Unemployment

I first became of the unemployment problem when young. At that time I had just come back from Burma, where unemployment was only a word, and I had gone to Burma when I was still a boy and the post-war boom was not quite over. When I first saw unemployment men at close quarters, the thing that horrified and amazed me was to find that many of them were ashamed of being unemployed. I was very ignorant, but not so ignorant as to imagine that when the loss of foreign markets pushes two million men out of work, those two million are any more to blame than the people who draw blanks in the Calcutta Sweep. But at that time nobody cared to admit that unem­ployment was inevitable, because this meant admitting that it would probably continue. The middle classes were still talking about 'lazy idle loafers on the dole' and saying that 'these men could all find work if they wanted to', and naturally these opinions percolated to the working class themselves. I remember the shock of astonishment it gave me, when I first mingled with tramps and beggars, to find that a fair proportion, perhaps a quarter, of these beings whom I had been taught to regard as cynical 'parasites, were decent young miners and cotton-workers gazing at their destiny with the same sort of dumb amazement as an animal in a trap. They simply could not understand what was happening to them. They had been brought up to work, and behold! It seemed as if they were never going to have the chance of working again. In their circumstances it was inevitable, at first, that they should be haunted by a feeling of personal degradation. That was the attitude towards unemployment in those days: it was a disaster which happened to you as an individual and for which you were to blame.

Why did the author know nothing about unemployment before he came to Great Britain?

What does the author blame for the rise in unemployment?

Does he consider the unemployed in any way responsible for their situation?

Rewrite the sentence “I remember the shock…” beginning “A quarter of…”. Keep your sentence simple.

What is the unemployed's attitude to their situation and how has this attitude been formed?

Which sentence from the text best summarises the main idea?

a) T first became aware of the unemployment problem when

young.

b) When T first saw unemployed men ...

c) In their circumstances it was inevitable...

How would your life style have to change if you lost your job or other means of support? Do you think it would affect your relation­ships?

Migration

Migration refers to the movement of people from one geograph­ic area to another in order to establish a new residence. Migration is the product of two factors. Push factors encourage people to leave a habitat they already occupy; pull factors attract people to a new habi­tat. Before people actually migrate, they usually compare the relative opportunities offered by the present and the anticipated habitat. If the balance is on the side of the anticipated habitat, they typically mi­grate unless prevented from doing so by immigration quotas, lack of financial resources, or some other compelling reason. In the 1840s the push of the potato famine in Ireland and the pull of employment opportunities in the United States made this country appear attractive to many Irish people. The push resulting from the failure of the 1848 Revolution and the pull of American political freedom also led many Germans to seek their fortunes in this country. At the present time, both push and pull factors are contributing to the entry into the Uni­ted States of large numbers of illegal aliens from Mexico. Low agri­cultural productivity and commodity prices in Mexican agriculture have served as a push factor and high American wages have served as a pull factor. The movement of people from one nation to another is called international migration.

People also move about within a nation - internal migration. Within the United States, the South and the West have been the fast­est-growing regions. Consider the South. Millions of people left the region. Most were poor whites and blacks heading North, away from

the South's ailing farms and struggling local economics. The South became increasingly attractive to business. Additionally, more and more retired people sought the South's warmer climate; racial attitudes liberalized; a more cosmopolitan atmosphere pervaded southern cities, exemplified by Atlanta; and lower living and amenity costs than those the Midwest and East attracted many younger people.

1. What is migration?

2. What two factors cause people to migrate?

3. What can prevent from migration? Give examples.

4. For whom is the South of the US attractive? Why?

5. What habitat in the world would you like to occupy? Why?