The politics of exit: Reversing the immigration paradigm

Journal of Modern History

Volumn 77, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 263-289

  Green, Nancy L ^a  

^a ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES   (France)

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EID: 33646694978     PISSN: 00222801     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/431815     Document Type: Review

References (158)

1. René Gonnard, Essai sur l'histoire de l'émigration (Paris, 1928), 16-17.
2. A Gentleman of the City of New York, An Inquiry into the natural rights of man, as regards the exercise of expatriation, Dedicated to all the adopted citizens of the United States (New York, 1813), 5.
3. A Gentleman of the City of New York, An Inquiry into the Natural Rights of Man, as Regards the Exercise of Expatriation, Dedicated to All the Adopted Citizens of the United States, Ibid., 10, 11.
4. Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield, eds., Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines (New York, 2000).
5. John Higham, Strangers in the Land (1955; New York, 1985)
6. and "The Strange Career of Strangers in the Land," American Jewish History 76 (December 1986): 214-26.
7. See, e.g., Gérard Noiriel, Le creuset français: Histoire de l'immigration XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris, 1988).
8. For example, Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, CT, 1997);
9. Dominique Schnapper, La communauté des citoyens (Paris, 1994);
10. Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, eds., Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York, 1992).
11. For two historically based critiques of the newness of transnationalism, see David A. Gerber, "Theories and Lives: Transnationalism and the Conceptualization of International Migrations to the United States," IMIS-Beiträge 15 (December 2000): 31-53;
12. Ewa Morawska, "Immigrants, Transnationalism, and Ethnicization: A Comparison of This Great Wave and the Last," in E Pluribus Unum? ed. John Mollenkopf and Gary Gerstle (New York, 2002), 175-212.
13. Even in the field of political science, as Jim Hollifield has noted, there is a lack of literature on the rules of exit ("The Politics of International Migration," in Brettell and Hollifield, eds., Migration Theory, 173).
14. Aristide Zolberg, for one, has long urged historians to integrate the state into the history of migration ("International Migration Policies in a Changing World System," in Human Migration, ed. William H. McNeill and Ruth S. Adams [Bloomington, IN, 1978], 241-86).
15. Compare, more recently, Gérard Noiriel, La tyrannie du national, le droit d'asile en Europe, 1793-1993 (Paris, 1991)
16. and Etat, nation, et immigration: Vers une histoire du pouvoir (Paris, 2001).
17. For a brief overview of different types of contemporary emigration, see Myron Weiner, The Global Migration Crisis: Challenge to States and to Human Rights (New York, 1995), 29-44.
18. Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York, 1985);
19. Nancy L. Green, "The Modern Jewish Diaspora: East European Jews in New York, London, and Paris," in European Migrants: Global and Local Perspectives, ed. Dirk Hoerder and Leslie Page Moch (Boston, 1996), 263-81.
20. Many studies have however focused on the image of America as a particular destination. See, e.g., Dirk Hoerder and Horst Rössler, eds., Distant Magnets: Expectations and Realities in the Immigrant Experience, 1840-1930 (New York, 1993).
21. Abdelmalek Sayad, "Les trois âges de l'émigration algérienne," Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 15 (June 1977): 59-79
22. and La double absence, des illusions de l'émigré aux souffrances de l'immigré (Paris, 1999).
23. While Sayad argued that every immigrant is or was an emigrant, René Gonnard postulated the reverse in 1928: "Every emigrant is inevitably an immigrant, except the legendary wandering Jew, who perpetually leaves without ever arriving" (Essai, 18).
24. Georges Tapinos, L'immigration étrangère en France, 1946-1973 (Paris, 1975).
25. See, e.g., the different interpretations of Henry Rempel and Richard A. Lobdell, "The Role of Urban-Rural Remittances in Rural Development," Journal of Development Studies 14 (1978): 324-41;
26. and P. Collier and D. Lal, "How Poor People Get Rich: Kenya (1960-1979)," World Development 12 (1984): 1007-18.
27. See also Panos Hatzipanayotou,"Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migrations," in Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism, ed. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (Cheltenham, 1999), 50-63;
28. Charles B. Keely and Bao Nga Tran, "International Migration and Remittances in a Two-Country Temporary Equilibrium Model," in Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism, ibid., 64-89;
29. and Charles W. Stahl and Fred Arnold, "Sending Countries and the Politics of Emigration and Destination," in Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism, ibid., 170-96.
30. See, however, Johanna Lessinger, "Nonresident-Indian Investment and India's Drive for Industrial Modernization," in Vertovec and Cohen, eds., Migration, 90-111
31. ; and Binod Khadria, The Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second-Generation Effects of India's Brain Drain (New Delhi, 1999).
32. Frank Thistlethwaite, "Migration from Europe Overseas in the 19th and 20th Centuries," in Population Movements in Modern European History, ed. Herbert Moller (New York, 1964), 73-92;
33. Brinley Thomas, ed., The Economics of International Migration (London, 1958);
34. Dirk Hoerder, ed., Labor Migration in the Atlantic Economies (Westport, CT, 1985), 321-52.
35. See also Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham, NC, 2002).
36. See discussion of Germany, Italy, and Hungary below.
37. For a look at Europe and beyond, see Nancy L. Green and François Weil, eds., Citizenship and Those Who Leave: The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation (forthcoming, Urbana, IL, 2006
38. and, in French, Citoyenneté et émigration: La Politique du départ, Paris, 2006).
39. See e.g., David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews, 1840-1914 (New Haven, CT, 1992), on British emigration versus Polish Jewish immigration;
40. Julianna Puskás, From Hungary to the United States (1880-1914) (Budapest, 1982), 111, on juxtaposing "racially pure Magyars" with the influx of Galicians.
41. Dorothee Schneider, "The United States Government and the Investigation of European Emigration in the Open Door Era," in Green and Weil, eds., Citizenship and Those Who Leave.
42. Or, as Aristide Zolberg has called it, "remote control," in his "The Archaeology of 'Remote Control,'" in Migration Control in the Northern Atlantic World: The Evolution of State Practices in Europe and the United States from the French Revolution to the Inter-war Period, ed. Andreas Fahrmeir, Olivier Faron, and Patrick Weil (New York, 2003), 195-222.
43. e sièle (Rome, 1981).
44. John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance. Citizenship and the State (Cambridge, 2000).
45. For a contrast to this idea of shifting attitudes about the right to leave over time, see a United Nations study which (during the cold war) argued that the right to emigrate is a natural right, with references ranging from Socrates, Grotius, and the Great Charter of 1215 (admitting that the pertinent article was eliminated the following year) to article 13 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. See José D. Inglés, Etude des mesures discriminatoires dans le domaine du droit qu'a toute personne de quitter tout pays, y compris le sien, et de revenir dans son pays (New York, 1963), 1-4.
46. Frederick C. Whelan, however, argues that the right to leave is a new concept dating to 1948 ("Citizenship and the Right to Leave," American Political Science Review 75 [September 1981]: 636-53).
47. Torpey, Passport, dates it to the French Revolution.
48. Barbara Schmitter-Heisler, "Sending Countries and the Politics of Emigration and Destination," International Migration Review 19 (Fall 1985): 469-84.
49. See also Ewa Morawska, "East European Migrations 1880s-1914: Contexts and Actors" (paper presented at the conference on "Migration Controls in 19th-century Europe and America," Sorbonne, Paris, June 25-26, 1999).
50. This persisted into midcentury as potential American soldiers did the reverse, trying to avoid embroilment in the Civil War by (re)-claiming their British ancestry-citizenship. See Peter Schuck and Rogers M. Smith, Citizenship without Consent: The Illegal Alien in the American Polity (New Haven, CT, 1985).
51. Prince de Cassano, Procès-verbaux sommaires du Congrès international de l'intervention des pouvoirs publics dans l'emigration et l'immigration, tenu à Paris du 12 au 14 août 1889 (Paris, 1890).
52. Nancy L. Green, Repenser les migrations (Paris, 2002), chap. 4.
53. Gustave Chandèze, Surveillance des agences d'émigration (Paris, 1890), 3;
54. e siècle (Paris, 1898);
55. Nancy L. Green, '"Filling the Void': Immigration to France before World War I," in Hoerder, ed., Labor Migration, 143-61;
56. François Weil, "Quitter la France, XIX-XXe siècle: Essai de synthèse" (paper presented at conference, "Les Français aux Amériques," EHESS, December 11-14, 2002.
57. S. Baghdasarian, L'émigration européenne au XIXe siècle: Italie, Autriche-Hongrie, Russie, Grande-Bretagne, Allemagne (Basel, 1910), esp. 134-36.
58. See, e.g., George Hay, A Treatise on Expatriation (Washington, DC, 1813), 22;
59. and Aristide Zolberg, "Exit Revolution," in Green and Weil, eds., Citizenship and Those Who Leave.
60. The phrase was used by Charles Buller to describe Robert Wilmot Horton's emigration scheme. H. J. M. Johnston, British Emigration Policy, 1815-1830, "Shovelling [sic] out Paupers" (Oxford, 1972), 168.
61. See also Kristian Hvidt, Flight to America: The Social Background of 300,000 Danish Emigrants (New York, 1975), 21-23, on Danish parishes providing financing for paupers (and convicts) to go to America; it was cheaper than providing poor relief. Hvidt adds that such exports were not a Danish or British specialty and cites examples ranging from Westphalia to Norway to France.
62. David Feldman and M. Page Baldwin, "Emigration and the British State, c. 1815-1925," in Green and Weil, eds., Citizenship and Those Who Leave.
63. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1992);
64. Peter Sahlins, Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After (Ithaca, NY, 2004). The major exception is the Huguenot exodus.
65. The previous, fourth, edition dated to 1762. The word "immigration" is in neither.
66. See François Weil, "French Migration to the Americas in the 19th and 20th Centuries as a Historical Problem," Studi Emigrazione 33 (September 1996): 443-60;
67. Gonnard, Essai, 17, 271-74.
68. He adds: "In fact, instead of exporting people, France exports ideas" (165).
69. Nicolas Heurtier, Rapport à Son Excellence le Ministre de l'Agriculture, du Commerce et des Travaux Publics fait au nom de la Commission chargée d'étudier les différentes questions qui se rattachent à l'émigration européenne (Paris, 1854);
70. see also Camille Maire, En route pour l'Amérique: L'odyssée des émigrants en France au XIXe siècle (Nancy, 1993).
71. Patrick Weil, Qu'est-ce qu'un Français? Histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution (Paris, 2002).
72. Klaus Bade, Vom Auswanderungsland zum Einwanderungsd? (Berlin, 1983);
73. Klaus Bade, ed., Deutsche im Ausland - Fremde in Deutschland: Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich, 1992);
74. Agnes Bretting and Hartmut Bickelmann, Auswanderungs-agenturen und Auswanderungsvereine im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1991);
75. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood;
76. Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States, 1789-1870 (New York, 2000);
77. Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder, eds., The Press of Labor Migrants in Europe and North America, 1880s to 1930s (Bremen, 1985);
78. Joachim Heinz, "Bleibe im Lande, und nähre dich redlich!" Zum Geschichte der pfälzischen Auswanderung Vom Ende des 17. bis zum Ausgang des 19. Jahrhunderts (Kaiserslautern, 1989);
79. Dirk Hoerder, Horst Rössler, and Inge Blank, eds., Roots of the Transplanted, 2 vols. (Boulder, CO, 1994);
80. Günter Moltmann, ed., Deutsche Amerikaauswanderung im 19. Jahrhundert: Socialgeschichtliche Beiträge (Stuttgart, 1976).
81. Donna Gabaccia, Dirk Hoerder, and Adam Walaszek, "Emigration and Nation-Building during the Mass Migrations from Europe," in Green and Weil, eds., Citizenship and Those Who Leave.
82. See, e.g., Christiane Harzig, ed., Peasant Maids, City Women: From the European Countryside to Urban America (Ithaca, NY, 1997).
83. Andreas Fahrmeir, "From Economics to Ethnicity and Back: Reflections on Emigration Control in Germany, 1800-2000," in Green and Weil, eds., Citizenship and Those Who Leave.
84. Andreas Fahrmeir, From Economics to Ethnicity and Back: Reflections on Emigration Control in Germany, 1800-2000, Citizenship and Those Who Leave, Ibid.
85. Dino Cinel, The National Integration of Italian Return Migration, 1870-1929 (New York, 1991), chap. 4;
86. Caroline Douki, "The Liberal Italian State and Mass Emigration, 1860-1914," in Green and Weil, eds., Citizenship and Those Who Leave;
87. Robert F. Foerster, The Italian Emigration of Our Times, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1924), chap. 23;
88. Donna Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas (London, 2000), 136-41;
89. Fernando Manzotti, La polemica sull'emigrazione nell'Italia unita, 2nd ed. (Milan, 1969);
90. Ercole Sori, L'emigrazione italiana dall'Unita alla seconda guerra mondiale (Bologna, 1979);
91. Sam L. Baily, "The Village Outward Approach to the Study of Social Networks: A Case Study of the Agnonesi Diaspora Abroad, 1885-1989," Studi emigrazione 29 (March 1992): 43-68.
92. Foerster, The Italian Emigration, 477.
93. Senator Tittoni, cited in ibid.
94. Douki, "The Liberal Italian State."
95. The poet Edmondo De Amicis, quoted in Cinel, The National Integration, 74.
96. Puskás, From Hungary to the United States, 92-115, provides a particularly interesting analysis of emigration.
97. See also Puskás, ed., Overseas Migration from East-Central and Southeastern Europe, 1880-1940 (Budapest, 1990);
98. Ladislav Tajták, "Slovak Emigration: Its Causes and Consequences," in Overseas Migration from East-central and Southeastern Europe, 1880-1940, ibid., 74-88;
99. and Monika Glettler, "The Hungarian Government Position on Slovak Emigration, 1885-1914," in Overseas Migration from East-central and Southeastern Europe, 1880-1940, ibid., 107-18.
100. Puskás, From Hungary to the United States, 107.
101. The novelist and nationalist Enrico Corradini, cited in Foerster, The Italian Emigration, 494.
102. Allgemeine Zeitung (Augsburg), December 9, 1816
103. cited in Marcus Lee Hansen, The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1806 (Cambridge, MA, 1941), 3.
104. Bishop Scalibrini, cited in Judith Rainhorn, "Des rives, des continents: Les migrants italiens à la Villette (Paris) et à East Harlem (New York) de 1880 aux années 1930," (Doctoral diss., Université de Tours, 2001).
105. Carol Blum, Strength in Numbers: Population, Reproduction and Power in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore, 2002).
106. Blum concludes with the observation that France turned to Malthusianism (like other European countries) during the nineteenth century, only to return to natalism at the end of that century. For the later period, see Yves Charbit, Du Malthusianisme au populationnisme, les économistes français et la population, 1840-1870 (Paris, 1981);
107. Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890-1920 (Ithaca, NY, 1993);
108. Hervé Le Bras, Marianne et les lapins: L'obsession démographique (Paris, 1991).
109. Marchese di Cosentino, cited in Cinel, The National Integration, 75.
110. See, e.g., [L'abbé] P. Labrune, L'émigration (Aubusson, 1869).
111. [Sic. in French] Roger Mols S.J., "Population in Europe 1500-1700," in The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, The 16th and 17th Centuries, ed. Carlo M. Cipolla (London, 1973), 32.
112. Cited by Louis Chevalier, "L'émigration française au XIXe sièle," Etudes d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 1 (1947): 166 (in quotation marks but with no reference).
113. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes, 3rd ed. (1874; Paris, 1886), 607, cites Say via Wilhelm Roscher.
114. More generally, see Gonnard, Essai, 281-86;
115. and Charles Emil Stangeland, Pre-Malthusian Doctrines of Population: A Study in the History of Economy Theory (New York, 1904).
116. Vauban, instigator of the first French population census of 1694, wrote: "The greatness of kings is measured by the number of their subjects"
117. (cited in Blum, Strength in Numbers, 8).
118. "Nulle perte n'est plus fâcheuse pour la patrie abandonnée," Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d'économie politique, 6th ed. (Paris, 1841); bk. 1, chap. 20, 239.
119. "When the laws against emigration are iniquitous ... when you prevent an overabundant people from leaving by crossing the country's borders, then they will exit by the grave" (Say, Cours complet d'économie politique pratique, 3rd ed. [1852; repr., Osnabrück, 1996], pt. 6, chap. 6, 151). Here as elsewhere Say argues that it is good laws and good institutions that create prosperity, not the number of individuals in and of itself.
120. Gentleman of New York, An Inquiry, 6.
121. Robert Wilmot Horton, Causes and Remedies of Pauperism, Containing correspondence with M. Duchatel (Paris, 1830), 8, 13. In their correspondence, Tanneguy Duchatel admitted that, given the choice between emigration and extreme misery, "it must be considered as a happier lot, to live in comfort in one's native country, than in a distant colony; but better to live in comfort in a distant colony, than to endure in one's native country the bitter condition of pauperism" (14).
122. Puskás, From Hungary to the United States, 92-115;
123. see also Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 626-27.
124. Georges de Pardonnet, Emigration au Kansas, Etats-Unis d'Amérique du Nord. Le Kansas, ses ressources et produits, ses concessions gratuites de terres. Conseils pratiques aux emigrants (Montbéliard, n.d. [ca. 1873]), 3-4, 35-37
125. and Amérique du Nord et du Sud, Renseignements généraux sur les diverses contrées où se dirige l'émigration européenne: Conseils pratiques aux emigrants (Paris, n.d. [ca. 1878]), 40-42.
126. Compare Philip Taylor, The Distant Magnet: European Emigration to the United States (New York, 1972), on the publicity efforts of individual American states.
127. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge, MA, 1970).
128. Gonnard, Essai, 285-86.
129. Malthus himself was in fact uncertain that emigration would provide any relief; T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, ed. Patricia James (1803; Cambridge, 1989), vol. 1, bk. 3, chap. 4, "Of Emigration."
130. Baghdasarian, L'émigration européenne, 134.
131. František Bielik, Horst Hogh, and Anna Štvrteckà, "Slovak Images of the New World: 'We Could Pay off Our Debts,'" in Hoerder and Blank, eds., Roots of the Transplanted, 1:377-90;
132. Mary Eleanor Cygan, "Polish Women and Emigrant Husbands," in Roots of the Transplanted, ibid., 1:359-74.
133. Foerster, The Italian Emigration, 495, citing Enrico Corradini.
134. Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, xv (intro. to 1st ed.). The term "colonizers" was often used to refer to the spreading of culture, wealth, or power, while implying the maintenance of greater ties with the homeland, while the term "emigrants" designated those who left permanently to go overseas, maintaining few links to home (Gabaccia, Hoerder, and Walaszek, "Emigration and Nation-Building").
135. See, e.g., S. Linstant, De l'emigration européenne dans ses rapports avec la prospérité future des colonies (Paris, 1850), 45.
136. De l'Emigration Européenne dans ses Rapports Avec la Prospérité Future des Colonies, 45, 1850, Ibid.
137. Cited in Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, 139.
138. Jules Duval, Histoire de l'emigration européenne, asiatique et africaine au XIXe siècle: Ses causes, ses caractères, ses effets (Paris, 1862), vi.
139. Duval, like other colonial enthusiasts, cites Gen. 1:28: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." Duval considered that emigration had always existed;
140. the only thing new was the increase in its proportions. He argued that the French should follow suit: "La grandeur durable de la France est à ce prix" (x). On Duval, see Charbit, Du Malthusianisme au populationnisme, chap. 8.
141. Puskás, From Hungary to the United States, 110.
142. Torpey, Passport;
143. James Davenport Whelpley, The Problem of the Immigrant (London, 1905), 194-95.
144. Hvidt, Flight to America, 23-25;
145. Zolberg, "The Exit Revolution."
146. Compare Torpey, Passport, pointing out the former;
147. and Fahrmeir, "From Economics to Ethnicity," emphasizing the latter.
148. Puskás, From Hungary to the United States.
149. Fahrmeir, "From Economics to Ethnicity";
150. Eagle Glassheim, commenting at the conference "Unsettling Europe," Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, May 3, 2002.
151. As Thomas Kleven cogently points out, the paradox of the liberal state today is that international law favors emigration on the basis of individual rights but argues for barriers to immigration on the grounds of collective self-determination ("Why International Law Favors Emigration over Immigration," Inter-American Law Review 33 [Spring 2002]: 69-100).
152. Zolberg, "The Exit Revolution,"
153. and "The Archaeology of 'Remote Control.'"
154. Compare Alan Dowty, Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement (New Haven, CT, 1987), esp. 26, and, more generally, chap. 2.
155. Fahrmeir, Faron, and Weil, eds., Migration Control;
156. Gerald L. Newman, Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law (Princeton, NJ, 1996).
157. On false dichotomies in migration history, see Green, Repenser, chap. 4.
158. Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 3rd ed., xi-xiv (intro. to 2nd ed.), 611, 626, n. 1. Indeed, he suggested that those turbulent elements ill-suited to the Old World could find good use for their energies in the New (624-25).