1st Edition
Migrant Labour in Europe, 1600–1900 The Drift to the North Sea
Migrant Labour in Europe (1987) examines the movement of workers from less prosperous parts of Europe to areas with demand for their services. The author identifies seven major systems of migrant labour: the North Sea System (mainly Westphalian workers heading for the German and Dutch North Sea Coast and Walloon/French workers bound for the Belgian and Zeeland coasts); the area between London and the Humber; the Paris Basin; Provence, Languedoc and Catalonia; Castile; Piedmont; and central Italy with Corsica. A detailed study of the first of these systems, tracing its development and changes, is brought into a synchronic relation with data for the other regions. The evidence shows major waves of immigration in the seventeenth century, and a rapid diminution of migratory labour to the North Sea in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a time when new ‘pull areas’ were created by the expanding industrial complexes of Germany and labour began to come in from areas outside Europe.
1. Introduction Part 1. A Description and Analysis of the North Sea System: the Northern Region of the French Empire c. 1811 2. Migrant Labour at Macro-level: Geographic Patterns in 1811 3. Migrants Under Way 4. Migrant Labour at Meso-level: the Work 5. Migrant Labour at the Micro-level: the Migrant Worker and His Household Part 2. The North Sea System in Wider Perspective: Migratory Labour in Western Europe c. 1800 6. Other West European Migratory Labour Systems c. 1800 7. The Absence of Migratory Labour Systems in Central and Eastern Europe Part 3. The Rise and Fall of Systems of Migratory Labour 8. The Rise of Systems of Migratory Labour: a Case Study of the Emergence of the North Sea System 9. The Demise of the North Sea System and Changes in Other European Systems of Migratory Labour
Biography
Jan Lucassen
