Return Migration from Nineteenth Century Australia: Key Drivers and Gender Differences

Abstract

This paper sheds new light on return migration from Australia to the UK in the latter nineteenth century. It uses data from shipping records, and from a random sample of the 23,000 Australian-born in the 1911 Census of England and Wales. Based on these sources, it estimates some 20% of migrants to Australia returned: higher among the wealthy, but still 12% of semi- and unskilled working class migrants returned. There was a preponderance of women among returnees. From that, and other evidence such as the geographic spread of returnees across England, the paper argues that social networks played critical roles in decisions to return.