The first systematic research on migration was published by E G Ravenstein in the 1880s. Ravenstein examined the data from the 1871 and 1881 censuses in Great Britain and Ireland, and drew conclusions about the movement of people during the intervening decade. Some of his inferences, or what he called “laws of migration”, may not apply in other circumstances or at other times. For example, he found that more women than men migrated from one address to another. But several of his laws have been found to apply widely among migrating groups, and they may be relevant in understanding the psychology of people who have departed from communities that have been completely abandoned. They include the following:
· Most people tend to move a relatively short distance from their original home. Presumably they prefer to avoid the costs and stress of longer journeys, and hope that they will find more in common with people living not far away than with those who are more distant.
· On the whole people move to larger centres of population. Residents of villages may expect that the opportunities for employment, accommodation, and social engagement may be greater in towns and cities than in smaller communities.
· Many people make more than one move before they feel settled. They may take advantage of temporary opportunities in the first suitable place they come to, but they will be inclined to move again if they believe it will bring them further advantages.
Ravenstein E G, The Laws of Migration, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 1885, 48, 167-235. A summary of Ravenstein’s work can be found on the website of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science at this address.
Research on the motives of migrating people, the factors that influence their decisions, has drawn a distinction between push and pull factors. Pull factors are the positive outcomes migrants hope to gain when they become resettled. Economic benefits may often be uppermost, but other attractions of migration may be social, for example wider opportunities to choose a long term partner, or the possibility of a more varied range of experiences. Push factors are the aversive aspects of the person’s present way of life and circumstances that drive them to move elsewhere.
Each person considering a move from their home will presumably weigh up the push and pull factors, and then come to a decision. Sometimes a decision may be made by a person acting on their own, but often the decision will be shared among members of a family or a larger group. In some cases of abandoned communities, most notably on St Kilda, the decision was made by the whole community acting together.
Some of the communities described in this website were abandoned as a matter of urgency after a major disaster or after a landlord had given very little notice. When villages were handed over to the military authorities in World War II, when sections of Dunwich became uninhabitable after a major storm, or the residents of Strathnaver were told they had one hour to leave before their homes would be burnt down, people had to make decisions very quickly. Clearly their thoughts would have been focussed on the events happening around them and the urgent need to get away. They had to make emergency plans to depart in the face of overwhelming “push” factors.
In other cases the abandonment of a community occurred gradually. At Kenfig the sand encroached and covered the town over a period of two centuries. Medieval villages eventually lost to sheep farming and the creation of large parks would often have been depopulated in a number of stages. At each stage inhabitants would have considered push and pull factors, together with the loss likely to be felt from leaving their home, and then decided whether to stay on or leave before things became worse.
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