Across the Sea to Ireland: Return Atlantic Migration before the First World War

Alan Fernihough

No 201929, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Are return migrants 'losers' who fail to adapt to the challenges of the host economy, and thereby exacerbate the brain drain linked to emigration? Or are they 'winners' whose return enhances the human and physical capital of the home country? These questions are the subject of a burgeoning literature. This paper analyzes a new database culled from the 1911 Irish population census to address these issues for returnees to Ireland from North America more than a century ago. The evidence suggests that those who returned had the edge over the population as a whole in terms of human capital, if not also over those who remained abroad.

Keywords: Migration; Brain gain; Economic history; Ireland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 N N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/11234 First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201929

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicolas Clifton ().