Migration in the United States since the Second World War has often been associated with “the American dream” of upward mobility. Such identification is often mistaken, and assumes that migrants make rational choices, are always seeking better opportunities and generally experience such mobility. Although it is true that the growth of suburbs gave the appearance of great upward mobility, the myth of the American dream ignores the experiences of the large numbers of refugees who have no choice but to come to the United States, and of others who are forced to move within the country owing to some form of displacement (losing jobs, losing land, and so forth). In addition, migration is often not linked to either upward mobility or to displacement, but is rather a question of life cycle changes fundamental to maintaining status within the middle class. Middleclass Americans move frequently from the time the young adult goes off to college or university until he or she moves into a retirement colony.

The origins of belief in an American dream are longstanding. Nineteenth-century Republican ideology was founded on the notion that Americans could improve their social condition by moving away from a place of oppression to one where opportunities were more abundant. The popular Horatio Alger stories cemented the ragsto-riches story in the popular consciousness. Although social historians since the 1960s have brought into question the veracity of this myth (showing in many instances that few Americans who were born laborers really did make their way out of the working class), nevertheless the myth has remained powerful, and has helped inspire many migrations, both among immigrants arriving at US ports and among native-born Americans within the country.

Even African American migration into northeastern cities, which began prior to the First World War and continued through the Second World War, and which radically altered such cities, is often spoken of in terms of an “exodus” out of the segregated South to the “promised land.” Such characterizations gained hold in spite of the fact that the later years of this migration coincided with the deindustrialization of many cities and resulted in economic plight for many of the migrants.

The dangers of assumptions about the “American dream” lie most clearly in the fact that migrations (and perceptions about them) are often closely connected. The “success” of one set of migrants or immigrants is seen in contrast to the experience of others, and is often mobilized in political discourse through notions of “model minorities” or peoples marked by a “tangle of pathology” As such, these assumptions fit neatly into or even frame beliefs about race and ethnicity that become mobilized in public-policy debates.

This is especially clear in the case of the migration of whites out of cities to the “crabgrass frontier” following the Second World War. Often labeled white flight, since the migration occurred partly in response to this influx of African Americans, many white city dwellers began to move to suburbs. Spurred on by the easy availability of mortgages for GIs returning from service in the Second World War (which African Americans have sometimes characterized as a “white ethnic handout,” since benefits were often withheld from black veterans) and by the construction of networks of highways promoting automobile culture rather than public transportation, large numbers of the children of immigrants moved away from urban neighborhoods to live in the newly developed suburban tracts. While such whites reaped the perquisites of suburban lifestyle, the marker of their success, most African Americans remained trapped in ghettos characterized by limited opportunities. What the Kerner Commission would see as the emergence of “two societies” was a product of the emergence of a racial divide that was not just spatial (suburban/ urban), but was also one framed by migration narratives (those who assimilated/those who could not do so because of an assumed “culture of poverty”).

Other migrations of great significance to post-Second World War American society occurred as a result of the rapid development of the western United States, spurred by military expansion and the growth of the oil industry. In the aftermath of the restrictions on immigration passed between the 1880s and 1920s, very few migrants entering states like California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona were first- and second-generation immigrants from Europe and China, the origins of many earlier migrants. Instead, many were of Mexican origin (exceptions to restrictions being made for immigrants coming from within the Western Hemisphere) for whom the region had long been familiar and marked by strong family and community ties crossing the boundaries of the nation state (many such “migrants” even questioned the legitimacy of those boundaries). In addition, migrants began leaving the “dust bowl” of Oklahoma to work as fruit pickers in California’s farming and wine industries (as in The Grapes of Wrath, 1939), and these were followed after the war by the kinds of migrants depicted in The Lucy Show (CBS, 1962–74), northeastern urbanites leaving their homes and making their way to the “land of opportunity.” The movie industry too had established itself in Hollywood earlier in the century with the migration of prominent Jewish movie moguls west from New York City, and, focused on their own westward migration rather than the northern and earlier eastward migrations, the movie industry tended to promote images of Californian prosperity and opportunity. Such westward migrations diminished with the end of the Cold War and the decline of federal funding for the defense industry.

The easing of quotas in 1965 returned immigration to levels witnessed in the years before the First World War. Along with refugees flooding into the country following American involvement in the Vietnam War and support for regimes that were overthrown (Nicaragua and Iran), these immigrants have radically altered the demographic character of the country. Prior to the 1960s, Americans were largely of European and African American origin, with Chinese, Japanese, Latinos and American Indians represented by regional concentrations. Now, throughout the US, South Asian, Asian and Hispanic communities are growing rapidly with the proportion of Europeans and African Americans declining.

Seeking cheaper land and labor, along with reduced taxes, corporations have moved steadily into the Southern and Southwestern regions, now often labeled the Sunbelt, and they have been followed by many northeastern and Midwestern workers seeking jobs. The economic revival and a perceived end to the racial turmoil that had been associated with these regions have made them more attractive to outsiders.

Finally older Americans have continued to migrate, sometimes into a nearby retirement home, but frequently also to areas of the country like Florida, that have large postretirement populations. Attractive to older Americans, especially during the winter months, Florida’s identification with retirement-age Americans is seen in both movies, (e.g. Cocoon, 1985) and sitcoms (Golden Girls, NBC, 1985–92).