Chain migration

Chain migration refers to the social process by which immigrants from a particular town follow others from that town to a particular city or neighborhood, whether in an immigrant-receiving country or in a new, usually urban, location in the home country. The term also refers to the process of foreign nationals immigrating to a new country under laws permitting their reunification with family members already living in the destination country.

Chain migration can be defined as a “movement in which prospective migrants learn of opportunities, are provided with transportation, and have initial accommodation and employment arranged by means of primary social relationships with previous migrants.”

According to James Coleman, “social capital…is created when the relations among persons change in ways that facilitate action.”Douglas Massey, Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone apply this theory to chain migration, positing that, “each act of migration creates social capital among people to whom the migrant is related, thereby raising the odds of their migration.” In Massey et al.’s argument, social capital is the tool by which chain migration occurs. In the context of migration, social capital refers to relationships, forms of knowledge and skills that advance one’s potential migration. One example is the positive impact of social capital on subsequent migration in China. Massey et al. link their definition to Gunnar Myrdal’s theory of cumulative causation of migration, stating that, “each act of migration alters the social context within which subsequent migration decisions are made, thus increasing the likelihood of additional movement. Once the number of network connections in a community reaches a critical threshold, migration becomes self-perpetuating.” Therefore, by initiating small social networks of migration, chain migration becomes a larger mass movement in and of itself.

Different groups of immigrants to the United States throughout its history have employed different strategies to enter, work, and live in the United States. Some groups, such as Eastern European Jews, emigrated in families en masse from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires of the late nineteenth century. Many groups have immigrated to the United States throughout history via chain migration. These social networks for migration are universal and not limited to specific nations, cultures, or crises. Chain migration is an overarching theme of many of the immigration experiences in American history. One group of immigrants to the English colonies in North America (and later the United States) was African slaves brought over forcibly; the circumstances of their migration do not fit the criteria of chain migration of free labor.

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Wikipedia