Harvest Migration from Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Abstract

THE SEASONAL movement of Irish workers to agricultural employment in Britain cannot be fitted neatly into any formal classification of population movements. In the ninteenth century the movement was not 'international' in the legal sense of the term; but it was certainly not local, as journeys of up to three hundred miles were commonly undertaken by harvest workers, all of whom made a sea crossing of more than one hundred and fifty miles. Although casual observers often described the movement as a haphazard migration of vagrants, in fact it followed a regular and carefully planned routine; and, although it was a seasonal movement, many harvest migrants became semi-permanent emigrants during the course of the nineteenth century, as urban employment gradually replaced agricultural work.