Internal Migration. Channelized Migration

While millions of people move across international boundaries every year, even larger numbers move within their home countries. Within any country, push and pull factors are critical to explaining migration patterns.

In the United States, the South and. once again, the West have become the primary destinations for migrants from other areas of the country in recent decades. Meanwhile, the industrial and agricultural regions of the Northeast and Midwest have experienced substantial out-migration. Why have the South and West grown through migration, while the North and East have declined? Several important push factors are associated with recent migration trends within the United States. To a considerable extent, recent migration is related to changes in the structure of the American economy.

Employment in agriculture and heavy industry has declined substantially, while employment in the service sector continues to expand. Because many heavy industries are concentrated in the northern industrial states, decline in industrial employment has triggered southward and westward migration. Pittsburgh's steel industry has been decimated over the past two decades because an increasing amount of steel now is imported. Other push factors associated with movement away from the North and the East include cold winters, high cost of living, high taxes, and high energy prices of the northern states.

The Sunbelt has several major pull factors. The warmer winters and the relatively low cost of living have attracted large numbers of elderly and retired people. The Sunbelt has also become a center for new jobs, especially in the fast-growing service sector of the economy. The importance of the invention of air conditioning to the growth of these areas cannot be overlooked. In years past, residents of the South and West sweltered through hot summers without air conditioning. Today, virtually even' new building in the Sunbelt is air-conditioned, as are most old ones, enabling people to escape the heat and high humidity.

Channelized Migration. Many studies of migration have found that the gravity model can predict levels of migration between places with a fair degree of accuracy. The gravity model posits that migration flows between pairs of places are directly proportional to the size of the places and inversely proportional to the distance between them. Thus, migration flows are greater between larger and closer places and less between smaller and more distant places. On the basis of the gravity model, we would expect more migration between New York and Ohio than between New-Hampshire and Kansas.

When actual migration flows between places are inconsistent with the gravity model's predictions, the discrepancy may be explained on the basis of push or pull factors specific to individual places. Many large flows between small or distant places can be explained by the fact that people in the origin place maintain strong personal connections with those in the destination place. Long-distance migration based on such place ties is known as channelized migration.

The settlement of urban neighborhoods in the North by African-Americans typifies the process of channelized migration. At the outset of the twentieth century, a large majority of African-Americans wore living in rural areas of the South as laborers on the plantations.

During the twentieth century, millions of African-Americans migrated from the rural South to urban areas in the North and the West. After the U.S. government limited immigration in 1924. large industrial corporations that had previously relied on immigrant labor turned to the rural South to recruit workers. Indeed, many sent recruiters to southern states in order to recruit workers to move to northern industrial cities.

At that time, many African-Americans welcomed the prospect of moving to the North. Life was seldom easy for them in the South during the 1920s. Racism and bigotry were institutionalized by laws that segregated schools, parks, and public-transportation facilities and denied basic civil and political rights to African-Americans (Figure 3-14). Poverty was widespread, incomes were low, and local job prospects were scarce. These push factors coupled with the opportunity to earn much higher wages persuaded many African-Americans to move to the North.

Figure 3-14. Segregation in the South in the 1920s. During the first part of this century, black and white populations were segregated. Public facilities were divided into those for "white" or "blacks" only. This segregation continued until the 1960s

In general, the northward migration of African-Americans followed well-defined routes. Those from rural Georgia, the Carolinas. and Virginia tended to move along the Atlantic seaboard, settling in cities such as Washington. Baltimore. Philadelphia, and New York. Those from Alabama. Mississippi, and Tennessee often wound up in Cleveland, Detroit. Chicago, and other Great Lakes cities. Natives of Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma often moved to California. These patterns have persisted to the present day (Figure 3-15).

Figure 3-15. The Migration of African-Americans to the North and West. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, millions of African-Americans migrated from the rural areas of the South to urban centers of the Northeast. Midwest, and West Coast. Much of this migration followed channelized patterns. Many black migrants chose to follow the paths of friends, relatives, and neighbors

After moving, migrants retained ties with friends and relatives back home. In their visits home and in correspondence, they described higher wages, better economic opportunities, and the relative absence of discrimination in the North. Friends and relatives eventually decided to move north also. Once the decision was made, they tended to move to the community where their former neighbors were now established. Early migrants would help newly arrived friends and relatives find jobs, secure housing, and get settled in the new community. The result of this process is a continuous flow of migrants from southern rural origins to specific northern industrial cities.

A similar channelization process was important in the settlement of North America by European migrants. Many immigrants from Europe moved to communities already settled by friends and relatives from the same community in the old country. Entire villages from Sweden resettled in the same county in Wisconsin or Minnesota. The process of channelization has been very important to the settlement of ethnic groups that have migrated long distances from their ancestral homes.