This article examines the assimilation of rural-born people into the urban economy in the industrialization context, focusing on Sweden from 1880 to 1910—a time characterized by a notable shift in economic activity towards urban areas. I utilize individual-level data on three cohorts of rural-urban migrants linked across census records, allowing for an examination of their labor market assimilation across all Swedish towns. The main findings suggest that the labor market assimilation of male migrants followed a Chiswick-like process, regardless of the size of the destination area. Initially, migrants displayed a sizeable negative gap in labor market outcomes compared to urban natives, which narrowed with the time spent in the urban area. Nevertheless, they never managed to close the gap over time. By contrast, female migrants displayed few signs of converging with female natives. Migrants’ inability to close the gap was likely due to the non-transferability of skills between the rural and urban sectors. The convergence that did occur can be explained by the potential for upward mobility from the relatively low initial positions migrants entered and, to some extent, negative selection into return migration.

中文翻译：

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从底层开始上升：1880-1910 年瑞典城乡移民的劳动力市场同化


本文研究了工业化背景下农村出生的人被城市经济同化的情况，重点关注 1880 年至 1910 年的瑞典——这一时期的特点是经济活动显着转向城市地区。我利用了与人口普查记录相关的三个农村-城市移民群体的个人层面数据，从而可以检查他们在瑞典所有城镇的劳动力市场同化情况。主要研究结果表明，无论目的地区域的大小如何，男性移民的劳动力市场同化都遵循类似 Chiswick 的过程。最初，与城市本地人相比，移民在劳动力市场结果方面表现出相当大的负差距，这种差距随着在城市地区花费的时间而缩小。然而，随着时间的推移，他们从未设法缩小差距。相比之下，女性移民几乎没有表现出与女性本地人趋同的迹象。移民无法缩小差距可能是由于农村和城市部门之间的技能无法转移。确实发生的趋同可以用移民进入的相对较低的初始位置向上流动的潜力来解释，并且在某种程度上，对回流移民的负面选择。