Migration Category Structure

Question

Although I have checked the page with instructions for the structure of migration, it does not say how to define how the "from" and "to" destinations should be described. 

I would personally assume that the "from" would be the place they were born and the "to" the place where they died. Those two facts would be the most common fact to be known by genealogists in both the origin country as the new one. Those two facts also tend to not change...

If a relative of mine was born in xx county but lived for six months in yy county before emigrating, I would consider him an emigrant from xx county since that is his origin. 

Is it mentioned anywhere how the categories should be used, how "from" and "to" should be defined?

Answer 1

I always looked at it as "from" where they lived at the time they moved and "to" where they settled.

Comments

That is also how I understand it. Though, on Maggie's side of the argument, if the person lived in a very short time in a place just before emigrating it might not "count".

On the other hand, it is definitely not from "port of departure" to "port of arrival". 

And if someone migrated several times, they get several migration categories, eg. from Sussex to Ontario and then from Ontario to California (The England -> Canada -> USA pattern is frequent).

... And it's true, these points are not on the structure page. Are they somewhere else?

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Its not quite that easy.   Take immigrants to, say, Southern Rhodesia.  A person born and raised in Kent, England who died in Cape Province, South Africa, but lived his entire life in two provinces in Southern Rhodesia.   He migrated from a port in Southampton, Hampshire to Cape Town, Cape Province (which is clear on the ship's passenger list), but transition between birth county and eventual African residence is not so clear cut (or necessarily well sourced).

The migration categories are far too complex.  I suspect many profile managers may struggle with this series of categories.  The question that was raised in my mind: is it necessary to drill down county/province (called the admin entity) of origin to county/province of destination and what is the pertinent variable or parameter (birth/death or port of exit versus port of entry - and there are others, like known residence post migration)?   Surely we should simply satisfy ourselves with, in this case, a man of Kent migrating to Southern Rhodesia.

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I understand it's NOT, repeat NOT, port of exit/port of entry but rather the areas where people actually lived for an amount of time that may be considered significant. That is nebulous in itself, but it's not the ports.

Personnally I'm happy to leave profiles in a mid-level category. For instance France has 90+ admin entities from 1789 on and I refuse to make so many categories, so anyone who emigrated after 1790 emigrated from "France", period, and that is a mid-level category. I agree it's not ideal, but it's the "less bad" option.

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I hear you on ports of exit and entry, but if there is to be a tangible source of a migration it is in the ship passenger lists.  There are many ways of skinning the cat...  but I agree that dropping down to mid-level categories for migration will be best.  Profile manager's choice of course.  In my neck of the woods, we do not have the luxury of census detail and listings, thus residence or place of eventual settlement is often not known.   That leaves us with birth and death, but that is prone to error on multiple migrations in between.   I think people just need to do their best, and go down to the levels they are comfortable with.

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In theory ship categories are an option that could solve this problem. Unfortunately it's been impossible to agree on a naming scheme for those. I also don't know how ship categories are set up with regards to parent categories, etc. It's been discussed before, again and again, but without result.

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Ship passenger lists are very often not available, depending on the era, so things get even more complicated in trying to determine when somebody migrated from where.  Plus, a person may have gotten on a ship in x port, but that may have been only a transit point.  

I don't think we should drill that deeply unless an actual passenger list is available, in which case it falls outside migration categories and falls under ships' categories.

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I perhaps wonder if the Dutch Cape, Cape Colony, and South Africa are not better handled with the progenitor category [[Category:Suid Afrika Stamouer-Progenitor]].  This category was set up for all profiles of people who were born (of foreign parents unknown) and, or, migrated to South Africa and had had issue or descendants born in South Africa.   It is lacking in perhaps country of origin is missing, but categorization is based rather more on general facts known  rather than specific 'source-able' parameters.  When I touched on migration categories being used, SA Roots suggested they already had a solution, progenitors...   I guess the individual profile managers' solution are each to their own, use it or move on by.

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hmm, that really has not got a lot to do with migration as such Andrew, looks like a category for grouping first ancestors more than anything else.  Or unknown birth location people.

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You may well be right, but in South African genealogy it is often intrinsically linked to migration with the arrivals in the 1800's, "Our goal is to source and improve all profiles of Stamouers-Progenitors migrated to the Cape of Good Hope"

Answer 2

Now there's an interesting conundrum.  I have one ancestor who was born in Ireland, but came here as part of the Carignan-Salières regiment (French).  He is tagged with the category ''Irish immigrants to New France'', which is most likely up for deletion/conversion to the new model for migration categories.  I have no idea when and where he was hired on as soldier for the regiment.  He certainly did not migrate directly from Ireland to here, and he was not French (although maybe he was half French, records for Limerick in this era are scarce, his mother's name could be French).  Still scratching my head on how to treat him in this context.

Comments

Interesting. If he just transited through France, he would indeed be considered a migrant from Ireland to Canada, New France. On the other hand if he really lived in France (but how long? What would be considered enough, one or two years?) then he should be considered to have migrated twice: from Ireland to France and then from France to Canada, New France.

Hard to determine without any documentation on the time he spent in France (and I assume there is none )

(edited)

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memory is such an inexact thing, he was with a marine company detachment of troops on arrival, not C-S regiment.  And somebody already replaced the category for him.

Have written to Marcel Fournier to ask him if he could give me a clue, he did a lot of work on marine companies.