Household Organization and Migration in Nineteenth-Century Italy

Abstract

Kinship ranks second only to economic factors in social-scientific attempts to explain who migrates, when they move, and where they go. A person’s household circumstances are commonly thought to influence his or her propensity to move, as is the presence of other kin in the same community. Furthermore, the existence and location of kin in other communities are commonly thought to affect both the propensity to move and the choice of destination. Much of the international migration literature, accordingly, focuses on kin chains of migration, while much of the contemporary internal migration literature focuses on rural-urban kinship ties and on the continuing importance of extended kinship ties in societies experiencing high rates of urban-bound migration.

Internal Borders and Population Geography in the Unification of Italy

“…The second was “circulatory migration” over short distances, with high rates of return migration, which often generated a legal transfer of residence preserved in official records. Just after unification, the village of Casalecchio di Reno, near Bologna, experienced annual gross flows of both in- and out-migration as high as 6.9 percent (Hogan and Kertzer 1985; Kertzer and Hogan 1985, 1990). Similar patterns of movement, responsive to economic conditions, have been documented for the pre-unification period in Casalguidi (near Pistoia in Tuscany) and in Ferrara province (Breschi, Manfredini, and Fornasin 2011, p. 500; Nani 2012).…”