Since 1950 more than three million people have left their homes in Appalachia in search of better jobs and a better life in the cities of the Midwest and Southeast. Today they constitute one of the largest minorities in many of those cities. Yet they have been largely overlooked as a social group and ignored as a potential political force, partly because so little has been written about them.

This important book is the first to explore the Appalachian migration and its impact on the cities, on Appalachia, and on the migrants themselves, from the perspectives of sociology, economics,...