Interdisciplinary perspectives on migration and integration
Lesson 1: introduction migration and integration
Migration and integration
Migration = highly politicised debate → But what is the meaning of these words?
Who is a migrant? What is integration? Who is responsible for it? Do we live in an unprecedented era
of migration? What are the laws governing the movement of people globally and locally? How does
society change and react to people moving in and out? How are social boundaries shaped and reshaped
by mobility?
Many disciplines – interdisciplinary
Different disciplinary perspectives: History, Law, Sociology, …and the look on migration depends on
disciplinary backgrounds.
Challenge: draw on these different approaches and build a critical understanding of migration,
mobility and integration.
Lesson 2: Migration: a historical perspective
Some terminological issues
Migration = internal and international migration → not only people crossing international borders
because in the past there were no borders. If we want to speak about migration, we also have to think
about people changing residence.
Time frame of this historical perspective:
• Early modern period: 1500-1800 → French revolution was important.
• Modern period: 1800-1914
Why a historical perspective?
Why a historical perspective?
Looking from a social perspective it gives a better understanding of what we see today.
Migration and the modernisation paradigm
Karl Polanyi (1944): ‘The great transformation’
• Breakthrough to modernity (19th century)
• Fundamental changes took place → stable, harmonious, immobile civilization.
• Sharp contrast with stable and harmonious (early modern) past
The revolt of the early modernists’ (Jan De Vries, 1994) ‘myth of the immobile peasant’ → it’s not
true that before the 19th century people didn’t migrate.
,Zelinski’s transition model
Zelinski tried to model demographic transitions with migration.
Linking demographic transition with migration: mobility transition
• First phase: pre-modern society > migration: limited and circular
• Second phase: ‘early transitional societies’: mobility rises.
• Third phase: ‘late transitional societies’: rural exodus and international emigration declines
• Fourth phase: ‘advanced societies’: city-to-city migration; immigration instead of emigration
“The life patterns of all but a few privileged or exceptional persons are, or were, preordained by
circumstances of birth. Options of activities were rigidly constrained by gender and by inherited class,
caste, occupation, religion, and location. Barring disaster, the orbit of physical movement was severely
circumscribed, and the feasible range of information and ideas was narrow and stagnant, changing
almost imperceptibly from generation to generation” (Zelinski, describing early modern migration
Migration and the modernisation paradigm
Day after day, such travellers crept past, but always (…) in one direction – always towards the town.
Swallowed up in one phase or other of its immensity, towards which they seemed impelled by a
desperate fascination, they never returned. Food for the hospitals, the churchyards, the prisons, the
river, fever, madness, vice, and death – they passed on to the monster, roaring in the distance, and
were lost.” (Charles Dickens, 1848, describing migration to London)
Fundamental societal changes during the ‘modern’ era
• industrialisation, urbanisation, strong demographic growth, transport revolution, rural
proletarianization
• labour market more integrated
Strong connection between growth of the urban poor and migration
Migration in nineteenth century described as
• a new phenomenon
• in one direction: from rural areas to the city
• defined as ‘miserable’.
,Critizising the ‘mobility transition’
The mobility transition:
• not a universal process
• a-historical
• link between modernisation and migration
• image of a sedentary rural society
Charles Tilly: proletarianization process in North-Western Europe since 16th century
• free labour market → stimulating geographical mobility.
• constant movement to cities
Leslie Page Moch: Migration is not a signal of the modern age, but rather continuous phenomena which
are embedded in the social and economic framework of human organization”
• Early modern period
• Age of early industry (1750-1850)
• Age of urbanisation and industrialisation (1800-1970)
• Migration in post-colonial Europe (from circa 1960 onwards)
Problem: transport and communication means:
development of:
Existence and costs of transport: from waterways
> paved roads, railways, bike > airplane, car
communication means >alphabetisation> letters,
journals > telephone, internet
Intermediaries: travelling and recruitment
agencies, transport companies, smuggling, etc.
,Critizising the ‘mobility transition’: quantification
Quantifying the mobility transition
• Steven Hochstadt: mobility high before industrialisation
• Pooley & Turnbull: intensity of mobility in England high before 1800
before 1800 end of 19th century
Becomes more complex: seems to be more mobility towards city (London in this case), but there
was already a lot of attraction in 1750.
• Jelle Van Lottum: ‘emigrant stock rates’ in London and the Low Countries: already high in 17th
century
• Lucassen J. & L., ‘The mobility transition in Europe revisited’ (2009) > long-term perspective +
quantification.
Total migration early modern period (1500-1800), J.&L. Lucassen
J&L Lucassen were inclusive in their definition
of migration (legende)
Comparison between migration before 19th
century and after → after it became a lot
more, it was always there but rose in the 19th
century.
,Studying migration in the past
distance moved depends on:
• transport possibilities and costs
• information channels → ‘meso’-level
motives: aspirations VS realisations
• Some migrants have an idea of what to expect, but the reality often is different.
Macro-, meso- and micro-level → migration as an adaptive strategy
• Macro = structural characteristics that lead to migration (labour market, demographic changes,
…) → push and pull factors
• Meso = social networks, people you know, family,
• Micro = individual characteristics of the migrants (age, education, cultural background,)
Influence on opportunities that migrants have to migrate.
Hoerder & Lucassen, typology
What are the different types of migrants?
Role of historians
What’s the role of historians in understanding migration in the past:
• Long-term perspective → continuities and changes
• avoid misinterpretation, cf. modernisation paradigm.
• understanding processes of migration and acculturalisation → time and place differences
• linking migration to broader processes of economic, demographic, political…. developments
,Concluding: migration in the past
• migration was central to the process of social, economic and cultural change in the past” (Pooley
& Turnbull)
• “The history of European migration is the history of social life” (Charles Tilly)
• “Human migration is not only a story of the spread of humankind, but also a story of the
transformation of human life again and again” (Patrick Manning 2005)
• “Wanderungen gehören zur Conditio Humana, wie Geburt, Fortpflanzung, Krankheit und Tod’”
(Klaus Baade, 2000)
Migration and urbanisation
Urbanisation trajectories
the amount of people living in cities expends trough
history → total human population expand quickly.
Urbanisation trajectories in long-term perspective
People living in cities started to grow in the
middle-ages and only will keep on growing.
Estimated urbanisation, c. 1800 (P. Clark)
around 1800, especially in western-Europe and Japan
and some places in the middle east lots of people
already lived in cities.
,Migration and urbanisation, 1500-1900, J. & L. Lucassen
Shows that migration and urbanisation
expanded in the 1800-1850’s.
Estimating migration to cities, J.&L. Lucassen
Why is migration to cities important?
Cities needed migration to grow, it was
difficult to overcome the deathrate in
cities.
Explaining migration to cities: macro-level
Economic cycles and shifting economic centres in Europe shifting hierarchical urban networks.
• 15th and 16th century: Italian and Spanish cities
➢ shift to NW-Europe: Antwerp (16thC), Amsterdam (17thC) London and Hamburg
Demographic factor: migration as a key regulator of city populations before 1800 → dependence on
rural migration
• ‘Urban graveyard effect’ → netto-effect of migration to urban growth
• Fast growing cities: majority was born outside the city walls (Amsterdam 17th century, London
17th and 18th century)
Example: Amsterdam
between 17th century and 1930 there were less and less
foreign-born citizens. Now in 2010 there are more foreign-
born citizens. Especially in the 17th century there were a
lot of foreign-born citizens.
,Migration to cities
So there was a lot more migration to cities:
• European Marriage Pattern and individual life cycles → female migrants that move over shorter
distance to marry.
• Proletarianization processes → people as mobile labourers → more mobility to search for work.
• Mass migration but also layered (permanent, semi-permanent, seasonal)
Underestimations of real mobility → high turnover of population
• seasonal patterns of labour migration
• not only migration from rural hinterland to cities
• Rising mobility in many directions (city to city, out of the city,)
Seasonal migration
Seasonal migration = migrants move in seasonal patterns
→ to work on the land, to farm, or seasonal weather, …
Happened more and more → highest in the 19the
century.
First, they went came and left again, but after a while they
settled in the cities.
Total migration, Duisburg, 1845-1914 (Jackson 1997)
It is not only people coming to a place, but also
moving from a place. → this is a parallel:
A lot of people are moving, but a lot of people
are coming in as well. → same as today
Trying to understand what triggers this.
Jackson 1997, Migration and Urbanization in the Ruhr Valley
,Macro-level: migration and the urban labour market
Occupational profiles of migrants → who comes:
• Depending on economic profiles of the city of destination
➢ economic fluctuations
➢ ‘Human capital’ (schooling, technical knowledge)
➢ formal and informal access restrictions to certain occupations (guilds in preindustrial times)
• Depending on characteristics of region of origin
➢ impact of push factors
➢ regional patterns of labour specialisation
• the stronger push factors, the less migration was adapted to local opportunity structures →
subsistence versus betterment migration (Peter Clark)
➢ subsistence = migrants whose knowledge/ skills are needed in a specific place
➢ betterment migration = migrants who are looking for a better life
Migration to cities: meso- and micro-level
Migration: also, social and cultural process
• Who moved and where the move depends on individual and family characteristics?
• In which direction they move depends on social networks and access to information and
communication channels
Information and networks
• Social bias
• Spatial patterns → transport and communication networks
• Proximity → individual networks, organisational networks
Distance-decay effect pre-industrial migration
If you want to describe
pre-industrial migration
(before 19the century)
and you look to the
distance travelled, the
gender-ratio, local
interaction of migrants
you can make a distinction
between long-distance
migrants and Hinterland
migrants.
• Long – distance migrants = migrants who move and cross borders and do more distance
• Hinterland migrants = migrants who move from near the city, they move short distances
, Industrial period: 19th century
In the 19the century social position and travel distance shifted → ‘democratisation’ of long-distance
migration
• rising transport facilities and declining transport costs → as well for the lower classes of society
• more and new communication channels (alphabetisation, press, telegraphs…), recruitment
agencies
• internationalisation of labour markets → proletarianization
But still socially differentiated!
• unequal access of groups according to age, gender, skills, resources
• differences in access to information and networks between ‘upmarket’ and poorer and lower
skilled migrants
Foreign migration to Belgium, 1846-1910, in %
In 2nd half of the 19th century there was a rise
12.00
Royaume of foreign migrants coming to Belgium, but
the most important migration is internal
2.00
migration. Foreign migration is only 4% of the
1846 1856 1866 1880 1890 1900 1910 total population.
-8.00
Foreigners living in Belgian cities (1846-1910) (in numbers)
Foreign migration to Belgian cities, 1846-1910
• Brussels & Antwerp attracted most migrants = capital- & port city
➢ Brussel: French and German migrants
➢ Antwerp: Dutch migrants
• Gent → especially hinterland migrants = people from around Gent who came to Gent
