Female Migration From Sweden to Britain : An investigation into how female migration from Sweden to Britain in 1894, 1914, 1925, and 1940 was affected by the economy and political changes to women’s rights

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to find out to what female migration from Sweden to Britain looked like in 1894, 1914, 1925, and 1940, and to what extent any changes seen were affected by the economy and political changes to women’s rights. In order to do this I have analysed statistics found in archive material, in addition to literature relating to migration into Britain, the economy, and women’s rights, in order to see if there is a correlation between changes in the statistics presented and changes in society. In doing this, I found that although there are immense changes to the rights of women between 1894 and 1940 in both Sweden and Britain, such as the right to vote, the right to equal work, and the right to equal pensions, migration patterns lean much further towards the economical changes than the political changes. The biggest of these economic factors in Britain was quite clearly the industrial revolution, which affected multiple sectors of work for every type of person. Meanwhile Sweden had a situation where there was an excess of women in the country, and 90% of those that worked were agricultural workers, leading to a large outlier of ‘pigor’ or female farmhands who emigrated in 1894.