Labor Migration in the Atlantic Economies

This collection of essays revises and broadens scholarly assumptions about the history of migration in search of work. The book begins with a critique of current concepts in migration history and a general survey of European labor migration from the 1820s to the 1920s. The following section discusses important emigration and immigration countries and examines in detail the problems of internal European migration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author then focuses on the acculturation of labor migrants on both sides of the Atlantic. The final section of this work tackles the much neglected question of return migration. A bibliographic essay, as well as numerous graphs, maps, and illustrations, supplement this collection of essays.

"This edited work of 19 articles by European, English, and American scholars is a virtual compendium about migration on search of work .... But labor migration is only part of the story here. Acculturation to new societies, once the job has been found, became the concomitant experience for migrants in such diverse cities as Marseilles, Milwaukee, Vienna, and New York. The essay by Lizabeth Cohen on the material culture of American working-class homes adds a great deal to this section. Of unique value is the book's third section on the experiences of the returned migrant, the worker forced to go through acculturation twice, both in his adopted society and again upon returning to his native state. Jonathan Sarna's study of Jewish return migration to Eastern Europe illuminates an almost unimagined phenomenon .... [the] overall usefulness of this volume to social historians cannot be overstated, especially since there are numerous statistical tables throughout the work."-Choice, ?This edited work of 19 articles by European, English, and American scholars is a virtual compendium about migration on search of work .... But labor migration is only part of the story here. Acculturation to new societies, once the job has been found, became the concomitant experience for migrants in such diverse cities as Marseilles, Milwaukee, Vienna, and New York. The essay by Lizabeth Cohen on the material culture of American working-class homes adds a great deal to this section. Of unique value is the book's third section on the experiences of the returned migrant, the worker forced to go through acculturation twice, both in his adopted society and again upon returning to his native state. Jonathan Sarna's study of Jewish return migration to Eastern Europe illuminates an almost unimagined phenomenon .... [the] overall usefulness of this volume to social historians cannot be overstated, especially since there are numerous statistical tables throughout the work.?-Choice

erder /f Dirk /r ed.