Migrant Labour in Europe, 1600–1900

The Drift to the North Sea

Jan Lucassen, Donald A. Bloch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032368436
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000777666
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Foreword and Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• Part One: A Description and Analysis of the North Sea System: the Northern Region of the French Empire c. 1811
• Part Two: The North Sea System in Wider Perspective: Migratory Labour in Western Europe c. 1800
• Part Three: The Rise and Fall of Systems of Migratory Labour
• Summary and Final Remarks
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Notes
• Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources
• Index of Place Names