When someone says “they’re coming into my country,” a great deal is being assumed before the argument even starts: that people belong to countries, that countries are defined by borders, and that crossing one of those lines turns a person into an outsider. Anthropology offers a different frame. Humans have always moved — migration is among the oldest adaptive strategies our species has — while immigration, as a political and legal category, is remarkably recent. For Cultural Anthropology 2024 we read the section “How is today’s global economy reshaping migration?” through the end of the chapter, alongside the Immigrant Interview fieldwork assignment. This lecture is part of the Global Transformations hub.
Architecture: this page owns the migration/immigration distinction and the demographic history behind it. For the doxa concept itself, see Habitus and Doxa: Bourdieu. For how Irish and Italian immigrants became White in census categories, see Anthropology of US Census Race Categories. For the deep history of human movement out of Africa and into the Americas, see Early Human Migration to the Americas. For the 1924 restrictions and what they did to anthropology, see Boas Basically Lost.
📚 Essentials of Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age: https://amzn.to/3X045Za (Commissions earned)
Key Concepts
- Migration is the species-level fact; immigration is the political category. Migration describes what humans have always done — moving within Africa, out of Africa and back into it, into Australia and the Americas and every habitable corner of the planet. Immigration only makes sense once nation-states with defined borders already exist. Choosing the second word concedes the framework before the argument begins.
- Borders are made, not found. Some follow rivers or mountains, but the Canada–United States border is largely a line drawn across a continent. The wall along the Mexican border isn’t even built on the border: there are American properties, ranches, and whole towns of United States citizens stranded on the far side, who pass through it to reach the rest of their own country.
- The biggest migration era was the Long 19th Century, not ours. From the French Revolution to World War I, close to a million people a year moved — Europe to the Americas, Asia to the Caribbean and the United States, alongside the continuing forced movement of enslaved Africans. As a percentage of people in motion, it likely exceeded today.
- 1910 was the peak; 1970 was the floor. The foreign-born share of the United States population hit its all-time high of 14.7% around 1910. Restrictions beginning in the 1920s drove it to an all-time low of 4.7% by 1970. The present figure is still below the 1910 mark.
- The 1970 generation grew up inside an anomaly. Anyone who came of age around 1970 formed their sense of normal during the lowest-immigration period in modern American history. When the numbers rose again after 1965, it registered as an unprecedented invasion. It was closer to a return to the historical norm.
- Colonial relationships explain who goes where. Migrations track the political relationships countries have had over time (Guest 318). South Asian populations in Britain follow directly from the British colonial relationship with India.
- Cold War conflict zones became migration sources. People arriving from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala were often escaping violence from conflicts the United States helped fund. The same pattern runs through Sudan, where American and Soviet money and arms in the 1950s through 1970s seeded what later gets described as ethnic conflict.
- Labor recruitment explains destinations better than “choice.” The Bracero Program brought regulated Mexican farm workers; the 1970s brought recruited doctors and nurses to fill American shortages. Informal recruitment does the same work today — a farm or processing plant asks its best workers to bring friends and family, which is why an entire community from one Mexican town can end up concentrated in one American place.
Borders Are Made, Not Found
Look at a world map drawn to scale, with the equator across the middle. There are natural features on it — rivers, mountain ranges, deserts — and some borders follow them. The Rio Grande does real work between the United States and Mexico. But the Canadian border is a line someone decided on, drawn straight across the continent. For most of the world, there are no countries or borders out there to be found.
None of this means borders are unreal. Build a wall and it becomes extremely real. But the wall along the Mexican border isn’t built on the border, which is its own kind of evidence: there are properties inside the United States that sit on the far side of it, ranches on the wrong side, and entire towns of American citizens who have to pass through the wall to reach the rest of their own country. A boundary that the barrier enforcing it doesn’t even follow is not a natural fact.
So when the debate is framed as immigration, it depends on a prior assumption that everyone belongs to a country, that everyone leaving one is entering another, and that stepping across a line puts a person somewhere fundamentally different. That assumption is the unexamined background of the whole argument — which is why the current spectrum runs roughly from expediting deportation to slowing it down a bit, and why almost no one in mainstream discussion argues that immigrants are a net positive, though the evidence supports it. Even undocumented immigrants pay taxes, and that barely registers. For the concept describing assumptions this deeply naturalized, see Habitus and Doxa: Bourdieu.
Migration as an Ancient Adaptive Strategy
Look back far enough and migration is simply what human beings do. It is how people moved around within Africa, out of Africa and back into it, and onward into Australia, the Americas, and every habitable part of the planet. This is one of the oldest adaptive strategies our species has. Curtailing people’s ability to move creates enormous problems precisely because moving is so basic to how humans have always operated.
That is why the vocabulary matters. Frame human movement as immigration and the nation-state framework has already been accepted as natural and inevitable. Frame it as migration and the framework becomes visible as what it is — a particular historical arrangement, and a recent one. For the deep-time account of these movements, see Early Human Migration to the Americas.
The Long 19th Century and the 1970 Anomaly
The largest era of migration by share of people moving was not the present. Historians call it the Long 19th Century, running from the French Revolution to World War I, when nearly a million people a year moved from Europe to the Americas, from Asia into the Caribbean and the United States, alongside the continuing forced movement of people out of Africa.
In the United States the foreign-born share peaked around 1910 at 14.7%. Then came the restrictions of the 1920s — the exclusion acts aimed particularly at Asia — which clamped down on nearly all immigration until 1965. During the Great Depression, Mexican Repatriation moved a substantial Mexican population back across a border that had until then seen little enforcement and a good deal of ordinary back-and-forth. The Bracero Program later brought Mexican farm workers under regulation, to work a defined season and return.
By 1970 the foreign-born share had fallen to its all-time low of 4.7%. That is the crux of it: anyone who came of age around 1970 formed their baseline sense of a normal country during the least immigrant-heavy period in modern American history. When the share began climbing again after 1965, it felt to that generation like their world turning upside down. Measured against the longer record, it was closer to a reversion.
The same restriction window is when earlier arrivals who had been treated as unassimilable — the Irish, the Italians — gradually melted into suburban whiteness. It takes time. People lived in Little Italy because that is where Italians lived, and they were said not to be fitting in, exactly as is said now. The linguistic pattern is just as consistent: across nearly every immigrant group, including Spanish speakers today, the second generation speaks English and the third has lost the original language, often because grandparents insisted on English at home to get ahead at school. For how these groups moved into the census category of White, see Anthropology of US Census Race Categories.
Colonial Relationships and Cold War Conflict Zones
Contemporary migration doesn’t distribute randomly. As Kenneth Guest notes, migrations are frequently connected to the colonial political relationships countries have had over time (Guest 318). Britain and India is the obvious case — the reason the best food in London is Indian.
Cold War conflicts produced the same kind of channel. People arriving at the United States border from Nicaragua, Honduras, or Guatemala were often escaping violence in conflicts the United States had helped fund, which had made those places difficult and dangerous to live in. Sudan runs the same way: one of the places where the United States and the Soviet Union backed rival militias across the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. What later gets described as ethnic conflict has money and arms with a traceable origin.
Labor Recruitment Explains Destinations
Alongside violence as a push factor sits active recruitment as a pull factor, and it complicates any simple story about people choosing to come. In the 1970s the United States had a doctor shortage and recruited physicians from South Korea into city hospitals; a nursing shortage brought nurses from the Philippines. These were people pulled in to do work that needed doing, not people arriving to take jobs.
Informal recruitment now does what the Bracero Program once did formally. If you run a farm or a chicken processing plant, you are not paying much, you need good workers, and you don’t know where to find them. So you use the cultural capital of being a boss: you ask the good workers you already have whether they have friends or family who might come. That is why you can visit an American town and wonder how everyone there came from one particular town in Mexico. They did not choose that destination at random. A recruitment network delivered them to it.
The Desire for a Middle-Class Life
Underneath the push and pull sits something broader. There was an assumption, strongest in the 1920s and 1930s, that each nation would industrialize and deliver a good life to its own citizens. Where that promise fails, the desire for a middle-class life persists and goes looking. People also describe feeling limited at home — by class structure, by gender norms, by what tradition permits — including in societies that outsiders would not think of as especially traditional. Migration offers a way out of that. People who migrate want what anyone wants, and in most cases they are a net positive to the society they join, or doing work others are not doing.
Map Projections and the View from the North
Even the picture of the world reinforces the assumptions. The familiar Mercator projection distorts size badly: many people who grew up with it believe Greenland is roughly the size of South America, when South America is about nine times larger. The equator — a word that means equal — typically sits only a third of the way up, handing two-thirds of the visual field to the Northern Hemisphere. Some versions slice a continent in half to keep the Americas centered, producing two Chinas, which makes no sense but is the map a lot of people grew up with.
A south-up map is equally accurate; there is no reason north goes on top. It looks wrong only because of what we are used to. The same habit of mind that puts the Global North at the top and in the center treats movement from the Global South as inherently a problem, even where the underlying patterns trace directly to colonialism, labor recruitment, and the uneven distribution of global resources.
Beyond the Current Debate
The anthropological view does not dictate a policy position, but it does refuse the terms the debate is usually conducted in. Once migration is understood as an ancient adaptive strategy, borders as human constructions, contemporary movement as the product of colonial history and labor recruitment, and migrants as a net contribution to where they arrive, the shape of the argument changes. The question was never whether to permit human movement. Humans have always moved and will continue to. The question is how societies adapt to something this fundamental about the species.
Questions This Lecture Answers
What is the difference between migration and immigration in anthropology? Migration describes human movement as a species-level phenomenon, continuous with evolutionary history and among the oldest adaptive strategies humans have. Immigration is a political and legal category that only exists once nation-states with defined borders do. The choice of word is not neutral: “immigration” accepts the nation-state framework as natural before the discussion starts.
Why do anthropologists say borders are not natural? Because most of them were drawn wherever someone decided. The Canada–United States border is largely a straight line across a continent. Borders are entirely real in their effects — a wall makes one very real — but real is not the same as natural. The wall on the Mexican border is not even built on the border, leaving American properties and whole towns of United States citizens on its far side.
When was the peak of immigration in United States history? The foreign-born share peaked around 1910 at 14.7%, then fell under the restrictions beginning in the 1920s to an all-time low of 4.7% by 1970. Current levels remain below the 1910 figure, which makes recent increases closer to a return to historical norms than an unprecedented crisis.
Why does immigration feel unprecedented to some Americans? Largely an accident of timing. Anyone who came of age around 1970 formed their sense of a normal country during the lowest-immigration period in modern American history. Rising numbers after 1965 were measured against an anomalous baseline, so a reversion registered as an invasion.
Why do migrants end up in particular places rather than distributing evenly? Colonial relationships and labor recruitment. Migration tracks the political relationships countries have had over time (Guest 318) — South Asians in Britain being the clearest case. Recruitment does the rest: the Bracero Program formally, and today the informal practice of asking existing workers to bring friends and family, which concentrates people from one town in one destination.
Continue Exploring
- Cultural Anthropology 2024 — the full course
- Habitus and Doxa: Bourdieu — the preceding lecture, and the canonical treatment of doxa
- Environment and Sustainability — the next lecture
- The Global Economy — chapter 10, part 1
- Anthropology of US Census Race Categories — how Irish and Italian immigrants became White
- Early Human Migration to the Americas
- The Savage Slot — Trouillot on who anthropology was assigned to study
- Global Transformations hub