International Migration Research

Constructions, Omissions and the Promises of Interdisciplinarity

Ewa Morawska, Michael Bommes, Michael Bommes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351926713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Emigración e inmigración

The centrality of international migration as a process articulating major transformations of contemporary societies offers an opportunity to make it the shared component of the theoretical and research agendas of the social science disciplines. In this volume a multidisciplinary team of authors presents a stocktaking account of current research on international migration in order to lay the ground for such an interdisciplinary collaboration. The first part of the book scrutinizes the theoretical concepts and interpretative frameworks that inform migration research and their impact on empirical studies in selected disciplines. The next two sections examine the epistemological premises underlying migration research in different fields of the social sciences and the challenges of 'informed translations' between these approaches. The final section considers the interdependency between the academic study of migration and the social and political contexts in which it is embedded. The book invites researchers to address the challenges raised by the empowerment of migration research, offering ways of communicating across different specializations and guiding readers towards a meaningful interdisciplinarity.

PART I
Theoretical Concepts and Interpretations in Migration Research

1
Migration and Population in German Historical Thought: Some Critical Reflections¹

Josef Ehmer

In attempts to seek simple explanations for causes of international migration, demographic arguments play an important role in the way political issues are commonly understood in contemporary societies. The concept of ‘overpopulation’ – explicitly stated or merely implied – assumes a central position in this line of argumentation. It states that a certain society or region is inhabited by a larger number of human beings than is compatible with the natural or economic resources of this society or region. This disproportion or disequilibrium produces ‘population pressure’ which results in migration. The most significant – and currently the most frequently encountered – field of application for this hypothesis is the area of migrational relationships between the prosperous north and the impoverished south of our contemporary world. The Third World’s rapid population growth and slow economic development are interpreted as ‘overpopulation’ which is, in turn, construed as the cause of international migrational flows – and even, in some research, presented as a threat to developed societies or to the very future of our planet. Terms such as ‘population bomb’ and ‘population explosion’ give expression to such fears and concerns. It seems that demographic arguments are powerfully attractive because they take complex sets of facts and circumstances and trace them back to a single cause – one which is, moreover, seemingly plausible (Sen, 1994).

In contrast to their political use, what role do demographic arguments play in scholarly discussions? As it seems, the situation is a contradictory one. On the one hand, terms like ‘overpopulation’ belong to the cultural repertoire of the explanation of migration. Goran Rystad, for instance, speaks of the universality of migration in human history, and substantiates this claim with a brief reference to population size: ‘When the size of a population becomes overwhelming in relation to the resources which it has access to, a portion will be forced to seek a livelihood elsewhere…’ (Rystad, 1992, p. 1172). On the other hand, in the current theoretical debate on the analysis and explanation of migration, demographic arguments either do not play any role at all or have been shifted to the very periphery of interest. Rystad, in the article quoted above, does not use any further demographic arguments in the subsequent elaboration of ‘theories of international migration’. A similar example is the essay ‘Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal’ authored by an international and interdisciplinary ‘Committee on South-North Migration’ of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and published in the Population and Development Review in 1993 (Massey et al., 1993). This essay claims to explicate and integrate the leading contemporary theories of international migration, with respect to both the initiation of international movements and the persistence of or increase in transnational population flows across space and time. The authors present numerous theories, disseminating a diverse theoretical repertoire of approaches to both empirical investigation and explanation of international migrational movements. It is interesting to note that demographic arguments do not come up at all, neither in the theories which the committee presents nor in its evaluation of them. Terms such as overpopulation or population pressure do not even come in for a single mention. It seems that the foremost social scientific theories of international migration have achieved a degree of complexity which can no longer be reconciled with the obvious simplicity of demographic arguments. Generally, one might say that in neoclassical economic approaches and in simple push-pull-models demographic concepts indeed have their place, usually as part of the explanatory chain oveϕopulation-poverty/unemployment-migration. As in migration theory, over the last two decades, neoclassical economic approaches have been heavily criticized and replaced by competing approaches, such as the new economics of migration, dual labour market theories, or world system theories; demographic concepts have been regarded as inadequate and left aside. A systematic and fundamental critique of concepts such as overpopulation or population pressure, however, has not been elaborated (cf. Massey et al., 1998; Parnreiter, 2000).

In the field of history the situation is different. Historical works do, as a rule, contain general statements as to the causes, the historical course, and the structure of migrational movements, and these statements certainly do have a theoretical character. Nevertheless, this is, as a rule, not made explicitly clear, but rather is cloaked as ‘common sense’. It seems that historical migration research has employed theories in a way that has often been inexplicit and unconscious, and this has fostered the survival of demographic conceptual constructions and explanatory models that have been cast aside in explicit theory formation in the social sciences. This applies particularly, though not exclusively, to research done in German-speaking countries. The following paper examines the use of demographic explanatory models in German historical research on migration and tries to subject them to an empirically-based as well as to a methodological critique.

The Use of Demographic Arguments in German Migration History

In Germany, the explanation of social, economic, and even political phenomena with demographic arguments displays an especially strong intellectual tradition. Its roots go all the way back to the particular central European version of mercantilism known as cameralism (Kameralismus) and to the nascent science of demographics in the 17th and 18th centuries, in which the work of Johann Peter Süßmilch assumed particular importance (Birg, 1989; Ehmer 1991, pp. 25-44). A significant influence during the 19th century was the reception given to the theories of Thomas Robert Malthus, whose effect upon political and scholarly thinking can hardly be exaggerated. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, demographic questions were accorded great importance in the social sciences then undergoing a process of modernization, with this enhanced esteem reaching its peak in the scholarly activities carried on in the Third Reich (Brocke, 1998). ‘Historical-sociological demographic theories’ in which the subject of migration assumed a central position took shape then (Ehmer, 1992/93). In postwar Germany, population theories stemming from the era of national socialism displayed astounding staying power. Into the 1970s, the few attempts at explicitly historical-sociological demographic theory tied in directly to the line of tradition sketched above (Köllmann, 1975, 1976). But even the modern historical-social scientific migration research that has been emerging since the 1980s has, for the most part, taken an uncritical position towards this tradition. The concepts of ‘overpopulation’ and ‘population pressure’ provide many historians with a serviceable framework to explain migrational processes. These terms can be found in encyclopedia articles on social and economic history as well as in specialized monographs and essays, and they are applied to preindustrial societies just as they are to those of the 19th and 20th centuries.

A few examples will serve to illustrate the widespread use of demographic arguments in recent German migration research. With reference to emigration from southwestern Germany, Wolfgang von Hippel (1984) maintained that ‘population pressure (had been) increasing dangerously’ even in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Mass emigration from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries was said to have ‘decisively contributed to… alleviating the population explosion, in that it eliminated excess population and eased economic and social tensions…’ (Hippel, 1984, p. 17). Peter Marschalck argued along similar lines with reference to population growth during the Vormärz period prior to the revolution of 1848 that was said to have led to ‘overpopulation and social tensions’ in Germany. During the second half of the century as well – despite sinking rates of growth – Marschalck maintained that ‘population pressure’ kept up, ‘partly lessened by overseas emigration…’ (Marschalck, 1987, p. 20). The same demographic arguments have been used by historians of the German Empire both to account for mass emigration from Germany, as well as mass immigration to Germany and domestic migration from eastern to western Germany. Horst Rössler regards the ‘background factor of general population pressure’ and ‘relative overpopulation’ as chief causes of the mass exodus from Germany (Rössler, 1992, p. 148). According to Christoph Kiessmann, the ‘pressure of rural overpopulation in the East’ in conjunction with the attraction exerted by heavy industry triggered the large-scale domestic migration within Germany (Klessmann, 1992, p. 304). Similarly, Steve Hochstadt also regarded ‘rural overpopulation’ as the essential explanation for 19th-century German mass migration. He stated that migration is a ‘response to population pressure’ and ‘population density’: ‘When population density outstrips the capacity of the local economy to provide work and income, migration is the universal demographic response’ (Hochstadt, 1996, p. 144).

Klaus J. Bade, who has made the most important contribution to the development of historical-social scientific migration research in Germany, is entirely of the opinion that the process of migration can ‘not be explained (with) natural population movements or the mechanistic consequences of “population pressure” and “absorption”‘ (Bade, 1987b, p. 10; a recent cautious and differentiated discussion is offered in Bade, 2000, pp. 165-8). Nevertheless, in earlier publications for him as well, the ‘disequilibrium between population growth and employment opportunities’ was the ‘key impetus’ or the ‘most important driving force behind mass migration overseas’ during the 19th century (Bade, 1984b, p. 57; 1992c, p. 311). Bade also invoked demographic arguments to explain the migration of specific segments of the population. In his influential paper on tramping by crafts and trades journeymen in Germany during the early modern period, for example, he explained the spread of mandatory tramping in guild crafts and trades during the 16th century as stemming from ‘growing competitive pressure’ (Übersetzungsdruck) in the crafts and trades which resulted from general ‘population pressure pushing up against the limits oí Nahrung’ (Bade, 1982 p. 11).

Similar explanatory patterns are employed in texts giving a general historical overview. In their work on ‘Social and Economic History of Europe in the 20th Century,’ Gerold Ambrosius and William Hubbard come to the conclusion that the ‘less industrialized regions with excess population’ were the ‘source regions of “classic” migrations’. Emigration is said to have constituted an Outlet to prevent overpopulation’ (Ambrosius and Hubbard, 1986, pp. 33-5). They thus repeat an argument which was applied to a whole series of countries and a variety of periods during the 19th and 20th centuries in ‘The Fontana Economic History of Europe’ published by Carlo Cipolla and Knut Borchardt (Cipolla and Borchardt, 1985/86). This list of examples could be continued. They show that Overpopulation’ and ‘population pressure’ represent a practically universal means of explaining migration, and one which can be applied to a wide variety of historical situations. Indeed, none of the works cited above made the attempt to operationalize or to test the postulated connection between population and migration. Occasional references to the density or growth of the population in source regions of emigration rather serve to illustrate demographic explanatory models than to seriously testing them empirically. Obviously, many historians – including some particularly innovative and thoughtful representatives of this field – presume that the connection between population and migration is a matter to be taken for granted and which requires no further proof.

Demographie Explanatory Models and the Results of Microhistorical Analysis

Despite this model having become so widespread, doubt and criticism have grown considerably in recent years. This has been voiced primarily by historians who have empirically investigated migrational processes of the 18th and 19th centuries on the local and regional levels and were not able to square their results with prevailing concepts of ‘overpopulation’ and ‘population pressure’. It is precisely those regions that have long served as classic examples of the connection between mass-scale emigration and ‘overpopulation’ which are well on their way to becoming examples of the revision of this model. The following section will focus on some results generated by this research.²

One of the classic emigration areas of early modern central Europe was the German southwest, mainly the provinces surrounding the upper and middle Rhine, the Main and Neckar, and the upper Danube. From the late 17th century and throughout the 18th century, tens of thousands of people emigrated to north America and hundreds of thousands to eastern and southeastern Europe, mainly to Habsburg Hungary. From contemporary observers to present day historians, ‘overpopulation’ has become the most popular explanation of the mass emigration from this area. For instance, one of the local officials in the village of Steinau in Hesse reported in the early 18th century: ‘The general causes of why it looks so bad… are that… the number of inhabitants is too high’ (Fertig, 1997, p. 287). In 19th and 20th century historiography of migration, this argument was fully accepted and has become almost comm...