Socio-economic Dislocation and Inter-war Emigration to Canada and the United States: A Scottish Snapshot

During the 1920s emigration from Scotland exceeded the natural growth of population. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the mechanisms of relocation, the regional and occupational origins and destinations of the emigrants or their demographic profile. This article draws on the recently compiled Scottish Emigration Database to provide a quantitative snapshot of the circumstances of 18,512 passengers who embarked on the lower Clyde in the first four months of 1923. The first section explains the rationale, methodology and historiographical context of the database. Then, after outlining the economic, social and political climate in inter-war Scotland, the article investigates the extent to which decay, dislocation and disillusionment – or alternatively opportunity and ambition – provoked transatlantic emigration. Reference is made to local and regional issues within Scotland, notably in the urban-industrial central belt and the crofting communities of the Hebrides. Setting the Scottish experience within the wider framework of British emigration policy between the wars, it also evaluates the effectiveness of empire settlement legislation in recruiting and retaining settlers for Canada against the competing attractions of the United States.     

A Link Between the 1780s Blast Furnaces at Coalbrookdale and Staveley: The Note of Mr Chas. Hornblower

In what appears to be the divulging of trade secrets to a potential rival, a Coalbrookdale Company employee provided the lessors of the Staveley furnace in Derbyshire with an account of blast furnace practice. A hurried draft by Charles Hornblower lists in considerable detail the raw materials and their proportions for charging the furnace, transport and labour costs, and advice about building the furnace hearth. Further analysis of the note provides contemporary information about the preparation of the raw materials, their composition and quality of iron produced.     

Little house in the jungle: The causes of variation in house size among modern Kekchi Maya

Interpreting variation in the size and quality of houses is a difficult task for the archaeologist. Are larger houses a sign of a larger household, of a higher-status household, or of a household which has lived at the site longer than others? This paper uses ethnographic data on the Kekchi Maya to test these alternative explanations. The discussion reveals a complex relationship between social positions, wealth, and house size. It is suggested that houses serve different symbolic functions in settlements with different kinds of economies.     

Skeletal age at death: an evaluation of the miles method of ageing

The accuracy of Miles' method of ageing individuals within a population, based upon an analysis of the rate of dental wear, was evaluated in a sample of 202 living Lengua Indians from the Chaco area of Paraguay. The preliterate and culturally isolated status of the Lengua provided a useful base for comparison with populations that are likely to be encountered by archaeologists. The independent age estimates from maxillae and mandibles of the same individuals were found to be highly correlated with each other and to the actual ages of those individuals (Spearman rank-correlation test maxillae r_s = 0·58, mandibles r_s = 0·95, medians of populations rank-sum R = 99·5 > 95). No significant differences (P > 0·05) were found between the mean ages of any of the Miles subgroups, as indicated by the t-test for paired comparisons. The present study provides evidence of the reliability of the Miles method of ageing archaeological populations on the basis of occlusal wear. These findings are evaluated in the light of the sources of error inherent in the Miles system of analysis.     

Diversity and employment growth in Canada, 1971–2001: can diversification policies succeed?

In this paper, we explore the link between diversity in the local economy, the process of diversification and employment growth. To do so, we first examine diversification trends between 1971 and 2001 across 382 Canadian areas (urban and rural). We then examine whether or not the more diversified areas display faster employment growth. Over some periods and for some types of area they do, but over other periods they do not. Furthermore, there is no clear link between the process of diversification and growth. Also, proximity to a large diversified economic unit (metropolitan areas) tends to be associated with growth; thus, it is not only the local characteristics of regions that determine their growth levels. Our evidence suggests that economies associated with diversity can occur concurrently with economies associated with specialisation. In the light of these complex relationships, we conclude that diversification policies are difficult to justify on the grounds of employment growth and would in any case be difficult to implement successfully due to the overall inertia observed in diversity levels.     

Breaking the Convention: Researching the "Illegal" Migration of Refugees to Europe

The study of refugees by geographers and other social scientists is, almost by definition, framed around a series of legal categories, which provide us with more or less neat categories of types of involuntary migrants. Yet the process of migration emerges in relation to legal categories and is not simply dictated by them. Thus, as legislation on migration in general and the interpretation of the 1951 Geneva Convention in particular have become more restrictive, patterns of migration have increasingly emerged that manipulate, circumvent or simply break existing legislation.
This paper examines the responses by researchers in geography and related disciplines to asylum–seeking and other forms of migration that are increasingly categorised as "illegal" as a result of recent European policy developments. Specifically, the potential for participatory and/or emancipatory research in such circumstances is explored, through comparative analysis of the ethical issues involved in radical research on a range of "trafficking" scenarios. The interaction of such research with public policy–making is also examined.