Continued Interest in the Appalachian Immigrant is not Warranted: Appalachian Out-Migrants in the Larger Southern Exodus, 1940-1980

Even as southern Appalachian migrants began to actively assert a group identity in some northern cities in the late 1960s, it was an open question as to whether they ought to be considered a group at all. In the years since the 1960s, the fate of southern Appalachian migrants in the North and Midwest has continued to be the subject of much debate. Migrants from the southern Appalachian region were clearly a group apart in the broader southern white exodus. In socioeconomic terms, Appalachian migrants looked like international immigrants from all over the world. If non-Appalachian southerners most closely resembled migrants from Canada and Western Europe, Appalachian migrants' economic experiences were more like those of migrants from Korea, South America, and Eastern Europe. In great contrast to the overwhelmingly successful southern white migrants portrayed in some recent historical studies, migrants from the Appalachian South seem to have been just as much at risk as nearly any other group of newcomers short of southern African-Americans and the most impoverished international immigrant groups.
Minnesota Population Center Working Paper Series