Skip Nav Destination
Close Modal
Update search
NARROW
Format
Journal
Date
Availability
1-1 of 1
William O’Reilly
Close
Follow your search
Access your saved searches in your account
Would you like to receive an alert when new items match your search?
Sort by
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2020) 51 (1): 39–63.
Published: 01 June 2020
Abstract
View article
PDF
Alongside the long-term migration systems that developed between Europe and the Americas, Atlantic migration history is replete with anomalous events—migration “fevers” that lie outside well-described norms in migratory processes. Prospect theory finds risk-seeking behavior to have been a compelling pre-condition for two instances of such migration fever in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as for their subsequent cascade effects, creating a social dynamic of “irrational” migration. Prospect theory provides a testable framework for understanding why and how short-lived migration episodes acquired so much force and intensity and points toward a broader relationship with accepted decision-making structures in migration studies.