Industry and Identity: The Migration Linkage Between Economic and Cultural Change in 19th Century Britain
Vasiliki Fouka and
Theo Serlin
No 33114, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
How does economic modernization affect group identity? Modernization theory emphasizes how labor migration led to the adoption of common identities. Yet economic development may reduce incentives to emigrate, preserving local cultures. We study England and Wales during the Second Industrial Revolution, a period characterized by the development of new industries and declines in transportation and communication costs. Using microdata on individuals’ names and migration decisions, we quantify identity change and its variation across space. We develop and estimate a quantitative spatial model in which migration and cultural identities are inter-dependent. Different components of economic modernization had different effects on identity change. Falling migration costs homogenized peripheral regions. In contrast, industrial development led to heterogeneity, increasing the overall prevalence of the culture of London, while also creating local identity holdouts by reducing out-migration from industrializing peripheries. Modernization promotes both national identities and persistent local identities in peripheral regions that industrialize.
JEL-codes: J6 N0 N33 N63 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
Note: POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33114.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
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:nbr:nberwo:33114
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33114
The price is Paper copy available by mail.
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().