A Study on Migrations from a Polish Village to the United States. Analysis of Arrival Records from the Ellis Island Archives.

Joanna Kulpinska, Jagiellonian University

The purpose of this presentation is to analyze ship passenger lists from the Ellis Island Archive. The archive's online collection forms a vast database of immigrants who came to the United States from various countries of the eastern part of the globe between 1892 and 1924. On the basis of the material collected on overseas migration from the Podkarpacie region, the question of the usefulness of the data contained in the aforementioned lists for the exploration of the phenomenon of the first migration streams flowing from Polish lands to the United States will be discussed. Both the advantages of access to such rich material and certain limitations in using it to describe the phenomenon of migration will be presented. The research covered selected localities of the contemporary Podkarpackie voivodeship, located in the southeastern part of Poland, which at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were under the jurisdiction of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Galicia province. The analysis is conducted on several levels: 1) synchronically - comparing migration from multiple localities at the same time, 2) diachronically - comparison of migration time trends 3) comparison of all local ethnic groups (Poles, Jews, and Ruthenians) living in the region at the turn of the 20th century (nowadays, Jews and Ruthenians are no longer present in the area).

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 Presented in Session 146. New Constructs, Old Data, and Incorporating Immigrants