1st Edition
Citizenship, Migration and Social Rights Historical Experiences from the 1870s to the 1970s
The tensions between European conceptions of the welfare state and transnational migration have caused heated political, public, and academic debates over the last decades. Historiography, however, has not yet explored in depth how European societies struggled with this dilemma-filled relationship in the formative phases of modern welfare states from the late nineteenth century to the post-war era.
The present volume contributes to filling this gap and thus to putting a highly topical issue into historical perspective. The focus is on Europe, but with a wide geographic scope that reaches also across the Atlantic. Following an introductory chapter, eleven case studies deal with four themes. The first part explores the agency of migrants in local-level administrative and judicial procedures that controlled practical access to formal rights. The second section investigates special regulations developed for seasonal labour migrants employed mainly in agriculture. The third part looks at the role of urban social policies in attracting, integrating, but also excluding both domestic and foreign migrants. The final section addresses the gradual globalisation of migrants’ social rights through international conventions.
The book will be of interest not only to historians of welfare, migration, and citizenship, but also to social scientists as well as to graduate students in these fields.
Connecting Welfare-State History and Migration History: an Introduction
Beate Althammer
Part I. – Negotiating Citizenship, Belonging and Social Rights
1. Negotiating the Right of Residence (Austria, Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century)
Sigrid Wadauer
2. Neither Citizen nor Foreigner: Gendered Negotiations and Hierarchies of Belonging in Alsace, 1918–1919
Leonie Bausch
3. Foreign Workers in the French Labour Courts: a Battlefield for the Recognition of Social Rights
Federico Del Giudice
Part II. – Regulating Seasonal Migrations
4. Pious Guardians: the Swabian Children Association and Public Welfare in the Tyrolean Alps, 1891–1915
Johnathon Speed
5. New Rights and Hierarchies: Regulating Seasonal Farm Labour (Austria, 1918–1938)
Jessica Richter
Part III. – Cities and the Integration of Migrants
6. Migration and Municipal Socialism in Imperial German Strasbourg (1871–1914)
Philipp Heckmann-Umhau
7. Who Cares for Foreigners? Dutch Migrants in Prussian Cities, 1870–1933
Beate Althammer
8. Social Rights at Work: Italian Migrants on the Turin and Munich Labour Markets, 1950–1975
Olga Sparschuh
Part IV. – Globalising Social Rights
9. Guaranteeing the Social Rights of Migrant Workers – a Transnational History (1901–1939)
Giulio Francisci
10. Argentina’s Social Policy for Immigrants in the Interwar Period
Simon Gerards Iglesias
11. Migrants, Refugees and the Right to Social Assistance in Post-war Italy and France (1945–1961)
Giacomo Canepa
Biography
Beate Althammer is a researcher at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany, with main interests in the social history of modern Europe. Her publications include the monograph Vagabunden (2017) and the journal article "‘Welfare Does Not Know Any Borders’ – Negotiations on the Transnational Assistance of Migrants before the World Wars" (2020).
