I was just wondering. What is it that makes a people migrate to a certian place? Like, I live in Michigan, and according to Wikipedia, 20% of our residents have German ancestry. I know there's a huge Scandanavian population here, especially in the Upper Peninnsula. Why do these conglomerations happen? Why isn't the mix more even across the country? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan#Race_and_ancestry
Maybe it reminded them of home... Or my guess would be they either already had family in the area, or knew someone, and just wanted to be around familiar faces and language...
I'd guess a small community started to develop there and people from back in the homeland just begin to settle there to fit in more with their own culture. I know here and in New Haven county, you can't spit without hitting an Italian, I remember we did a poll in class once back a few years ago, and out of 24 kids, 17 said Italian as their main heritage.
yes immigration was like a chain..the first groups move and then recall friends and relatives;for example there are in New York or other cites entire italian villages transfered on the american soil..
in the United States are calculated to be over 15 millions people having italian as their main heritage
*Bumping this thread. Give others a chance to post too. Immigration stems from a thousand and one reasons for different people by different people. I'll try to list a few off the top of my head, a list that is in no way complete. Colonialism, slavery, globalization, want of a different education system, better standard of living, moving for children and for better opportunities, more job and success opportunities. Lately in the news there was an article about the immigration that men in Senegal are willing to do to get to the Canary Islands. People are fighting for the right to immigrate mostly for better lives for themselves and their families. Do you know how difficult it is to immigrate out of China? I don't think "historic" peoples had reasons so much different from ours today. Conglomerations happen with resources, landscape, natural environment, (again) job opportunities? I know it even happens due to superstition. Ie. a suburban area called Richmond is superstitiously coveted by Asians because it may sound like "rich man".
The biggest factor in choosing a migration destination is familiarity. Usually that familiarity is gained by the presence of a family or village member who has already migrated. For this reason, in parts of California, nearly every Mexican is from Michoacán, or highland Jalisco, or some other region where it has become customary to look to certain places in the USA as destinations. Often, with Mexicans as with Europeans in the past, immigration to the USA is motivated by the creation of jobs by some industry which wants cheap easily-abusable labor. Often they go to the origin points and advertize. In villages in Jalisco, Mexico, for example, you often see signs offering agricultural or sweatshop jobs at some particular place in the USA. You can see in The Grapes of Wrath that practice during the Depression, when California growers and packers advertized in the Dust Bowl towns that jobs were available, knowing that 20 times as many people would show up as were needed, conveniently keeping the wages down and providing an ever-eager pool of replacement workers to replace anyone who got uppity. So, it is a combination of economic "pull" factors which attract people to a place, some of this "pull" created by the employers, some by the presence of people from that same origin region already in the destination. As for Minnesota, we can't ignore the obvious notion that perhaps Scandinavians would be quicker to go to somewhere with a climate like that of Norway, than would Sicilians or Napolitani used to a Mediterranean climate.
point of note : terminolgy amaze your friends and frustrate your "enemies" emigrate: to leave one's country of origin in order to settle in another country immigrate: To enter a country for the purpose of settlement when something emits it sends somethings out (radio wave emitted from aerial) when something is immersed it goes into something (clothing immersed in water) there is a difference between immigration and emigration
