Abstract
We examine the similarities and differences in the cross-national comparison of Americans who have emigrated to Australia (“Yanks”) and those who went to Israel (“Olim”). In comparing these two groups, we found them to be similar in a variety of biosocial characteristics: age, marital status, level of formal education, and employment. While they held these characteristics in common, they diverged from the general adult American population in that they were much younger, slightly less likely to be married, more highly educated, and more likely to be professionally employed. Only in one area for which data were available was there a difference between the groups, and that was gender. Slightly less than three-fifths of the surveyed Americans in Israel were female, but exactly three-fifths of those surveyed in Australia were male. In examining the motivation for migration, we first defined international migration as the voluntary and permanent relocation from one country to another for more than 1 year. In developing a framework for analyzing motivations, we constructed a table which arrayed the locus of concern (self or others) on the vertical axis against the horizontal goals of migration (expressive or instrumental). This yielded four quadrants: A, B, C, and D.
The primary motivation for Americans emigrating to Australia was the search for adventure, travel, or a working holiday; and for emigration to Israel, the quest was for expanding the meaning of one’s religioethnic identity. These attributes represent self-expressive motives found in quadrant A.
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Notes
- 1.
Also, 28% of our panel study group of Olim, had studied for, but did not complete, a college degree. That would raise the “college” percentage to 70% for the Olim, which is quite high. The Yanks reported 16% studying for but not completing a college degree for a “college” total of 52%.
- 2.
One policy-linked reason for this is the need to screen applicants for genuine migration from the much larger group of transient visitors and tourists. In order for aliens to work in Australia, they must qualify for a Temporary Resident Visa, valid for 1 year but renewable; or a Permanent Resident Visa, good for 5 years, and renewable indefinitely. Both require identical background investigations, demanding much time and documentation. A Tourist Visa is much easier to secure, but it is temporary, about 6 months, and does not allow employment in Australia. Government officials probably assume that anyone who would go through the inconvenience of acquiring a Permanent Resident Visa instead of a Tourist Visa must intend to stay. Therefore, anyone with a Permanent Resident Visa was assumed to be a genuine settler. All interviews with Americans were restricted to those who had Permanent Resident Visas. We operationalized the concept migrant to mean any American living in Australia under either type of settler visa.
- 3.
Working independently, Haour-Knipe (1990) studied 42 North American emigrants in Geneva, Switzerland, and found a similar set of motivations to which she attached different labels but similar distinctions. Her findings offer support for the distinctions proposed here.
- 4.
The Australian Department of Labour and Immigration study (1969; 1971) reported that 29% said that the desire for travel was the main reason for migrating, the highest response of any category (followed by employment opportunities, 21%; all family-related reasons combined, 17%; and escape from social tensions, 14%). The report’s conclusions, however, largely ignore this finding and discuss only those Americans who prefer living in Australia for reasons other than economic advantage. Finifter and Finifter (1980a), as part of their focus on the values and political orientations of American migrants (see 1980b; 1982), found adventure/travel to be an important motive. Despite the large percentage of responses in this category (nearly equal to “economic betterment”), they consider this relatively unimportant, concluding that the travel and adventure motives did not possess universal significance. Interestingly, they attribute more importance to what they term the “quality of life” motive, despite the significantly fewer responses in this category compared with “travel and adventure.” Finally, Cuddy (1977) also ignored the adventure/travel motive. More than 55% of his respondents selected “for adventure” as their prime motive for migrating, the single most popular response. Nonetheless, he dismissed the finding, instead focusing on the far fewer (26%) responses to the category “becoming overcrowded” (see DeAmicis 1980).
- 5.
Durkheim (1951, p. 221) distinguished between “egoistic” and “altruistic” in his analysis of suicide in this manner: “Having given the name of egoism to the state of ego living its own life and obeying itself alone, that of altruism adequately expresses the opposite state, where the ego is not its own property, where it is blended with something not itself, where the goal of conduct is exterior to itself, that is, in one of the groups in which it participates.” This definition seems to also aptly describe the difference between emigration to Israel and Australia.
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Dashefsky, A., Woodrow-Lafield, K.A. (2020). Motives: Why They Move. In: Americans Abroad. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1795-1_4
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