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The ‘push’ for many migrants to Britain was poverty in their own countries.

• Many families in the Scottish Highlands were forced off their land by enclosures and the Highland Clearances, when landowners evicted them in favour of sheep farming.
• Thousands of Irish families left because of rising rents, bad landlords, poor harvests, rising prices and a lack of jobs. The Great Famine in the 1840s caused one million to leave Ireland, with many going to Britain and the USA.
• Extreme poverty and civil war affected the villages of Southern Italy so badly that thousands migrated north to Britain.

For these people, Britain’s booming industrial economy offered the hope of jobs and survival.