The Role of Government in Migration

Abstract

The great watershed in the history of European emigration, as has often been pointed out, was the First World War. The Great Migration was brought to an end first of all by the war itself, then by restrictive legislation or practices in the various countries of destination, and finally by a reduction in the economic differential that had induced people to leave Europe and seek a new life overseas. During the years of the great depression, when return immigration often exceeded emigration and when the net reproduction rate of most of Western Europe was below unity, it became common to say that the era of the great migrations had passed once and for all. Only some years later was it generally noticed that the change had been less one in total numbers, perhaps, than in the character of migration. What had been the free migration of individuals¹ became the forced or controlled or induced migration of sectors of society. At the depth of the depression, during the first two Five-Year Plans, several million “kulaks” were removed en masse to the sites of cities-to-be. Also during the interwar period, the League of Nations negotiated a series of population transfers designed to eliminate national minorities from adjacent countries.