As always with questions about the British Empire at large it completely depends on region/time and race. To answer this question we will need to (briefly) jump into the debate about the organisation of the British Empire. In the last few decades the image of a centralised, efficient and effective (if ‘hands off’) administration of empire (and thus Imperial policies such as migration) has been challenged. In its place came a raft of historiography which pointed out its arbitrary, confused and at times contradictory organisation and policy approach. This debate about where the reality sits hasn’t massively been settled (mainly as we are talking about so many different countries, times and policies there really isn’t a consistent story). However I think the take home message is that we should not look for systematic policy pronouncement and simply assume read that as a binary there was/was not a migrationary tendency in the British Empire. The most convincing works I have read characterise this messy system still being bound together and given some at least 'philosophical' direction by an (admittedly waxing and waning) Colonial Office. As well as this there was a shared ethos of the white governing class which despite perhaps not following the same policies does lead to a degree of governing in the same spirit. This is because most were raised and educated amongst each other from an early age – educated at second-tier public schools like Haileybury School, attending the second–rung colleges at Oxbridge these slightly more economic and socially peripheral groups had a joint sense of purpose and ethos.

So when I try to explain migration patterns in the empire I tend to think of ‘streams’ of ‘currents’ (Slightly stolen from Harper and Constantine). Generally the benign and paternalist self-conception of the colonial authorities rejected specific legal remedies to tie their subjects to the land (there are of course exceptions). The extended trade and shipping routes by this time in the early 20th century in theory made migration very logistically possible. So why then so we not see more mass migration. Well A) we do and B) while there is no formal moratorium for most subjects there was certainly an informal one (this is the British Empire we are talking about after all).

Now to streams. Imagine the links between each colony and the mother county being connected by ‘streams’ representing (usually) ship-based transport essential for migration. To navigate these requires social and financial capital, i.e. an knowledge and ability to attend, access, (persuade) onto the boat, secondly to actually pay for passage. The former was not made easier (in general) by the colonial authorities who lack the incentive to encourage this. The latter was also heavily prohibited unless you were white and wealthy (big point: in the British Empire these two combining was not necessarily always the case). This essentially created a situation where migration was informally very difficult/impossible – keeping much of the labour where it was.

However there were always exceptions. There were some streams where it was desirable to get labour to move from place A to place B. In the case of the South African mines new labour was needed to work there after the Anglo-Boer war in 1902. Alternatively new plantations in pacific islands need new workers, expanding rice-mills in Burma ditto. Additionally in the Indian case individuals were needed to fill the petite-bureaucratic functions of the colonial state (policemen, soldiers, junior civil servants) – for example in 1921 there were 23000 Indians in Kenya - more than the number of whites. If any of these were the case then the informal mechanisms which check migrations were mitigated. Recruitment was actively encouraged ensuring that a lack of social capital would not be an impediment as you will told and somewhat managed through the process. Financially costs would be covered (very rarely), mitigated (rarely) or funded by some system of indentured servitude (working off your cost travel when you arrive – there is a huge controversy whether this was slavery 2.0 – it was officially banned in 1917). However it is done the ‘current’ (please ignore the continuing tortured metaphor) of that particular stream (Shanghai to Transvaal, India to Kenya etc.) would now be easier to navigate thus encouraging travel. It is important to recognise that opening this particular stream was achieved without simply opening borders – i.e. as an Indian you could work as a policeman in Kenya but good luck going to New Zealand. Now while in some cases this process acted like a giant ‘tap’ turning on mass migrations and then turning them off (for example the Chinese migration to Transvaal was quickly stopped after 54,000 made the journey terrifying the local white settler of their own wages being undercut and depressed). In just as may this was a smaller scale thing. An Australian company might need labourers and send a single recruiter to a particular province in India bringing over only a few hundred labourers or so. This means that when we imagine migration for all the ‘big movements’ there is an ongoing ‘shuffle’ at a smaller and lower-level between colonies started by commercial rather than colonial interests (oh how I would love to get into the relationship between these too but I have to clean the house). All of this I have talked about gave rise to a patchwork but real migrationary trend in the Empire, for example British Guiana was known as the “land of six countries” due to the significant (Indigenous, British, Portuguese ex-colonists, African Slaves, Chinese and Indians)

There were obviously other mechanisms for migration. Geographical proximity meant that there could be more local migrations as it was cheaper and easier to travel thus negating the informal controls. For example we see a large and more unsolicited migration from India to the tea fields of Ceylon and rice mills of Burma for economic reasons. This was less arbitrated by the colonial officials and tended to be more constant. Additionally the Chinese (who were mostly not empire-based but nonetheless interesting) in particular had a habit of using their own steam to migrate – i.e. poor quality junks and other mechanisms to travel to opportunities for work as migrant and usually returning labour. As these were individuals working abroad to send money home the Chinese tended to be single young men (there were twice the number of Chinese men to women in Malay in the early 20th century for example). This invoked the ire of many a Colonial official and white dominion as unlike some-what controlled migration from within the empire this seemed more random and unstoppable – giving rise to tensions. The Chinese went to Australia and then New Zealand in the 1800’s for a ‘gold rush’ and also found themselves in Canada working on the Canadian Pacific railway. Both of these habits are best seen in Malay, with ample jobs in tin mines etc. we see a shift from local Indians as well as 653,077 enterprising Chinese through Singapore in a few years at the start of the century. All this meant that while 80% of the population of Malay was native in 1880 by 1911 it was only 51%.

One final note is that there were some ‘hard lines’ which limited immigration. While we certainly see sporadic efforts to make reductions to the informal barriers there are just as many instances of attempts to increase the barriers against migration for specific economic or political reasons. These were usually temporary, however in the case of the White Dominions became permanent. By 1914 laws had been passed to ban Chinese and Indians (with the former very much in mind) from migrating to white Australia, New Zealand and Canada - not entirely, but effectively limiting the flow of migrants to these countries.

Overall we see a patchwork and mixed system of migration which differed by group and country, which waxed and waned depending on the economic and political situation. However one thing which is certainly not true is that the empire lived in a system of stasis with each ethnic group existing and contained to their ethnic homeland. We see a complex, mixed and rich pattern of migration throughout the early 20th Century

Sources

Marshall (ed.) (1996) British Empire CUP

Porter (1996) The Lion's Share Longman

Darwin (2013) The Unfinished Empire Penguin

Darwin (2009) The Empire Project CUP

Harper and Constantine (2010) Migration and Empire OUP