11 March 2027, Starts: 19:30

Networks of Emigration: Scottish Pioneers to Patagonia

Online talk by Dr Liz Forrest

Organised by Society of Higland & Island Historical Research. Details on how to researve a place, and to receive the Zoom link from their website. Participation is free for members and students. Non-members are requested to pay a lecture fee of £5. 

Scotland is known as a country donating emigrants to the world for centuries. None of these emigrant journeys happened in isolation, all required networks within Scotland and the host countries to enable a successful move, help the newly arrived immigrant settle in and facilitate a return to Scotland, if required. 

This talk examines some of these networks, both formal and informal, in the context of the Scottish pioneers who travelled to the Patagonia region of southern South America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This emigration was unlike some other emigration episodes in Scotland. It wasn’t the result of famine, formal emigration schemes or government initiatives but an individual response to opportunities overseas.

With family connections in Patagonia and the Falkland Islands, Liz Forrest travelled to Chile to meet up with family in 2013. What she found there caused her to embark on a small project to investigate the reasons behind their decisions to emigrate. This morphed into more extensive research and Liz was awarded her PhD by the University of the Highlands and Islands in October 2024.