On the Move: Migration in an Italian Community, 1865–1921

Abstract

Internal migration remains one of the most important issues in European social history. Our entire concept of community and of social life rests on certain assumptions about residential stability, yet these assumptions have only been inadequately tested for most historical periods and in most places. We now know that previously accepted characterizations of the stable peasant community are erroneous, for numerous studies have documented the great population flux in much of western Europe in preindustrial times (Schofield, 1970; Tilly, 1978). Yet, for the most part, our ideas about life in communities of the past tend to rest on an assumption of a bedrock of residential stability to which the limited population movement is anchored.