Moving from opportunity: Intergenerational mobility of rural–urban return migrants in Sweden, 1890s–1940s

Using a novel longitudinal dataset, we study the intergenerational mobility of rural–urban migrants who returned to the countryside in due course. By examining pairs of brothers during the entire migration lifecycle – from childhood until age 34 – we estimate the effect of temporarily relocating to an urban area on occupational income over the mature working ages of 35–44 between the 1890s and the 1940s in Sweden. The results show that rural–urban migrants who returned to the countryside were not failures who did not improve their social position, but instead experienced substantial gains compared with their non-migrant brothers. These gains were similar to those of migrants who had permanently settled in urban areas. This pattern is mainly attributed to their capacities to leave farming and enter white-collar positions to a greater extent than non-migrants. The extent of temporary rural–urban migration, combined with the high levels of intergenerational mobility of return migrants in Sweden during the period examined, suggests that rural–urban migration to towns resulted in positive feedback effects for the countryside.