The paper comprises four substantive sections. The first offers the briefest of descriptions of the current economic crisis. It is followed by a discussion of migration and crises in the nineteenth century. This is an attractive period to study because it not only saw massive flows of people, but these were largely unencumbered by government policies, and so they offer us a reasonable chance of inferring the real economic and social incentives to migration. In fact, one better say that the nineteenth century illustrates migration and economic cycles than migration and economic crises, for the sort of fluctuations we have just experienced were fairly common then, and were more or less accepted as a law of nature.
URL : http://www.migrationdrc.org/publications/working_papers/WP-T31.pdf