Some predictable phenomena (Cubans being the most common migrant group in Florida from 1970 onwards, Mexicans being the most common migrants in Texas and the West Coast initially and then most places) and some weird ones (why were Laotians so common in Minnesota in 1990, and why is the Ethiopian diaspora the largest in South Dakota as of 2013?)
(source: went to school in the 90s in Minnesota, like 30% of my classmates were Hmong)
Similar deal with Somali in Minneapolis - once there's critical mass of a given group in a given city, it increases the immigration pull because there's a support network. Right: if you do local stuff in Minneapolis, it's trivial to get paperwork in Somali, or find a Hmong translator.
I understand the benefits of diasporas settling in one city, just surprised it's one in Minnesota.
In the UK the smaller diasporas all seem to end up concentrated in London. My favourite exception to this is Ugandan Asians fleeing Idi Amin, the majority of whom chose to settle in Leicester, a city many of them first heard of through adverts Leicester City Council took out in the Ugandan press addressed to "the many families in Uganda considering coming to Leicester" urging them not to come; they've been one of the UK's most successful minority groups ever since.
Some, in the case of Hmong and Somali, are because of groups in Minnesota encouraging the migration specifically to Minnesota. This is a reasonable recap of the Somali side:
A lot of the Hmong settled in the American North and West because of the CIA's liason with the Hmong, who was a Montana boy by way of Palo Alto.
He thought the Hmong had fought hard against communism and would be massacred by the Viet Cong after the American pullout. So he lobbied hard for Hmong immigration opportunities to the States he knew best, which tended to be Northern and Western.
For this reason, delicious Hmong produce is available in improbable locations, such as the Helena, Montana farmer's market.
It's really cool to see these phenomena. I'll add immigration from Italy that didn't happen until the end of 19th century (there was no Italy before 1860).
This also suggested me that it would be cool to have the states borders that change as well, as time progresses.
I love new ways to express data. But, as I see animations like this I become a little anxious as I'd like to absorb the information, but if I look too closely in one area then I risk missing a bigger pattern or trend.
After watching, I'm convinced that a good old line chart would have been a better representation of the data. Perhaps with some added dynamic behaviour.
It's a fair point. An interactive stacked area chart or a dot matrix would give you the freedom to focus in and to take away a lot more information about specific trends.
My counter would be that there is more to data visualization than the quantity of information communicated. If that weren't the case, all data would be shown as numbers in spreadsheets.
This data involves population counts spanning several orders of magnitude, for 72 countries over 20 time periods. It could be shown in a chart, but one that would require some patience to figure out.
An animated map requires no reading of axis labels, no analysis of abstract lines or shapes. The meaning of everything is plainly evident. And for the minute it takes to watch, the information content is actually very high.
Seriously a fraction of the total slave trade from Africa went to the United States. The vast majority of slaves from Africa went to the Caribbean Islands and South America.
>Of the more than 10 million enslaved Africans to eventually reach the Western Hemisphere, just 388,747—less than 4 percent of the total—came to North America.
There was the occasional slave-running ship, yes, but I doubt they did business 'en masse'; the profits if successful were good, but besides the prohibition on the trade from the US, they had to deal with interdiction by the Royal Navy, and in those days you did not mess with the Royal Navy.
This is a cool map and there's tons of information in it. It'd be nice to see more details, like the actual numbers instead of just a top 3 counties list. Or if I pause the timeline and hover over a country it'd be neat if it listed that year's exodus.
Why do come countries brighten in some years but then dim later on?
Yes. It originally did allow you to hover over the countries to see more information. But combined with everything else it required too much memory and caused it to run slow on mobile browsers.
Doesn't seem like removing a tooltip should make the difference, but it allowed me to simplify the map, remove jquery, and make a few other simplifications to the code.
If I were to make it over again, I would use WebGL for the particles next time instead of Canvas, and performance problems wouldn't be an issue.
Surprised me how much came from Canada -- has that been a thing
Looking at the absolute number of immigrants per year skews things a bit in Canada's favour; the low barrier to movement means that there's relatively more Canadians who live in the USA for short durations.
I'm sure that Canada is a much smaller proportion of the stock of immigrants than than its proportion of the annual inflow.
There was a massive (relatively speaking) emigration of Canadians (apparently mostly Canadiens français) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries[1]. The estimates for the period are of about 160K to 800K (including descendants) Canadians living in the USA, most of them living in the North-East, and most of them of French descent. An American census of 1870 counted about 160K in New England.
It's hard to get accurate numbers, but there definitely was a substantial number of emigrants.
I was as well. It makes some sense, my family is an example. They were Scots they came to the British-American colonies in the 1750s after the clan system was extinguished in the post-Jacobite era. But part of the family went up to Canada in the early 19th century after the Revolution. Many of them are still there today but some have moved back down. My wife's family has gone back and forth between the US and Mexico a number of times, depending on economic factors. Her dad had dual citizenship and renounced his American just 20 years ago. Sounds odd but he does really well for himself in manufacturing and as a politician.
The ties between all 3 North American countries have to be pretty deep at this point.
One thing that stood out to me is that immigration from Canada nearly stopped altogether in the mid 1890s. I wonder if the klondike gold rush was a factor here. I know it spurred a mass migration to the North.
As a collateral effect, even Vancouver's population skyrocketed growing from around 13,700 in 1891 to over 100,000 in 1911.
Probably one major factor was completion of the trans-canada rail road to British Columbia, finished in 1885 by CPR. This allowed free movement of immigrants from Coast to Coast, lowering immigration to the US and moving that migration to Western Canada.
I found this surprising as well. However, I'm wondering if there were nearly as many people leaving the U.S. for Canada at the same time. The source data might not be looking at "net" immigration, and for most countries it wouldn't matter, but it might for Canada.
I think so. When I read history from the 19th until the mid-20th century, it's almost like the border didn't exist. People would move back and fourth with little concern.
German was a dominate language. At one time, nearly 1/3 of people in the US spoke it fluently. Germans were shamed from speaking it after WW1 and WW2 made the numbers dwindle even further. If it hadn't been for the wars, the US would most likely have most official documents in English, German and Spanish and German would probably be on the passports as well (currently US passports contain English, French and Spanish)
My great grandparents were born in America in the late 1800s and live in southern Ill (right outside of St. Louis), but spoke german at home as did much of that area.
My grandmother tells me the story of how mad she was when she started going to kindergarten/1st grade and she couldn't speak English yet.
The data is a bit skewed, because the biggest flow is in the 19th century, but it shows the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949) not the German Confederation (1815), which included Austria (which itself was much bigger, including Hungary etc.) and Prussia (which was basically where Poland is today).
There really was no "Germany" back then, just German speaking states, which fought wars against each other, had different religions and so on. The reason they united was basically because they hated Napoleon more than each other.
For the most part, Austria, Hungary, and Poland are broken out separately according to their present borders, even for the periods when they weren't separate countries.
Maybe I misunderstand what is said on page 16, but to me it seems like foreign nationals like Polish people are included in other countries data. So the data is bound to geographical areas not nationalities, while the interactive map shows today's geographical boundaries, which don't included said geographical areas and nationalities anymore, making the data skewed.
How was the data gathered? Depending on what you asked a Hungarian from 1850, you might have gotten 3 different countries.
The light blue counties are the ones with German being the most commonly reported ancestry during the 2000 census.
Personal note: Being from the Dakotas originally, it's interesting seeing some of my great-grandparents' backgrounds nearby: Native American, German, Norwegian, Finnish (further away), plus a few others that aren't nearby.
I think most white Americans identify as Irish first and then German second. However, a lot of German heritage was suppressed following anti-German sentiment during WWI and WWII.
Edit: it's actually the other way around. German is the most common ancestry for white people in America.
My mothers parents were of German heritage. Neither spoke English before entering kindergarten. My grandfather was an engineer in Detroit working on the Liberty aircraft engine that powered the WWI bombers.
He rode the bus to work and it wasn't uncommon for women mostly to come up to him and physically attack him wondering why he wasn't in the armed forces.
I asked my grandmother once why she didn't teach either of her children to speak German. She told me that it was on purpose, they were ashamed and didn't want to make them targets.
I've long heard that German is the most common ancestry for Americans, but I've always wondered how that was determined. I think they may be counting total immigrants, but not allowing for when the immigrants arrived.
I can readily believe that more immigrants arrived from Germany than from the British Isles, but it's also possible that by the time those German immigrants showed up they were outnumbered by the descendants of the earlier immigrants from the British Isles, perhaps even just immigrants from England itself.
I've never seen any sort of analysis like this, though.
They just ask people where their ancestors came from, like on the census. Brits may be undercounted because they've been here so long they don't even know they were British, but also the European population was quite small when they first started to settle here.
Fifteen largest ancestries in the United States as self reported
in the 2000 Census:[58]
Rank Ancestry Number Percent of total
population
— U.K. (1801–1922) 66,224,627[59] 23.3%[59]
1 German 42,841,569 15.2%
2 Irish 30,524,799 10.8%
3 African 24,903,412 8.8%
4 English 24,509,692 8.7%
5 American 20,188,305 7.2%
6 Mexican 18,382,291 6.5%
7 Italian 15,638,348 5.6%
8 Polish 8,977,235 3.2%
9 French 8,309,666 3.0%
10 American Indian
and
Alaskan Native 7,876,568 2.8%
11 Scottish 4,890,581 1.7%
12 Dutch 4,541,770 1.6%
13 Norwegian 4,477,725 1.6%
14 Scotch-Irish 4,319,232 1.5%
15 Chinese 4,010,114 1.4%
Even more interesting if you look at it state by state. You'll find that most states in the northwestern part of the country are majority German, for example.
I can't find the source, but a couple of years ago I saw a fascinating presentation from a genealogy & genotyping company showing that genetically more American's had English heritage than German heritage. Combining the 'American' census category into the 'English' category pretty much removed the discrepancy...
German-Americans are (were?) the largest group in the US. It almost seems a miracle that German didn't become the main language in the US. I guess that since the dominant groups were English-speaking they had to adapt in order to get jobs.
Back then, it was like Spanish is in California. You see it everywhere, a huge number of people speak it, and there are a lot of Spanish-language media. However, English is still the dominant language.
German used to be everywhere, being heard in the streets, with large numbers of German-language newspapers and cultural clubs. The Germans, being Germans, liked to organize themselves into clubs.
It gradually died out, as immigrants stopped teaching it to their children. Usually the children of immigrants learned the language at home, but they didn't usually pass it on to their children. World Wars I and II did a huge amount to suppress German culture and language, but it would have eventually died out anyways.
By World War II, German was still common enough that the Army was able to find large numbers of German interpreters among the young men who had spoken it with their parents.
My grandmother knew German as a child, but the language in the family had switched to English by the time she was about 10 years old. Once she was grown, she wasn't married to a German speaker, and hadn't spoken it in years anyway, so none of her descendants learned it. By the time I talked to her about it in her 80s, the only German she could remember were a few lines of some children's poem she recited when she was a child.
I suspect that this will eventually happen to Spanish, although the continued migration of Spanish-speaking immigrants will slow down the process. Eventually, the non-Spanish-speaking descendants will greatly outnumber those who speak Spanish, and the language will slowly decline.
I wouldn't be so sure for that one, the thing is unlike German, there is a country with 120M of Spanish Speaking people a few miles away, as Mexico's GDP keeps growing, US economy will become even more dependent of Mexico's trade. My point is people will get more proficient at Spanish over time, not less.
Great data visualization for learning a little more American history. Seems one more piece of evidence that the mainstream American culture is set by the British and German, or the original English and German speakers, and luckily so. Think about the rigorous constitution, logical reasoning, rule of law, and the founding fathers, etc. (from someone without British or German root, otherwise the "political correctness" would kick in).
Awesome viz! Would like some perspective on the overall volume, too. Maybe add a bar chart above the timeline/slider showing total immigration in each year? Maybe even alongside a graph of total US population growth so it's clear how much of the growth is due to immigration.
Also don’t forget emigration. I don’t know the numbers for the US but for example in the EU some countries had more emigrants than immigrants during some years (e.g. Spain in 2010).
Thanks. They actually are great circles, generated using arc.js. As they approach the poles the arcs look a little funny, but that is only because it is a cylindrical map projection.
That's because in the last ten years, America has proven to have a great quality of life. Clean roads, better facilities and plenty of well paying jobs.
How has it proven that? What I find interesting is that early on, our immigrants were predominantly from developed nations. Over time, this shifted more and more to developing nations. To me that seems to indicate that we're not seen as the land of opportunity among first world nations any longer. There are better options with more economic mobility and social services. Unless gun ownership is your primary motivating factor for immigration, there are many places where the working poor are better off going.
Both of these theories seem too simplistic. From the visualization, it didn't seem like immigration from Europe necessarily decreased in the late 20th century. It's just that the proportion from the rest of the world increased.
Also, countries like Ireland, Germany, and Italy weren't really "developed" prior to the 20th century (and to be fair, neither was the US). Germany and Italy weren't even united countries until late in the 19th century and Ireland was a British possession until the early 20th. It's possible Europeans are just staying where they are because conditions in their home countries have improved. Or, more likely, they are emigrating to richer EU countries because the Schengen agreement makes this much easier. Another factor is that a big draw for European immigrants in the 19th century was the large amount of unclaimed farmland out west. This is no longer the case now.
As for immigration from non-Western countries, they are coming over in larger numbers now because they are actually allowed to. Prior to 1965, quotas heavily favored Western European countries over the rest of the world[1].
According to this, Canada was in the top 3 from 1910 to 1969 (being #1 from 1920 to 1949). Mexico has been #1 since 1960 up to present. It would be interesting to see the number of immigrants per country (at least in the top 3) as well as the proportion of immigrants wrt the total population during each decade.
1965 Immigration Act. That's when we stopped caring about making immigration work for our country, and started caring about doing whatever it takes to not be called racist.
It's neat how you can see immigration policy being enacted though. China goes dark in 1882 (Chinese Exclusion Act), then Russia lights up for the New Immigration near the turn of the century and goes dark in 1924 (Immigration Act of 1924), and then everything opens up in 1965.
Who, living in Australia, would want to immigrate to US? Most of the people I know would be happy to go as far as Hawaii (for a holiday) but moving to US from Downunder.......hmm.......you would have to have a good bloody reason, especially given the possible outcome of the upcoming elections. As for the rest of the countries mapped on this viz, I totally understand.
The people who I've personally known that migrated from Aus to the US do so for very lucrative economic reasons (job in software development or Hollywood) or for love. I don't think anyone is going to move in either direction between the two countries in search of a significantly better life.
The graphic is a canvas element overlaid on an svg element. I wasn't able to figure out a way of making the whole thing responsive so I just put it in a responsive iframe.
I'm sure there is a better solution. Would love to hear if anyone knows.
Since this page states" "Most illegal immigration is not included" I'd like to see one of these representing the flow of illegal immigrants (especially from and across Mexico) since Obama won his first election (and second).
There's a new outflow of illegals from the US to Mexico since 2007. But net inflow of legal migrants from Mexico has been strong and much larger than illegal flows every one of those years.
And net inflow of illegals from Central America that cross Mexico is very high and has been rising as illegal inflows from Mexico fall.
Some predictable phenomena (Cubans being the most common migrant group in Florida from 1970 onwards, Mexicans being the most common migrants in Texas and the West Coast initially and then most places) and some weird ones (why were Laotians so common in Minnesota in 1990, and why is the Ethiopian diaspora the largest in South Dakota as of 2013?)