Migration and the Residual Community

Abstract

While all migration involves a sending a receiving and a migrating unit it is rare that equal attention is given to all three. Most migration studies have concentrated on the changing relationship between individual migrants or migrant groups and the receiving or host society. They are in fact studies of immigration; and as such they make an important contribution to our understanding of the processes of assimilation acculturation and since most migrations are rural-urban of urbanization itself. By contrast few studies have examined the changing relationship between the migrant and the sending or residual community and comparatively little is known about the overall effects of migration on the residual community. For sociologists part of this neglect is explained by the urbanindustrial orientation of the discipline. Both the European speculative and the American empirical traditions have been animated principally by urban and industrial themes. Therefore when sociologists have shown an interest in migration they have concentrated on the adjustment of migrants in urban and industrial settings. This concentration on immigration is particularly evident in American sociology where many sociologists are immigrants themselves and the society as a whole has subscribed to a melting pot ideology. (excerpt)