• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: The Decision to Emigrate: A Study in Diffusion
  • Contributor: Rice, John G.; Ostergren, Robert C.
  • Published: Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, 1978
  • Published in: Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 60 (1978) 1, Seite 1-15
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 0435-3684; 1468-0467
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: Central to the study of migration is the question of why people decide to move. Scholars have identified a wide range of contributing factors. Among these is the flow of information - a process that has received considerable attention from geographers in the form of diffusion studies. The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which the decision to emigrate may be thought of as an innovation spreading across time and space. The question is taken up at several scales in order to see if this phenomenon, which can so readily be identified at the individual level, is also demonstrable when data are aggregated. To this end a methodology is developed and applied to the nineteenth century emigration from a region in West Central Sweden known as Upper Dalarna.