The dynamics of internal migration in nineteenth-century France are too complex to
describe as a rural exodus or as the result of economic crises. Although wages were
lower in the countryside than in cities, the countryside remained attractive and sustained
its old migratory networks, including temporary migration. Urbanization was
slow, even though Paris extended its sway over the entire national territory. Each village
developed a migratory area that channeled flows of migrants, including women,
in a threefold model: long-distance migration for the better off and the well educated
seeking upward social mobility; short-range migration for the poorest; and sedentarity
for the populations in the middle. Kinship ties or occupational networks, as well as
the spatial distribution of opportunities and infrastructures, shaped the strategies and
trajectories of human mobility. Nominative approaches derived from microhistory,
and based on biographies, genealogies, and family structure, authorize a ‘‘mesoscopic’’ approach to the study of migration that elaborates the links between individuals and
their macroscopic environment
