Striking how few people left France for the New World in the 19th century, compared to all other European countries.
France transitioned to a lower fertility rate much earlier than any other country, so the "surplus labour" susceptible to leave was small. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was actually a big immigration country while most other European nations were emigration countries.
One popular explanation for the lower fertility rates was a change in inheritance law after the revolution: estates had to be divided equally among children rather than transmitted to the oldest son, thereby giving incentives to have fewer children.
Populations of France, Germany and the UK in the 19th century (from Maddison database)
Foreign nationals in France, 1850-1936, by nationality.
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I am writing a book on immigration policy and the welfare state for @OUPPolitics. Here's a thread on how my own existence is due to immigration policy and the welfare state.
Up to the 1960s, Switzerland had satisfied a great deal of its labour needs with immigrant workers from Italy, so that it had become quite dependent on Italian workers. In 1960, 20% of the whole workforce were migrant workers, and two thirds of these were Italian.
But permit conditions were drastic, with limits on family reunification, exclusion from welfare schemes. Given that wages and living conditions in Italy were improving rapidly, Italy used this dependency as leverage.
Based on the projection and earlier polls asking about vote transfers, this is how voter flows in the second round of the French presidential election could look like. If this holds Macron should still win with 54%.
This ignores the small candidates for whom I don't have declared preferences in the second round. It also ignores the "endorsements" for the runoff being made just now. Mélenchon just called not to give a single vote to Le Pen, even if he didn't name Macron explicitly.
We know that a number of radical right (RR) parties in Western Europe have developed substantial (ideological; financial) links with the Russian government over the years. bbc.com/news/world-eur…
But what about their voters? The Pew Research Center periodically asks respondents in 16 countries about their views on a number of global issues, and notably their trust in global leaders, including Putin. The last available wave is from 2021. pewresearch.org/global/2021/09…
I guess it had to happen: I started a substack where I'm going to post some short pieces. You can subscribe here: alexandreafonso.substack.com
The first post is about radical right voters in Western Europe and Vladimir Putin. We know that Le Pen, Salvini and the AfD are very pro-Putin. Was it the case of their voters? alexandreafonso.substack.com/p/1-radical-ri…
I use data from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey collected in 9 countries in 2021 (n=9k). The short answer is that radical right voters were on average 3x more likely than other voters to have confidence in Vladimir Putin to "do the right thing in world affairs".