Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/20570 
Year of Publication: 
2004
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 1304
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Most labor scarce overseas countries moved decisively to restrict their immigration during the first third of the 20th century. This autarchic retreat from unrestricted and even publiclysubsidized immigration in the first global century before World War I to the quotas and bans introduced afterwards was the result of a combination of factors: public hostility towards new immigrants of lower quality, public assessment of the impact of those immigrants on a deteriorating labor market, political participation of those impacted, and, as a triggering mechanism, the sudden shocks to the labor market delivered by the 1890s depression, the Great War, postwar adjustment and the great depression. The paper documents the secular drift from very positive to much more negative immigrant selection which took place in the first global century after 1820 and in the second global century after 1950, and seeks explanations for it. It then explores the political economy of immigrant restriction in the past and seeks historical lessons for the present.
Subjects: 
mass migration
globalization
immigration policy
JEL: 
F22
O1
J1
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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