Using Dutch emigrant records, agricultural records, industrial employment records, population registers, and tax records, a cohort of Dutch Catholic emigrants (1847–1871) from the province of Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands was analysed according to regional variation in the emigration movement and social and economic background of the emigrant group. The regional analysis illustrates that areas with commercial agriculture and factory production had low emigration rates while areas with small-scale subsistence agriculture and a declining rural textile industry (northeastern Noord-Brabant) contributed to a relatively significant movement. It was discovered, furthermore, that emigration from northeastern Noord-Brabant (the municipalities of Uden, Zeeland, and Boekel) took place among the lower classes of rural society, and that emigrating individuals or households were more geographically mobile than was thought to have been the case previously. The outcome of the study signifies that emigration from the southern province of Noord-Brabant was related to the decline in domestic industry, and that Dutch emigration in the mid-nineteenth century was more varied than had been suspected.