Abstract
This article challenges the “imaginary ethnography” of European urban population as monocultural and non-migrating. Pre-1800 European migrations are discussed first, next changing patterns in the 19th century are summarized. In the third section immigration to industrializing cities at the height of nationalism is exemplified by Czech migration to Vienna, Polish migration to the cities of the Ruhr District, and the multicultural and immigrant character of Budapest and of Paris. Immigrant insertion, conflict, migrants, and economic niches, as well as the reaction of host societies and community formation are discussed. In conclusion, older theories of disorganization are contrasted with recent concepts of acculturation and transcultural lives.
Résumé
Cet essai remet en question l’«ethnographie imaginaire” selon laquelle la population urbaine euroéenne est monoculturelle et stable. Après un historique des migrations européennes avant 1800, l’auteur résume l’évolution des mouvements migratoires au 19e siècle. Dans la troisième section, il illustre l’immigration vers les villes en voie d’industrialisation, à l’apogée du nationalisme, en donnant les exemples de la migration tchèque vers Vienne, de la migration polonaise vers les villes de la Ruhr et du caractère multiculturel de Budapest et de Paris dû à l’immigration. L’auteur y analyse l’insertion des immigrants, les conflits, les enclaves ethniques, qu’elles soient sociales ou économiques, ainsi que la réaction des sociétés hôtes et la formation des communautés. Enfin, l’auteur oppose des vieilles théories de déstructuration à des concepts récents d’acculturation et de transformation culturelle.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, A.B., & Frideres, J.S. (1981). Ethnicity in Canada: Theoretical perspectives. Toronto, ON: Butterworths.
Bade, K.J. (Ed.). (1992). Deutsche im Ausland. Fremde in Deutschland. Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Munich: Beck.
Barfuß, K.M. (1995). Foreign workers in and around Bremen 1884–1918. In D. Hoerder & J. Nagler (Eds.), People in transit. German migrations in comparative perspective, 1820–1930 (pp. 201–224) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bauer, O. (1924). Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (2nd ed.), Vienna: Volksbuchhandlung.
Bertaux-Wiame, I. (1982). The life history approach to the study of internal migration: How women and men came to Paris between the Wars. In P. Thompson & N. Burchardt (Eds.), Our common history. The transformation of Europe (pp. 186–200). London: Pluto.
Blussé, L. (1986). Strange company: Chinese settlers, mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia. Dordrecht: Foris.
Bothe, F. (1966). Geschichte der Stadt Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt am Main: Sauer & Auvermann.
Brousek, K.M. (1980). Wien und seine Tschechen: Integration und Assimilation einer Minderheit im 20. Jahrhundert. Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik.
Chatelian, A. (1976). Les migrants temporaires en France de 1800 à 1914: Histoire économique et sociale (2 vols.). Lille: Publ. de l’Université de Lille.
Coleman, T. (1965). The railway navvies. London: Hutchinson.
Cross, G.S. (1983). Immunigrant workers in industrial France. The making of a New laboring class. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Fassmann, H. (1985). A survey of patterns and structures of migration in Austria, 1850–1900. In D. Hoerder (Ed.), Labor migration in the Atlantic economies. The European and North American working classes during the period of industrialization (pp. 69–94), Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Fawcett, J.T., Khoo, S.-E., & Smith, P.C. (1984). Women in the cities of Asia. Migration and urban adaptation. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Friedrichs, C.R. (1979). Urban society in an age of war: Nördlingen, 1580–1720. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gerber, D.A. (1989). The making of American pluralism: Buffalo, New York, 1825–60, Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press.
Glettler, M. (1985). The acculturation of the Czechs in Vienna. In D. Hoerder (Ed.), Labor migration in the Atlantic economies. The European and North American working classes during the period of industrialization (pp. 297–320), Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Glettler, M. (1980). Die Wiener Tschechen um 1900. Strukturanalyse einer nationalen Minderheit in einer Großstadt. Munich: Oldenbourg.
Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., & Blanc-Szanton, C. (1992). Towards a transnational perspective on migration: Race, class, ethnicity and nationalism reconsidered. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Gordon, M.M. (1964). Assimilation in American life. The role of race, religion, and national origins. New York: Oxford University Press.
Green, N.L. (1985). “Filling the void”: Immigration to France before World War I. In D. Hoerder (Ed.), Labor migration in the Atlantic economies. The European and North American working classes during the period of industrialization (pp. 143–161). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Green, N.L. (1986). The Pletzl of Paris. Jewish immigrant workers in the Belle Epoque. New York: Holmes & Meier.
Green, N.L. (1997). Ready to wear-Ready to work. A century of industry and immigrants in Paris and New York. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Harzig, C. (Ed.) (1997). Peasant maids, city women. From the European countryside to Chicago. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Herberg, E.N. (1989). Ethnic groups in Canada. Adaptations and transitions. Scarborough, ON: Nelson Canada.
Herbert, U. (1990). A history of foreign labor in Germany 1880–1980. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Hochstadt, S. (1999). Mobility and modernity. Migration in Germany, 1820–1989. Ann Arbor. MI: University of Michigan Press.
Hoerder, D (1992). Labour migrants’views of “America”. Renaissance and Modern Studies, 35, 1–17.
Hoerder, D. (1993). The traffic of emigration via Bremen/Bremerhaven: Merchants’interests, protective legislation, and migrants’ experiences. Journal of American Ethnic History, 13, 68–101.
Hoerder, D. (1996). From migrants to ethnics: Acculturation in a societal framework. In D. Hoerder & L.P. Moch (Eds.) European migrants: Global and local perspectives (pp. 211–262). Boston MA: Northeastern University Press.
Hoerder, D. (in press). Cultures in contact: European and world migrations, 11th century to the 1990s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hohenberg, P.M., & Lees, L.H. (1985). The making of urban Europe 1000–1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holmes, C. (1988). John Bull’s island: Immigration and British society, 1871–1971. London: Macmillan.
Hughes, E.C. (1948). The study of ethnic relations. Dalhousie Review, 24, 477–482.
Hughes, E.C., & MacGill Hughes, H. (1952). Where people meet: Racial and ethnic frontiers. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Isajiw, W.W. (1999). Understanding diversity. Ethnicity and race in the Canadian context. Toronton, ON: Thompson.
Jackson, Jr., J.H. (1995). Migration in Duisburg, 1821–1914. In D. Hoerder & J. Nagler (Eds.), People in transit. German migrations in comparative perspective, 1820–1930 (pp. 147–176). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, Jr., J.H. (1997). Migration and urbanization in the Ruhr valley, 1821–1914. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
John, M., & Lichtblau, A. (1993a). Schmelztiegel Wien einst und jetzt. Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart von Zuwanderung und Minderheiten (2nd ed.). Vienna: Böhlau.
John, M., & Lichtblau, A. (1993b). Vienna around 1900: Images, expectations and experiences. In D. Hoerder, & H. Rössler (Eds.), Distant magnets: Expectations and realities in the immigrant experience. New York: Holmes & Meier.
Karpat, K.H. (1982). Millets and nationality: The roots of the incongruity of nation and state in the post-Ottoman era. In B. Braude & B. Lewis (Eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The functioning of a plural society (vol. 1, pp. 141–169). New York: Holmes & Meier.
Katus, L. (1991). Ethnicity in a central European metropolis: Budapest 1850–1914. Manuscript, Labor Migration Project, Universität Bremen.
Kazal, R.A. (1995). Revisiting assimilation: The rise, fall, and reappraisal of a concept in American ethnic history. American History Review, 100, 437–471.
Kiernan, V.G. (1978). Britons old and new. In Holmes, C. (Ed.), Immigrants and minorities in British society (pp. 23–59). London: Allen & Unwin.
Klessmann, C. (1978). Polnische Bergarbeiter im Ruhrgebiet 1870–1945. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck.
Klessmann, C. (1985). Polish miners in the Ruhr district: Their social situation and trade union activity. In D. Hoerder (Ed.), Labor migration in the Atlantic economies. The European and North American working classes during the period of industrialization (pp. 253–276). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Klucsarits, R., & Kürbisch, F.G. (1982). Arbeiterinnen kämpfen um ihr Recht. Wuppertal: Hammer.
Köllmann, W. (1984). Industrialisierung, Binnenwanderung und soziale Frage. In W. Köllmann (Ed.), Bevölkerung in der industriellen Revolution. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck.
Kracauer, I. (1925–27). Geschichte der Jüden in Frankfurt am Main 1150–1824 (2 vols.). Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann.
Kriedte, P., Medick, H., & Schlumbohm, J. (1981). Industrialization before industrialization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kulczycki, J. (1994). The foreign worker and the German labor movement. Xenophobia and solidarity in the coal fields of the Ruhr, 1871–1914. Oxford, UK: Berg.
Kulczycki, J. (1997). The Polish coal miners’ union and the German labor movement in the Ruhr, 1902–1934. National and Social Solidarity. Oxford, UK: Berg.
Lequin, Y. (Ed.). (1988). La mosaïque France: histoire des étrangers et de l’immigration. Paris: Larousse.
Lequin, Y. (Ed.). (1992). Histoire des étrangers et de l’immigration en France. Paris: Larousse.
Löw, R. (1984). Der Zerfall der “Kleinen Internationale”. Nationalitätenkonflikte in der Arbeiterbewegung des alten Österreich (1889–1914). Vienna: Europa-Verl.
Lucassen, J., & Penninx, R. (1997). Newcomers. Immigrants and their descendants in the Netherlands 1550–1995 (rev. ed.) Amsterdam: Spinhuis.
Lucassen, J. (1987). Migrant labor in Europe 1600–1900: The drift to the North Sea. Beckenham, UK: Croom Helm.
Matovic, M.R. (1984). Stockholmsäktenskap. Familjebildning och partnerval i Stockholm, 1850–1890. Stockholm: LiberFörlag.
Moch, L.P. (1983). Paths to the city: Regional migration in nineteenth-century France. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Moch, L.P. (1992). Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Press.
Mommsen, H. (1963). Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage im Habsburgischen Vielvölkerstaat. Vienna: Europa Verlag.
Montelius, S. (1966). Recruitment and conditions of life of Swedish ironworkers during the 18th and 19th centuries. Scandinavian Economic History Review, 14, 1–17.
Murphy, R.C. (1982). Gastarbeiter im Deutschen Reich. Polen in Bottrop 1891–1933. Wuppertal: Hammer.
Murzynowska, K. (1972). Polskie wychodzstwo zarobkowe w Zaglebiu Ruhry 1880–1914 [Polish economic emigration in the Ruhr basin]. Wroclaw.
Noirel, G. (1988). Le Creuset français. Histoire de l’immigration XIXe-XXe siècles. Paris: Seuil.
Nordmann, C. (1971). Grandeur et liberté de la Suede, 1660–1792. Paris: Nauwelaerts.
Norman, H. & Runblom, H. (1985). Migration patterns in the Nordic countries. In D. Hoerder (Ed.), Labor migration in the Atlantic economies. The European and North American working classes during the period of industrialization (pp. 35–68). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Persons, S. (1987). Ethnic studies at Chicago, 1905–45. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Ra’anan, U., Ames, K.Z., Martin, K. (Eds.). (1991), State and nation in multi-ethnic societies. The breakup of multinational states. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Richmond, A. (1994). Global apartheid: Refugees, racism and the new world order. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press.
Riegler, C.H. (1985). Den farende Svend ... Scandinavian Journeymen and Workers. In C. Harzig & D. Hoerder (Eds.), The press of labor migrants in Europe and North America 1880s to 1930s (pp. 205–219). Bremen: Universitaet.
Roberts, M. (Ed.). (1973). Sweden’s age of greatness, 1637–1718. London: Macmillan.
Rosander, G. (1967). Herrarbete. Uppsala: Universitetsforlaget.
Scander, R. (1975). Karl X’s Göteborg på hisingen. En holländsk koloni med svenskt medborgarskap. Göteborg: Hembygdsförbundet.
Silverman, M. (1992). Deconstructing the nation. Immigration, racism and citizenship in modern France. London: Routledge.
Taylor, J.G. (1983). The social world of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Thomas, W. & Ananiecki, F. (1927). The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. New York: Knopf.
Weber, A.F. (1967). The growth of cities in the nineteenth century. A study in statistics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen. The modernization of rural France 1870–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Willcox, W.F. & Ferenczi, I. (1929, 1931). International migrations (2 vols.). New York: Gordon and Breach.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hoerder, D. Metropolitan migration in the past: Labour markets, commerce, and cultural interaction in Europe, 1600–1914. Int. Migration & Integration 1, 39–58 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-000-1007-3
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-000-1007-3