cross-sectional difference. We conclude that cities did make individuals more productive during industrialization.

Building Socialism on Abandoned Land: The Long-term Impact of Deportations in South-East Poland

Session: 7

Authors: Oliver Wach

Co-authors: -

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of forced migration on economic and political development in the short and long term. For the first time, I use data on the ethno-religious composition of municipalities in inter-war Poland and examine the total expulsion of more than 600,000 Ukrainians and other minorities not recognized as Poles from south-eastern Polish territories after the establishment of the current Polish borders between 1944 and 1947. The study finds a long-lasting negative effect of deportation on labor market outcomes such as unemployment, however, this effect declines in importance between 1990 and 2020. The findings further suggest that one of the important mechanisms behind this effect is the increased intensity of collective farming in the areas that experienced forced migration. To investigate this further, I combine data sets from three time periods: Pre-deportation data from the interbellum period (1921-1939), data from the socialist period (1944-1989), and modern data (1990-2020). For this purpose, I vectorized a historical administrative map of municipalities from the interwar period, which allows me to assign interwar census data (1921 and 1931) to modern municipalities by intersecting historical and modern municipalities. To my knowledge, this has not been attempted before. In addition, I take data at the municipal level from statistical yearbooks of the 1980s and manually adjust them to today’s municipalities. This results in a novel dataset that combines 100 years of municipality level data for the provinces of Lublin, Subcarpathia and Lesser Poland, covering 555 contemporary municipalities. This procedure can also be applied to the other territories of present-day Poland that were part of the Second Polish Republic (1919-1939). The territories are then separated by a line that follows the so-called “Ukrainian Ethnic Territory” (UET), i.e., the territory with a significant (>10%) minority of Ukrainians and other ethnic minorities. This is then being used to show that other potential confounders vary smoothly around the UET and allows to identify how municipalities that experienced deportations performed relative to similar unaffected municipalities. The fuzzy RDD approach used for this analysis allows viewing deportation as discontinuous rather than binary, considering that municipalities outside the UET also experienced small amounts of deportation. This paper will complement the previous literature in several ways: First, it examines the long-term effects of deporting a population group with lower socio-economic and educational performance, whereas most of the previous literature has focused on the opposite. Second, the study identifies the strengthening of state institutions as another important mechanism determining the legacies of deportation. In the Polish context, the state took advantage of the property rights vacuum after the deportations to expand collectivized agriculture, something that was hardly possible in other parts of the country belonging to the Second Polish Republic, where deportations did not take place. Finally, the study shows that while the effect persists for some variables in the long run, it weakens or even disappears over time.

Migrant selection and labor outcomes of Non-Western immigrants in Sweden and Denmark after the 2001 Danish reforms

Session: 7

Authors: Fátima de Arriba Moreno

Co-authors: Anna Tegunimataka and Jonas Helgertz

Abstract: Denmark and Sweden have been hosting countries for similar types of migration since the 1980s. However, despite sharing the same socioeconomic characteristics, their migration policies have followed contrary paths since the 2000s. While Sweden has opted for a more generous policy in the last two decades, Denmark has chosen considerably more strict immigration policy, increasing the obstacles for a specific type of immigration. The consequences of these numerous policies have not yet been fully addressed in the literature. The starting point of this paper will be the first tighter policies implemented by Denmark in 2001, aimed at limiting a certain type of immigration, such as longer waiting times for obtaining residency and higher requirements for family reunification. The object of study will be to understand the consequences of this shift on the selection of migrants in terms of educational attainment and labor market outcomes after their arrival. For this, we will use register data from Denmark and Sweden, focusing on those origin countries which were more exposed to the change in policies and, at the same time, were the bigger source countries at that time. Given that Sweden did not change its immigration policy during these years, a difference-in-differences design will be used. The policy change is expected to have resulted in a decline in the number of arriving in Denmark, contrary to a stable flow in Sweden. As such, and given that the policy targeted refugees, the share of this type of immigration would be decreasing in Denmark. Finally, regarding income outcomes, we expect a decrease in the income of those who were targeted by the policies, showing the increasing obstacles for their effective integration. In conclusion, we expect to find a shift in the type and labor outcomes. The study of the consequences of these policies will help address its real impact and the consequences they may bring forward, as well as a better design of immigration policy based on empirical evidence.

The Returns to Migration: Internal Migration and Intergenerational Mobility in Sweden, 1880-1940

Session: 7

Authors: Jonatan Andersson

Co-authors: NA

Abstract: What where the effects of migration on upwards mobility in the past? I show that the returns to internal migration were substantial by using a difference-in-difference framework and longitudinal data from late nineteenth and early twentieth century Sweden. Tentative results show that the effect of internal migration on economic status was 20 per cent in the long run. However, the gains were lower for migrants from poorer households. The results suggest that internal migration was an important strategy to facilitate social mobility. Yet, the lower returns for migrants from poorer households might explain why not more people chose to migrate.