tilly cities and migration

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CITIES AND MIGRATION- - -

Charles TillyUniversity of MichiganDecember 1976

CRSO Working Paper /I147 Copies available through:Center for Research onSocial OrganizationUniversity of Michigan330 Packard StreetAnn Arbor, Michigan 48104


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CITIES AND MIGRATION

script for television series "Culture,Community and- dentity: An Ethnic Perspective"produced by University Studies & Weekend College,Wayne State University. Script by Charles Tilly,spoken by Tilly and ~ e o i ~ eoleman (wiyne 'State).Taped in September 1976.

Charles Tilly, University of Michigan


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CITIES AND MIGRATION

COLEMAN: Introduction

TILLY: I want to talk about where cities fit into migration patterns,and how migrants fit into cities. People have lived in cities foreight or ten thousand years. Over those entire hundred centuriescities and migrants have had a love-hate affair going.

COLEMAN: A love-hate affair?TILLY: Yes, it's a love affair, because cities and migrants have been un-

able to live without each other. But it's also a hate affair, becausethe people already in the city -- they are, of course, the earlierrounds of migrants and their descendants -- have usually kicked thenewcomers around and blamed their troubles on them. The love affairand the hate affair are still going on in North American citiestoday.

COLEMAN: You mean that ethnic and racial conflict are nothing but newcomersagainst old-timers?

TILLY: No, but there are some connections we can talk about later. First,let's think about cities and migration in general. When people mi-grate in large numbers, they usually head toward cities. The longer-range the migration, the more often cities are the destination. That'snot surprising. It's partly a result of the communications positionof cities, partly a result of the kinds of opportunities they offer,and partly a result of their special population patterns. As aswitchpoint in a set of large-scale communications systems, any bigcity has contact with millions of people spread all over the world.Cities offer the volume and variety of opportunities -- especially


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job opportunities -- to attract people from distant places. And fewcities have both a high enough birth rate and a low enough death ratefor their natural increase to meet the need for new hands, and newheads.

COLEMAN: So what does that have to do with ethnicity?TILLY: Well, because they feed on long-distance migration, cities are

ethnic factories. They manufacture ethnicity. The process works intwo ways, one obvious and one not so obvious. Here's the obviouspart: because of their varied opportunities and large geographicrange, cities recruit clusters of people who differ significantlyin language, culture, religion, skills and experience of the world;when they come in clusters, those differences are the makings ofethnicity.

The less obvious part is that the structure of the city, andthe way migration fits into it, combine to encourage people ofsimilar origins to emphasize their differences and the privilegesattached to their differences.

COLEMAN: For example?TILLY: For example, Italians in early twentieth-century American cities

began joining and building political organizations to protect theirrights and ease their way to power over their own lives. As they didthat, they developed an investment in those organizations and in

being Italian. More important, they (and especially their politicians)developed an investment in other people's not being Italian.

Another example. When Macedonians build up a network whichgives them the advantage in placing people in the restaurant industry,they make it easier for more Macedonians to pile up in restaurant


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work. They develop an investment in making sure that Macedonianscome first, and that non-Macedonians come second.

Or a third case. When Portugal travel agents specialize in

flights to the Azores, in locating jobs for Azoreans in Toronto-andin locating Azoreans for jobs in Toronto, they develop a vested in-terest in keeping Toronto's Portuguese community together. Priests,businessmen, politicians, foodsellers, doctors and many other influen-tial members of a migrant community call on common origins to buildand keep their clientele. All these people are manufacturing eth-nicity.

COLEMAN: All right, but your examples all deal with overseas migrants.What you say may apply to the great migrations of fifty or a hundredyears ago, but what about now?

TILLY: You're right: Little Italys and Chinatowns are slowly thinning outin many cities. But plenty of people with distinctive cultures andlanguages are still arriving from far away. Puerto Ricans and Chi-canos, 'for example, are building up the Spanish-speaking populationin United States cities, and next door, in Canada -- well, it's a lotlike fifty years ago. Anyway, I think the same general process workswith migrants from the same culture. It's just not as visible.

COLEMAN: What process?TILLY: The process of. anufacturing ethnicity. Chain migration is right

in the middle of it. You've already been talking about chain mi-gration in this course: it's the arrangement in.which a long chain ,of people connected by kinship and friendship move from one place toanother. I'd distinguish it from two other main migration patterns:There's circular migration, in which a whole group moves from one


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* place to another for a while, and returns to its starting place;many migrant laborers run through an annual cycle like that. There'salso career migration, in which individuals follow job opportunities

in their field from one place to another; the lifetimes of engineersand of executives in big companies are often filled with careermoves like that. While career migration is very important in Americatoday, over the long run I'm sure that chain migration has broughtmany more people to cities.

COLEMAN: So the difference is that career migrants have jobs before moving,and chain migrants don't?

TILLY: Well, that's part of it. In chain migration, current informationabout jobs at either end moves back and forth along the chain. Butso does information about housing and living comditions, not to men-tion news about friends and relatives. The people at the receivingend typically help their friends and relatives find jobs and housing.Sometimes they supply the jobs and housing themselves. The peopleat the destination often put up the cost of the next-comer's trans-portation and settling. So chain migration makes it easier forpeople to experiment: try out the city and see if they want to stay.In fact, back in the days of mass European migration to the UnitedStates, a quarter or more of the migrants in a given chain often re-turned home after trying American life. Some had made good and some

hadnlt,,but ack home in Greece or Italy they spread the word aboutopportunities in America.

COLEMAN: Now you're talking about the old days again.TILLY: Right. But chain migration operates inside the United States as

well. Most likely the majority of the millions of migrants who have


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come to Detroit from the rural South since World War I have come aspart of migrant chains connecting Detroit with some small town inKentucky or Georgia. That applies to Blacks and Whites alike. SinceWorld War I1 one common pattern has been for a carload of youngpeople to drive back South for a long weekend, tell their friendsabout chances up North, and then return to Detroit with an extrarider: a cousin or a neighbor who will lodge temporarily with oneof the drivers while he or she looks for work in the city, When youhave thousands of chains like that, even though many people go backhome the net effect is to empty the countryside of its extra hands.

COLEMAN: But what does that have to do with ethnicity?TILLY: I admit I'm stretching the term to cover the creation of visible

clusters of people who are self-conscious about having common origins.Chain migration itself helps manufacture ethnicity. For one thing,it guarantees that clusters of people with similar backgrounds, in-stead of a broad cross-section of all available migrants, will showup in a particular city. For another, finding jobs, housing andother things with the help of the same small group of fellow-migrantstends to locate people in jobs, housing and life situations that areclosely connected to each other. If you're always next to peoplelike yourself, then you're usually separate from people-nlike your-self. So chain migration promotes social segregation.

COLEMAN: So all you mean by ethnicity is segregation?TILLY: No, social segregation is likely to persist and to crystallize into

genuine self-conscious ethnicity if the group is big enough and dif-ferent enough from the rest of the population to build its own fullround of institutions -- such as churches, social clubs and eating


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p l a c e s . S tr on g e t h n i c i t y i s more l i k e l y t o d e v e l o p . i f o t h e r g r ou pss i n g l e o u t t h e m ig r a n ts a s d i f f e r e n t and u n d e s i r a b l e, i f o t h e r g ro up sd i s c r i m i n a t e a g a i n s t i t or compete f o r i t s . jobs, housing and gatheringp l a c e s . E t h n i c b r o k e r s . s u c h a s m i n i s t e r s , t r a v e l a g e n ts and p o l i -t i c i a n s o f t e n r e i n f o r c e e t h n i c i t y . But t he y c an o n ly b e e f f e c t i v eunder two c ond i t i o ns : i f t he g roup ha s a d i s t i n c t he r l t a ge andi n t e r n a l co n ne ct io ns i n t h e f i r s t p l a ce , and i f i t b r i n g s o r a c q u i re ssome advantages the group members consider worth defending.

COLEMAN: I t sounds l i k e you ' r e de sc r ib in g what o the r pe op le have c a l l e dt h e c r e a t i o n of u rb an v i l l a g e s . B a s i c a l ly , r e e s t a b l i s h i n g r u r a l l i f ei n t h e c i t y .

TILLY: Y e s and no. The I t a l i a n "u rban v i l l a ge " t h a t s oc i o lo g i s t s ha ve de-sc ri be d i n th e West End of Boston i s a good example of th e proc esswe'.re d i scu ss in g , b ut people do nT t have t o be peasants o r even fromthe count ry to form e t hn ic communi ties . I n any case , f o r a longt i m e most mig ra n t s t o De t ro i t a nd o t he r b ig c i t i e s ha ve n 't come fromthe c oun t ry ; t he y 've come f rom o th e r b ig c i t i e s and th e i r suburbs .

COLEMAN: What a bout bl a c k mi gran ts?TILLY: Them, t oo . Remember t h a t about t e n y ea rs ago th e pr op or ti on of

American B la cks l i v in g i n c i t i e s pas sed the p r opor t i o n of Whit es .The Black population i s now more urban th an th e w hi te . Of co ur se,th e huge migra t io n of Blacks off southe rn farms toward th e c i t i e s ofSou th a nd Nor th pl a ye d the major p a r t i n t h a t s h i f t . For ye a r s t he r ew e r e t h r e e major s t r e ams of b l a c k migra t i o n i n t h e Uni te d S t a t e s : oneleading up th e Eas t coas t f rom Flo r id a , Georgia, the Carol inas andVir gin ia t o Washington, Ba l t imore , P hi lad e lph ia , New York and othernor the r n c i t i e s ; a s ec ond moving peop le f rom the Miss i s s ip p i ba s i s


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and the rest of the old South to Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit andother Midwestern cities; and a third, smaller stream running fromTexas, Oklahoma and western Louisiana out to California. But by the

1950s the cross-flow of black migrants among metropolitan areas wasas important as the flows out of the rural South. Take a look atthis diagram showing the movement of Blacks between 1960 and 1970.You can see the remains of the old South-to-North movement, but youcan also see how many Blacks migrated among northern metropolitanareas, and made the big jump from East Coast to West Coast. By the1970s, the northward streams were slowing down; there weren't manypotential migrants left. After all, by that time only a few hundredthousand Blacks remained on farms anywhere, and the majority of theblack population lived in the urban North.

COLEMAN: Does all this mean that migration is slowing down?TILLY: It doesn't seem to be. Migration does slow down in bad times and

pick up in good times. But over the long run of the last centurythere hasn't been any significant trend up or down. What's beenhappening is that as migration out of rural areas has slowed, migra-tion between cities has grown.

That's sometimes hard to see, for two reasons: first, becausewe tend to ignore migration to and from the suburbs, which are reallyintegral parts of the kinds of cities we now live in; and second,

because the steady or declining population of most big cities leadsus to forget the turnover within the population. For example, NewYork's population was almost constant at a. little under eight millionfrom 1960 to 1970. But when we break it down we find a net outmi-gration of almost a million and a net inmigration of about 440 thou-


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sand o the r s , mos tly B la cks. (De sp i t e t he ne t ou tmigra t i on , t he b i r t hr a t e was h igh enough to keep th e popula t ion about th e same.)

COLEMAN: How many m ig ran ts a l t o g e t h e r ?

TILLY: I don ' t re a l ly know. I was t a lk ing a bout ne t mig ra t i on , t he d i f -fer enc e between a r r i v a l s and dep art ur es. The number of people whoa c tua l ly mig ra t e d i n t o o r o u t of New York Ci t y dur ing th e te n yearsc ou ld e a s i l y ha ve bee n t e n mi l l i o n . The c i ty i s l i k e a g r e a t r i v e r :the leve l s tays the same only because new wate r cons tant ly replacest h e o l d .

COLEMAN: How many pe opl e pa ss th ro ug h d o e s n ' t t e l l you how b i g an im pac tt h ey r e a l l y h a ve on t h e c i t y .

TILLY: Tha t ' s r ig ht . But migran ts a r e d i f f e r en t , and they make a d i f f e r -ence. On th e whole , f o r example , th ey . i nc lu de many people i n t h e irl a t e teens and twen ties ; th ey ' r e young men and women wi thi n f i v eyear s o r so of leav ing school . On th e average th e e f f ec t of heavyin-migrat ion i s t o r a i s e t h e e d u c at i o n al l e v e l o f t h e c i t y ' s popu-l a t i o n .

COLEMAN: Are you s u r e about t h a t ?TILLY: W e l l , i t ' s not t r u e of every group of migran ts , b ut i t ' s t r ue ove r-

a l l . I t ' s e a sy to fo r ge t t h a t t he young e ng ine e rs and e xe c u tive swho move to Chicago or De tr oi t ar e a l s o mig rant s . I f we includeth e suburbs where so many of th e be t te r- of f migran ts go, th e educa-t i on a l a dvan tage o f i n -migra n ts ove r t he me t ropo l i t a n popu1,ation a sa whole i s l a r g e .

COLEMAN: Then mi gr at io n shou ld r e a l l y push up th e ed uc at io na l l e v e l .TILLY: Not nec es sa ri ly , because out-migrants a r e a l s o more high ly edu-

ca ted , on th e average . There ' s a f low of educa ted , s k i l le d and pros->


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perous workers from one metropolitan area to another, depending onopportunities in particular industries and occupations. That's thecareer migration we talked about before. Still, overall, the effectof substantial in-migration is to increase the numbers of youngadults and single people, and to raise the average levels of edu-cation and occupational qualification.

COLEMAN: Obviously, that varies from one part of the metropolitan area toanother

TILLY: Right, there are high-turnover areas and low-turnover areas, andwithin the high-turnover areas some are mostly career migrants andothers are mostly chain migrants. What's more, migrant groups movewithin metropolitan areas. As a very rough model, we can imagine theaverage metropolitan area as a-series f pie wedges, with their : , # - . ' :.points meeting at the transportation center of the centra1,city.

COLEMAN: But most big cities can't be pie-shaped, because one side is ariver, a lake or a harbor.

TILLY: Yes, whether the whole pie is there depends on the site. Look atthese sketch maps of street patterns in Chicago, Milwaukee, Torontoand Cleveland, all cities on the Great Lakes. Each of our imaginarypie wedges has a major traffic artery leading from the center outtoward the edge. The density of buildings and the intensity of landuse go down from center to edge, but at different rates in different

wedges.COLEMAN: Where does migration fit in?TILLY: Well, within many wedges we can see two fairly distinct sections of

high turnover, one close to the center, the other out near the edge.Near downtown, in.some wedges we find a small number of highly-


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educated, prosperous migrants, typically young and childless. Inothers, we find a large number of relatively low-income, unskilledmigrants, both single and in families. Comfortable cosmopolites innew high-rises, poor chain migrants in older housing, often rundown.Toward the edge of the metropolitan area we also find high-migrationsections. Out there we're dealing with residential suburbs andrelatively high-income families.

COLEMAN: You said migrant groups moved.TILLY: Yes. Take a look at this map of the expansion of mainly Black

residential areas in Chicago between 1920 and 1965. It clearly showstwo main lines of growth away from the Loop: a main line in thewedge going south toward Gary and a second line almost due west.

COLEMAN: And other groups?TILLY: Now and then if you walk around downtown you see a Pentecostal

church that used to be a synagogue, or a Polish social club that hasseen better days. You're seeing the remains of a group that hasmoved on. In our cities, one migrant group after another has madeits first substantial settlement in the low-rent areas close to low-wage workplaces, which means especially near the city's center.Then members who have gotten better jobs and higher incomes havemoved out along the major lines of transportation within their wedgeuntil the migrant group was strung out through the wedge. Different

ethnic groups spread radially from different points of origin in thecentral city.

COLEMAN: Can you be more specific?TILLY: I can, if you'll let me take Toronto as an example. The Toronto

metropolitan area shows these processes more dramatically than any


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m aj or c i t y i n t h e U n it ed S t a t e s , b e ca u se T or on to i s s t i l l a majord e s t i n a t i o n f o r o v e r s e a s m i g r a ti o n . Toronto i s a b u s t l i n g c i t y wh ic hha s s t ayed l i va b l e , pa r t ly th rough good management, and pa r t ly , I

t h i n k , . b ec au se of t h e d i v e r s i t y b r o u gh t b y i t s hundreds of thousan dsof foreign-born. I t ' s n o t t o o h a r d t o im ag in e d i v id i n g t h i s s t r e e tmap of t h e me t r o p o l i t an a r ea i n t o t h e p i e w edg es we w ere d i s cu s s i n ge a r l i e r . ( I c a n ' t r e s i s t s ne ak in g i n some maps of t h e c i t y t h r e e ofmy ch il dr en drew when we l i v ed i n Toronto about te n ye ar s ago. Yousee how t h e seven-year-old maps h e r own neighb orhoo d, t h e nine- year-o l d h a s a b a s i c g r a sp of t h e c i t y as a whole, and th e eleven-year-oldc a r r i e s a round i n h i s head q u i t e a com plic ate d map, even i f some oft h e d e t a i l s a r e wrong.) I n To ro nt o, t o p u t i t very rough ly , r e l a -t i v e l y u n s k i l l e d g rou p s o f m i g ran t s f ro m e l sew h e re i n Canada h av ete nded t o s e t t l e f i r s t on t h e eas t s i d e of downtown, and th en t o workth e i r way ou t toward the no r t he as te rn suburbs . Overseas migran t s , ont h e o t h e r h an d, h av e r ec u r r en t l y e s t ab l i s h e d b each head s o n t h e w es ts i de o f downtown, then sp re ad nor thwes t a long major a r t e r i e s such a sB a th hu rs t S t r e e t . I n t h e l a s t t h i r t y y ea r s , E as t e rn E urop ean J ew s,Hungar ians, I t a l i a n s and , mos t re ce n t ly , Car ibbean Blacks and Por tu -guese have gone through some ve rs io n of t he same experi ence. We se eh e r e a n I t a l i a n b u s i ne s s a r e a n o t f a r no rt hw e st of t h e c i t y ' s c e n t er .I n t h e n e x t s c e ne w e move fu r t he r nor thwes t : I t oo k t h r e e p a i r s ofp ho to gr a ph s i n t h e e a r l y a f t e r n o o n o n a F r i d a y , a S aturda y and aSunday. I n e a ch c a se , t h e p ho to o n t h e l e f t i s a major shopping areao n B l oo r S t r ee t downtown, t h e o ne on t h e r i g h t an I t a l i a n a r ea ab o u ta m i l e w e s t on B l oo r S t r e e t . We see the downtown area emptying outon Sunday, and t he a re a f u r th er wes t tu r n in g i n t o a Sunday promenade


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for an almost entirely Italian-speaking population. In Toronto, chainmigration is building distinctive ethnic communities. But it's onlyan unusually visible example of a very general process.

COLEMAN: If the process is that general, maybe it's one of the reasons somany cities are in trouble.

TILLY: To really go into that, we'd have to talk about what people meanby "trouble". All this ethnic5ty-building probably does contribute :to competition over turfs, jobs and political advantages. On theother hand, what we've seen about migration throws up quite a chal- .lenge to the idea that the stress and strain of migration tearspeople and families up and makes them more criminal, disorganized,disorderly, and so on.

COLEMAN: How's that? You've hardly mentioned what happens to the indi-viduals involved.

TILLY: No, I haven't, although I think the evidence against migration asa big disorganizer at'the individual level is pretty strong, too.But remember that we've seen two main types of long-distance migrants.On the one hand, we have the relatively educated, skilled and pros-perous people who move from one metropolitan area to another as theyleave school or move from job to job. They may feel the stress andstrain of moving, but they usually have the means to cope with it.On the other hand, we have the less educated, less skilled and lessprosperous chain migrants from rural areas, from small towns andfrom other big cities. Migration does often present them with seriousproblems, like getting a job, finding housing, rearranging thefamily. But they have resources, too: they have the help andadvice of friends, relatives and neighbors. Because they rely on


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that help, the big city continues to contain many small clusters ofpeople linked with each other by kinship, friendship and mutual aid.It also contains some clusters of clusters which are big enough and

coherent enough to stand out as separate ethnic groups.

SLIDES FOR C. TILLY LECTURE: CITIES AND MIGRATION1. Miletus (Blessing)2. Rome 1549 (Argan 69)3. Peking (Doc. photo)4. Rio de Janeiro: favela (Doc. photo)5. London: The City (Doc. photo)6. London: Westminster Abbey and Parliament (tourist)7. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania street by Walker Evans (International

Museum)8. Los Angeles interchange (Doc. photo)9. Detroit Iron & Steel 1903 (Library of Congress)10. Detroit up Woodward from Campus Martius c. 1890 (? )11. No. Woodward 1905 (? )12. Griswold South from Michigan Ave. 1905 (? )1-3..Michigan and Griswold 1908 (? )14. Upriver from Dime Bafik Bldg. 1916-1920 (? )15. Steerage deck of S.S. Pennland c. 1893 (? )16. Immigrant processing at Ellis Island c. 1910 ( ? )17. Russian family in Detroit 1915 (? )18. Immigrants in New York c. 1915 (? )19. Slavic lodging house in Pittsburgh 1903 (Pittsburgh survey)20. One-room immigrant household, Pittsburgh 1903 (P;S.)


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21. Night scene in Slavic lodging house, Pittsburgh 1903 (P.S.)22. Poor white family in St. Louis, 1919-1920 ( ? )23. Black tenement, Chicago 1941 (? )24. Detroit skyline from Windsor (tourist)25. Movement of Blacks in the U.S. 1960-1970 (New York Times)26. Major street patterns of North American lakeside ctties (Tilly,

Urban World, 279)27. Extension of Black areas in Chicago 1920-1965 (Berry & Horton)28. Central business district, Toronto (Blaine & McMurray 43)29. University of Toronto and government buildings from air (B & M 92)30. Toronto skyline from Queen's Park (Tilly)31. Toronto downtown from city hall (Tilly).32. Downtown Toronto (Czolowski.& Skeldon 9)33. Street map of metro Toronto (Blaine & McMurray 3)34. A seven-year-old's map of Toronto (Tilly -W 10)35. A nine-year-old's map of Toronto (Tilly-l 11)36. An eleven-year-old's map of Toronto (Tilly-W 12) '37. Italian businesses, College & Clinton, Toronto (B & M 49)38. Two parts of Bloor Street on successive days (Tilly -W 16)39. Central Detroit from airplane window (Tilly)40. Another central Detroit from airplane window (Tilly)41. Detroit suburbs from airplane window (Tilly)42. Detroit skyline from Windsor (Tilly)43. Panorama of Detroit River (tourist)44. South along Detroit River (tourist)45. Looking North over City (tourist)46. Along East Jefferson Avenue (tourist)

tilly cities and migration

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