Track 10

Track 10

Lecturer: This morning I’d like to focus on New York as a model for understanding immigration patterns in relation to national rather than international change. Firstly, it is important to understand that migration patterns are primarily affected by the rules of immigration which determine the conditions of entry. After that, internal changes can affect patterns considerably.

To highlight my first point let’s study this diagram of Ellis Island and the process of admitting immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Upon arrival at Ellis Island, people underwent a series of examinations and questions before being allowed to enter the US. First of all, there was a medical inspection to ensure the immigrants were not bringing in any contagious diseases.

Anyone who did not pass the medical examination was refused entry to New York and sent home on the next available ship. If the examination was passed, immigrants were required to take a further examination; this time a legal examination to establish whether they had any criminal convictions. After this, immigrants were able to change currency and purchase tickets for onward rail travel from New York.

Having completed this simple process, immigrants were told to wait — this wait could be as long as five hours — before boarding a ferry to take them to New York City. This simple system allowed millions of immigrants to enter the US and is largely responsible for the ethnic make-up of the city today. Even though the immigrants themselves may have had a variety of reasons for deciding to migrate, it was only possible because of US national immigration laws.

Moving on to the second point — how changes within a country can have as much or more of an effect than those outside the country. Various parts of New York have changed radically in their ethnic make—up over the last 200 years: communities became wealthier, governments introduced new laws, and employment opportunities came and went.

These factors affect where people choose to live or force them to move to somewhere different. For example, most people think that the population has changed in Manhattan due to the rise of it’s importance as a financial trade centre. which is true to some extent. But like the Ellis Island example, a change in politics, namely a change of mayor, allowed the city to boom as a financial centre. And this resulted in different types of people moving to the area.

Brooklyn is an interesting example, too and we’ll be looking at it as our case study later in the lecture. Whereas it used to be a predominantly working-class area of the city and therefore attracted unskilled migrant workers, nowadays its fame as a centre for up-and-coming artists and musicians means it has attracted a new and much more diverse population of middle-class residents. Finally, Queens has shown a dramatic change in its population over the last fifty years due to the airports there. This means that the number of airline staff living in the area has dramatically increased and changed the nature of the local population.

Finally, I’d like to use Brooklyn as a case study of local change. Brooklyn’s population has changed significantly over the years and this can most easily be seen in its economic activity. Tracing the Brooklyn industries back from the current financial services companies. to manufacturing in the 1950s. to shipbuilding in the 1900s, we can map this onto average wages and therefore the type and class of resident. And this has affected the population density too which has been steadily increasing over the past 100 years from 1.5 million in 1900, through to 2 million in the middle of the twentieth century, to the 2.3 million inhabitants today.

In fact, Brooklyn is suffering from considerable overpopulation now. But this large population increase was due not to employment but the building of the subway which linked Brooklyn to other areas of New York. Prior to this at the beginning of the twentieth century, the only way of transportation was the Brooklyn Bridge.

Another factor which traditionally increases the desire for the middle classes to live in a particular place is the extent and type of local heritage. especially for those people with young children. In Brooklyn, this is evident in the increase in population after the construction of Coney Island. The modern-day equivalent of this is the restoration of Prospect Park, which has brought more middle-income families into the area.