New Methods in the Economic History of Migration

Over the past decade and a half, economic history in general and the study of historical migration in particular have experienced a revolution in the types and sources of data on which research has been based. Studies in this vein mark a transition from previous research, which relies primarily on published official statistics or relatively small samples of micro-data. They are distinguished by the exploitation of the availability of complete sets of micro-level archival records and the elaboration upon these sources with the aid of increasingly sophisticated computer scripting, linking of records across different sources, and large-scale and increasingly efficient transcription efforts. These newly available sources, tools, and methods are general-purpose technologies, opening new options and horizons for research that have only begun to be explored. A particularly generous observer of the field might liken the potential effect of these tools to the transformation brought about by the MRI in neuroscience research, and by gene sequencing in medicine. It is also possible to compare these tools to the introduction of game theory to the industrial organization literature in economics, allowing scholars to revisit existing debates in the literature with increasingly powerful methods and data, and opening new frontiers for study for which older methods were ill-equipped. Whether these new tools will translate into a major revolution in the knowledge created by scholars of migration history remains to be seen, but the potential is undoubtedly great.