The peopling of western Pennsylvania began 12,000–18,000 years ago with the first migration to the area by Native Americans slowly moving west from their point of arrival, the Aleutian Strait in Alaska. The Monongahela people were the group inhabiting western Pennsylvania at the time of the first European settlements on the East Coast. By the time the first Europeans explored this area in the early 1700s, the Monongahela people had vanished, victims of disease. By that time, eastern tribes had been pushed westward by English settlement on the Coast and the Iroquois Confederacy moved into western Pennsylvania to resettle.

The first Europeans to venture into western Pennsylvania were fur traders of French and British background. After the British won their claim to the area in 1758, English, Scots, and Scotch-Irish slowly came in to settle farms or work in trades. The Scots and Scotch-Irish, in particular, were attracted to the "west" (as our area was considered until the War of 1812), because they were subject to prejudice from the more "genteel" English on the East Coast.

Some "push" events in Europe changed the nature of migration to America: A potato famine in the mid–1840s left Irish peasants starving, and political upheaval made German men subject to forced military conscription. Pittsburgh and the region were attractive destinations: Ample farmland was still available cheaply, and employment was available in growing boat-building, shipping, glassmaking, and other manufacturing industries. Thousands of Irish and German immigrants found their way to Pittsburgh. The Irish–poor, unskilled, and Catholic–were subject to ridicule, discrimination, and low-paying jobs. The Germans, not having weathered a famine, tended to arrive with more skills for higher paying jobs or capital to buy land. Immigration was running at such full steam during this era that in 1860, foreign born residents made up half of the population!

During the same era, brave souls in southwestern Pennsylvania became involved in the covert migration of many slaves escaping from the South. Free blacks and white abolitionists were conductors on The Underground Railroad, which was very active along the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers. Most of the “passengers,” however, did not stay in the area, moving on to Canada instead because of the danger of being returned to slaveowners under the Fugitive Slave Act.

In 1890 the character of immigration changed dramatically. The growth of the Pittsburgh steel industry and its need for cheap, unskilled labor, combined with agricultural depression and political unrest in eastern and southern Europe, set the stage for the largest migration ever. Millions of Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Slovenians, Ukrainians, and other eastern Europeans took advantage of cheap transport to arrive in Pittsburgh ready to work in the mills and transplant their cultures to the neighborhoods nearby. By 1920, two-thirds of Pittsburgh's population was foreign-born or had parents who were foreign-born.

World War I, however, cut off the flow of immigration as it increased the demand for steel. This was the "pull" opportunity for thousands of African Americans in the South, who eagerly left Jim Crow laws and sharecropping economic conditions behind. This “Great Migration” reached its peak during the Great Depression in the 1930's.

Just as other ethnic groups in the city before them, the Black community put their roots down by establishing churches and other institutions. One of the most powerful and diverse neighborhoods was the Hill District, just east of the Golden Triangle beyond Grant Street. The Hill District was a first stop for several migrant groups arriving in Pittsburgh. First the Irish arrived in the mid 1800s, then Jews in the late 1800s, then African Americans in the 1910s. As each group became more prosperous, they tended to move to the suburbs to be replaced by the next group of migrants.

After World War I, immigration slowed almost to a standstill after Congress enacted quota laws. Pittsburgh's population continued to grow, however, until hitting a peak of 676,806 in 1950. Allegheny County's population hit a peak of about two million in 1960.

Since the 1970s, however, the push-pull factors have not been working in Pittsburgh's favor. In a reverse of the immigration boom of the 1890s-1930s Pittsburgh's population went into a rapid decline. After the loss of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s–1990s, young people left the area to find work. Pittsburgh's population was 369,879 in 1990, only 57% of its peak in 1950. Allegheny County's population declined also, though not as drastically to 1,336,449, 66% of its peak population.

While the region has lost its manufacturing jobs, its new economy has need of technology and medical positions. New immigrants from Asia and the Middle East have come to make their homes here. Much more mobile than immigrants of 100 years ago because of the automobile, these newcomers don't cluster in neighborhoods. But like all others before them, they feel the need for community, so build houses of faith and other institutions to keep their cultures alive.

When studying immigrant groups, we need to make a distinction between involuntary and voluntary migrants. Voluntary migrants willingly leave their homelands, usually with hopes of furthering their education and/or improving their standard of living. On the other hand, involuntary migrants generally leave their homes because of fear, war, or persecution.

Let’s look at Cuban immigrants as an example. The first wave of Cuban immigrants, who were mostly upper class and professionals, were “pushed” from Cuba when the communists, led by Fidel Castro, took control in 1959. The second wave was “pulled” to the United States in the early 1980s by greater economic opportunity.

Today, most large-scale migration occurs from developing countries to developed, industrialized countries like the United States.

All culture is learned. No one is born with a particular culture imprinted on his or her soul. Acculturation is the process by which an individual or group changes their cultural patterns by adapting to or borrowing from another culture.

We can speak of four basic styles of acculturation:

Style	Description
Assimilation	Characterized by a high degree of participation in the new culture and a rejection of the original cultural identity.
Integration	Characterized by a high degree of participation in the new culture while maintaining the original cultural identity
Separation	Characterized by a low degree of participation in the new culture and maintenance of the original cultural identity.
Marginalization	Characterized by a low degree of participation in the new culture and rejection of the original cultural identity.

It is common for the first generation of immigrants, particularly involuntary migrants, to have a separation or marginalization style. Their children, by contrast, often show assimilation or integration styles as a result of being exposed to the new culture at an early age. A young child has had less experience with his or her native culture than an adult has, and culturally related beliefs, values, and customs are not as firmly rooted.

An important factor affecting the acculturation of immigrants is the attitude toward them in their new community. This reception can range from a warm welcome at one end of the spectrum to xenophobia, legal discrimination, and interpersonal violence at the other end. Immigrants have historically been better received when they collectively provided a needed source of labor, or occupied an important political or moral role in their new society.

The greater the similarity between the immigrant’s original culture and the culture of their new community, the easier it will be for the immigrant to feel at home. For example, a person coming to the United States from England would probably have an easier time adjusting than a person from Pakistan or Bangladesh would.

Immigrants are most likely to adjust well to a new culture when they are not isolated from their culture of origin as they settle in their new home. They try to find an area where people with their cultural background can be found. These social contacts provide a secure environment, a sense of the familiar, from which they can begin to break into a culture that is, at first, alien to them. Some immigrant groups actually remain in ethnically homogeneous areas for generations, such as the Chinese living in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Let’s take a look at the Ukrainians as an example. Before the First World War (1914–1918), close to 98% of Ukrainians lived in the northeast, and well over 70% were concentrated in Pennsylvania, working in the mines and steel mills of the central and western portions of the state.

Be it in a large city or a small mining town, Ukrainians, like most immigrants, invariably “clustered,” that is, they settled en masse in what might be described as urban villages. Within these communities, which usually abutted on those of Old World neighbors such as Poles, Slovaks, or Jews, Ukrainians evolved networks of “our people” who helped each other. These neighborhoods re-created the sense of community that the transplanted villager sorely missed and badly needed. A church was always at the core of these communities.

As immigrants settled into their “urban villages,” they began to develop what can be called parallel institutions in their neighborhoods. No better illustration of this can be found than that of the South Side of Pittsburgh. In the 1920–30s, there were well over a dozen Catholic churches in the South Side—all in different languages. They overlapped each other in physical space, but were nations apart in culture.

Parallel institutions like the South Side churches are clues of a time when a cultural group differed in some way (race, religion, language, or national origin) from the "majority" group. It was a practical way of dealing with discrimination (either overt or covert): The "different" group would find comfort and support by creating (usually at great cost to themselves ) institutions like churches, schools, hospitals, orphanages, old folks' homes, charities and fraternal organizations. Almost every one of those South Side churches had a school where classes were taught in native languages.

By banding together, ethnic groups were able to become more self-sufficient by caring for each other. Voluntary associations and fraternal organizations, and charities like the Polish Falcons, Jewish Community Center, NAACP, and the Urban League provided social services lacking for their members in the community at large and took political action when necessary to right wrongs.

Blacks in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, for example, established not just locally owned businesses, they also sponsored community picnics and neighborhood events. When oppression denied them opportunities to fully participate in Pittsburgh society, residents of the Hill District found ways to be self-sufficient. The Pittsburgh Courier, for example, was founded in the 1920s as a voice for newly migrated African Americans whose news the other papers didn't cover. (It gained national recognition.)