ABSTRACT
Although employment opportunities were the single most important factor stimulating migration, there were also strong links between migration decisions, family obligations and the life-course. In addition, many moves could alter family responsibilities and separate kin, leading to changes in family structures and obligations. Over the past two decades there has been a large volume of research on the changing nature of the family in the past, but this literature had been only loosely related to the pattern and process of migration (Flandrin, 1979; Anderson, 1980, 1985, 1990; Davidoff, 1990; Drake, 1994). In addition, contemporary migration studies have focused on the ways in which migration decisions vary over the life-course, related not only to age but, especially, to family position and responsibility (Champion and Fielding, 1992). This chapter draws on such studies and explores the ways in which migration in Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries was related to changing family structures and the nature of the lifecourse.
