Moving-on From a Rural Parish: a Multidisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Population Trends and Migration in an Area of the English-Welsh Borderland.

This study is about migration and aims to analyse the complexities which underlie the movement of people in time and space. There are three major interdependent elements essential to such a study – data, a context and longitudinal time scale. The study commences with a discussion of various approaches which have been taken by scholars to the study of migration, drawing particular attention to the behavioural or decision making perspective. This is followed by an assessment of relevant data sources, including census enumerators’ books, parish registers and oral accounts. This piece of research has been structured to use these sources for an analysis of a study area in the middle English /Welsh Borderland, concentrating on the neighbourhood of the parish of Little Hereford. The salient geographical characteristics of the area and family structure are highlighted in Chapter 4, before an examination is made of its culture, ways of life and changing demographic profile in Chapters 5 and 6. The remainder of the study homes in on the details of migration, first looking at the pattern of movement in the decade 1871 to 1881 and then charting the movements of three core families (Bennett, Rowbury and Maund), with a particular focus on the last of these. It is these three families which give the longitudinal dimension to the study. An assessment of the role of place in migration decisions is attempted but even at this micro scale of analysis it proves difficult to get really close to the decisions made over a long time period.
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