From the middle of the nineteenth century to the eve of the Great War, rural Quebec and southern Italy became leading suppliers of population and labour for North American industry. As thousands upon thousands of Italians and French-Canadians sought the means for a more secure life, theyexperienced some important transformations associated with the emergence and consolidation of industrial capitalism; they also helped reshape the sociocultural map of the many regions that participated in the growth of a North American economy.By combining a narrative and analytical approach, Professor Bruno Ramirez penetrates the local microcosms of several Quebec and Italian regions and identifies those factors that sent some villagers away but not others, and brought some migrants back again. He follows rural Quebecers out of theprovince and into the textile districts of New England and, at the same time, Italian migrants into some of the remotest work sites in North America and through the turbulent labour markets of the metropolis in order to unveil some of the central mechanisms of the migration processOn the Move sheds new light on the process of working-class formation and on the unusual place held by Quebec in the circuits of North Atlantic migration. Indeed, this is the first study of Quebec's double role as both a sending and a receiving society. The book breaks important ground in the studyof international migration and offers a better integrated perspective on a crucial chapter of Quebec social history.