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Is there life outside the migrant network? German immigrants in XIX^th century Netherlands and the need for a more balanced migration typology [1]

Clé Lesger Department of History University of Amsterdam Leo Lucassen Department of History University of Amsterdam Marlou Schrover International Institut of Social History Amsterdam

Résumé de l'article

À Rotterdam et Utrecht au xixe siècle, comme à Londres ou New York, les Allemands forment un groupe hétérogène. Pour autant, entre ces deux villes hollandaises, il est possible de dégager des nuances notables. Certes les possibilités différentes offertes par chacune des cités attirent des types logiquement différents d'immigrants allemands, du point de vue du sexe, des origines et des professions. Mais le plus frappant est l'opposition entre les modes migratoires. A Utrecht, environ la moitié des Allemands sont concentrés dans un petit nombre de niches, conformément au modèle habituel des chaînes migratoires. Rotterdam en revanche fournit un paysage plus dispersé, sans réel regroupement fondé sur l'activité professionnelle ou l'origine régionale.
Ces formes de migrations hors-réseau, qui sont souvent sous-estimées par la littérature scientifique sur les chaînes migratoires, sont tout à fait passionnantes en ce qu'elles nous montrent qu'il convient de se garder de considérer toute migration comme profondément modelée par les réseaux personnels des individus mobiles. Par notre typologie à trois dimensions – « espace, temps, mode » –, nous voudrions suggérer combien serait utile de distinguer au sein des modes migratoires les migration à réseau, les migrations organisationnelles, enfin les migrations hors-réseau. Le concept de « migration organisationnelle » est plus large que la notion de « migration de carrière » développée par Charles Tilly et dont elle s'inspire. Dans notre cas, elle ne se réduit pas aux couches intermédiaires et supérieures de la société, mais comprend tous les migrants qui ont partie liée à ces sortes de réseaux professionnels. Ainsi à Rotterdam, ceux qui travaillent comme employé ou commis dans le commerce ou les firmes d'import-export, ainsi que les apprentis de multiples métiers (tailleurs, boulangers, bouchers...). Tous étaient au courant des possibilités spécifiques offertes par certaines villes hollandaises et ne se reposaient pas nécessairement sur des contacts personnels ou des réseaux sociaux pour effectuer leur migration. Quant aux migrations hors-réseaux, elles correspondent en définitive aux immigrants qui se déplacent de manière autonome sans se reposer sur des réseaux personnels particuliers et qui n'entrent pas dans des structures professionnelles organisées. Comme les précédents, ils sont avertis des perspectives que le marché du travail leur offre sur leur lieu d'arrivée, mais cette connaissance reste générale, sans information particulière sur des domaines spécifiques. Les servantes, les personnes employées dans le secteur de la restauration ou des transports entrent dans cette catégorie. Elles migrent parce qu'elles estiment qu'il y aura toujours du travail disponible dans une grande cité en expansion. Il est évident qu'une ville comme Utrecht est moins susceptible d'attirer ce genre de migrants « aventureux ». Germans in nineteenth century Rotterdam and Utrecht, like in London and New York, formed a heterogeneous group, but between these cities some remarkable differences were found. Not only did the diverging opportunity structures of these cities attract different types of German migrants, with respect to gender, origin and occupation. Much more striking are the differences in the way the migration of these Germans was patterned and channelled. In Utrecht about half of the Germans were concentrated in a small number of niches, according to the classic chain migration pattern. Rotterdam on the other hand offers a much more dispersed picture, with virtually no combinations of occupational and regional clustering.
These non-network migration patterns, which are often neglected by the literature on chain migration, are of special interest, because it shows that we should be careful not to view every migration mode as deeply embedded in personal networks. In our three-fold “space, time and mode” typology we suggest that it might be useful to make a distinction within migration modes between network, organisational and non-network migration. The concept of organisational migration is broader than Charles Tilly's “career migration”, by which it was inspired. In our case it is not restricted to the middle and upper segments of society, but includes all migrants who are part of these kind of occupational networks. In the case of Rotterdam: especially those working as clerks and assistants in wholesale and international trading firms, as well as apprentices in various crafts (tailors, bakers, butchers etc.). All of them were aware of specific possibilities in certain Dutch cities and did not necessarily depend on personal contacts and social networks to migrate. Non-net work migration, finally, refers to immigrants who move independently without relying on distinct personal networks, and who do not fit in organised occupational structures. Like organisational immigrants, they are aware of the possibilities that the labour market offers at their destination, but instead of specific knowledge, they rely on general information. Female domestics, people working in the catering business and those working in the transport sector fall in this category. They migrate on the basis of the idea that there is always work to found in a large and booming city. A town like Utrecht would be less likely to attract this type of “adventurous” immigrants.

Plan de l'article

• Introduction

• Research questions, sources and methods

• Destination Rotterdam

• Migration modes of German immigrants in Rotterdam

— Origin of the German immigrants in Rotterdam

— Occupations

• A comparative perspective: German immigrants in Utrecht

— Origin and migration patterns of the German immigrants in Utrecht

• Explaining different patterns

• Conclusion

• Bibliographical references

Introduction

In the last quarter of the xixth century, an increasing number of Germans migrated to the Dutch town Rotterdam. Most of them came from the Western part of the German Empire. No distinct push-regions can be distinguished within this vast area, nor do we see ethnic clustering within Rotterdam. This rather fragmented picture does not fit with the existing migration typologies. To understand why migration theory has trouble dealing with these dispersed patterns, a short overview is useful.

Since the end of the xix^th century, geographical mobility has fascinated thousands of scholars from various disciplines. Our understanding of this multifaceted phenomenon has increased accordingly (Lucassen & Lucassen, 1997). Especially the relatively recent focus on the channelling function of networks and of chain migration has taken the research field an important step forward, away from mechanistic macro push and pull approaches (Lucassen, 1987; Gabaccia, 1988, 76-97; Hoerder, 1997; Borges, 2000). The concept of chain migration, which ope-rates at the micro and meso level, reaches back to the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time the US commissioner-general for immigration used the image of “endless chains” to describe the pattern of immigration to the United States. The chains arose through personal contacts and letters between immigrants and those who considered a transatlantic move (Price, 1963, 108; Barton, 1975, 49-50; Alexander, 1981). Subsequently, Robert Park and his colleagues from the Chicago School of Sociology acknowledged the explanatory potential of this concept, when they studied settlement patterns of European immigrants in American cities. They found that Italians, for example, were not just scattered at random throughout the United States, but “…they settle by villages and even by streets, neighbors in Italy tending to become neighbors here” (Thomas & Znaniecki, 1918, II, 1513-1515; see also Park & Miller, 1921, 146).

Since then “chain migration” has become a key term in scholarly work on migration. It was, however, for a long time overshadowed by the push-pull paradigm, which tended to reduce immigrants to particles without any agency, moved principally by economic and political forces. In the 1960s the chain migration concept finally broke through, when migration scholars started to pay more attention to the social dimensions of human mobility (Price, 1963; MacDonald & MacDonald, 1964). Many of these more recent authors use quite a narrow definition of chain migration only considering streams that start in one place or small area and end in one destination (Lee, 1969, 293; Lewis, 1982, 47-48). Tilly’s [2] concept of “transplanted networks” and his well known and influential definition of chain migration fit in this tradition. According to Tilly: “Chain migration moves sets of related individuals or households from one place to another via a set of social arrangements in which people at the destination provide aid, information, and encouragement to new immigrants. Such arrangements tend to produce a consi-derable proportion of experimental moves and a large backflow to the place of origin. At the destination, they also tend to produce durable clusters of people linked by common origin”. (Tilly, 1978, 53)

Apart from chain migration, Tilly distinguishes three other patterns of migration: local, circular and career migration. In our study of German immigrants in the Netherlands career migration is important. It is defined by Tilly as “…more or less definitive moves in response to opportunities to change position within or among large structures: organised trades, firms, governments, mercantile networks, armies, and the like. If there is a circuit, it is based not on the social bonds of the migrant's place of origin, but on the logic of the large structure itself”. (Tilly, 1978, 54)

Although innovative and productive, Tilly’s typology is also problematic because it excludes long distance migration flows that do not fit his four categories [3]. The migration of German bakers to the Netherlands, for instance, does not fit in Tilly’s definitions. German bakers migrated to the Netherlands in large numbers already before the xix^th century (Knotter and Van Zanden, 1987). Their migration conti-nued into the xix^th century. Many of the German bakers went to Amsterdam. Their migration can not be considered career migration, as defined by Tilly, because it was not for instance organised by large firms or governments. It was, however, also not chain migration, since there was no clustering of German bakers from one particular village or well-defined German region in Dutch towns. Immigrant bakers came from various parts of Germany. They moved in a much more solitary fashion to the Netherlands than is accounted for in the model of chain migration.

Other earlier studies on migration made similar findings. Decades ago, in his study on Southern Europeans in Australia, Charles Price noticed that a large part of the immigrant population did not consist of people coming from the same village or region. Neither did they cluster in Australia (Price, 1963, 112). In his study of European migration to Cleveland, Josef Barton also came across immigrants who were not part of transplanted networks. He labelled them as “solitary”. About 70 percent of all Rumanians and Slovaks migrated in a fashion in which neither village nor district connections were important (Barton, 1975, 51-54). Large village chains, common for Italians migrating to America, were an exception rather than the rule. In Bechelloni’s study of Italian immigration to France, his data show a very scattered pattern of migration. These led him to conclude that there were migration paths between “n’importe quelle localité italienne à n'importe quelle localité d'accueil en France”. Italians moved from every place in Italy to every place in France (Bechelloni, 1988, 85).

The concept of chain migration can of course be stretched so that it includes also “solitary” migrants. To us, this does not seem the best way to move on. The root of the problem is Tilly’s typology itself. It is composed of unlike quantities: local migration refers to distance (space), circular migration to the time that migrants stay in their new surroundings, and chain and career migration to the mode of migration. We therefore propose to distinguish between at least three separate but interrelated dimensions of migration, each with its own typology (see figure 1).

Fig. 1

A tri-nominal typology of migration

In our case study of German immigrants to the Netherlands we focus on one of the dimensions of migration: the mode of migration. The mode of migration therefore needs some clarification. Personal network migration is primarily based on personal contacts, whether they are shaped as a chain or as a web, or whether they are forged at the level of the family, the village or the region. In all cases people move because they are informed (and often helped) by people they know or know of. Organisational migration (or non-personal network migration) resembles Tilly’s definition of career migration, but our typology is not restricted to elites or (highly) skilled immigrants. Artisans, journeymen and unskilled workers, who move within a guild-like tramping system also fit into this category. Organisational migration includes German journeymen bakers in Amsterdam and apprentices in crafts and trade. Non-network migration refers to immigrants (and their families) who have only a general knowledge of the opportunity structure in a certain destination, upon which they make their decision to move, without having personal contacts at their destination. Information about their distant destination will in most cases be transferred at the personal level, but in contrast to (personal and non-personal) network migration, the decision to move does not primarily depend on the expected support of specific social and professional networks. Typical examples of this type are unskilled workers in the transport sector, or female domestics, who tried their luck in Rotterdam, because it was common knowledge that this large port city offered ample opportunities for employment. Neither organisational nor non-network migration normally lead to massive out-migration from specific places or to concentrated ethnic settlement at specific destinations.

Research questions, sources and methods

In the following we will first demonstrate that our typology of migration modes is a valid one. Our case study of Germans in Rotterdam shows that migration to this city was not exclusively channelled through personal and professional networks. Most migration to Rotterdam seems to have been of the non-network type. A comparison with German migration to Utrecht reveals some of the factors that account for this departure from the classical theory because German migration to Utrecht was largely channelled through networks.

The Rotterdam (Lesger and Lucassen) [3] and Utrecht (Schrover) case studies were conducted independently of each other. A comparison between the two Dutch cities was not planned in advance. When discussing the different migration modes in the two cities, however, we came across problems with the dominant migration typology and in particular with the classical definition of chain migration. We therefore decided to combine our data. One of the consequences of the late decision to combine our findings is, that although we used the same source, the data were collected in different ways. Two major differences stand out. For Utrecht the period under observation is longer (1849-1879) than that in Rotterdam (1870-1879), and for Utrecht more personal and contextual information was gathered about German immigrants.

In both cases we used the population registers, which were introduced in the Netherlands around the middle of the xix^th century. They form the basis of a continuous registration of all people living permanently or temporarily in the Netherlands. These registers are based on the censuses, that were held every ten years and record all changes in household composition and address in the period between two census years. In contrast to the German Meldewesen (See Jackson, 1997 and Hochstadt, 1999) which emerged in the same period, population registers were kept in every Dutch municipality and were interactive. When a person left one municipality a record of his or her destination was kept in the place of departure. At the destination the former residence was registered. This makes it possible to follow people from one place to the next, as long as they stayed in the Netherlands. The municipal population registers list name, address, date and place of birth, religion, marital status, occupation, date of death, as well as previous and new addresses. They thus offer a unique opportunity to reconstruct migration patterns of immigrant communities.

For the years between 1870 and 1879, we extracted from the Rotterdam population registers Germans arriving at an age between 15 and 30 years. A random selection of 383 of these people (203 men and 180 women) was analysed further [4]. From the Utrecht population registers we extracted all people who were born in German regions and who lived in Utrecht between 1849 and 1879. This gave us a total of 2052 people: 536 men and 423 women who were already in Utrecht in the 1850’s, and another 676 men and 417 women who entered the city between 1860 and 1879.

Destination Rotterdam

Germans in Dutch cities in the xix^th century have so far not attracted much attention (except for Lucassen, 1987; Knotter, 1991; Lucassen, 2001 and Schrover, 2001a). This is surprising when we realise that in that period, as in the preceding centuries, Germans were by far the largest minority in the Netherlands. In the nineteenth century, 60% of all foreigners in the Netherlands came from German regions. Around 1850 there were officially over forty thousand first generation Germans in the Netherlands (Heijs, 1995, 216 and 229). In the second half of the xix^th century German immigration did not keep pace with the overall growth of the population and as a consequence their relative numbers declined.

In contrast to the national trend, the proportion of Germans in Rotterdam continued to increase in the period between 1870 and 1890 (Lucassen, 2001). The main reason for this was the expansion of the (transit) harbour, which became the largest in the Netherlands. The increasing volume of trade in Rotterdam was a function of its strategic position between the rapidly industria-lising German Ruhr area and England (Nusteling, 1974). Through Rotterdam raw materials (such as ore, coal, grain and later also oil) were shipped to the Ruhr area. The export of German (finished) products was less important for the expansion of the Rotterdam harbour. The increasing dependence on Germany during the 1870s weakened the traditional links of the Rotterdam mercantile community with Great Britain. Increasingly it was oriented towards the new German empire, and from the 1880’s onwards German was the first language of the Rotterdam merchants (Van de Laar, 2000, 149).

The expansion of the Rotterdam port economy pulled German migrants to the city. It led to the establishment of numerous German trading firms and insurance companies, that recruited part of their personnel (clerks, assistants) from Germany. It also attracted a large numbers of dock-workers, skippers and sailors. But Rotterdam was also attractive to German entrepreneurs who aimed at the local market, such as the well-studied shopkeepers from the Westphalian Münsterland.

The German community in Rotterdam manifested itself in a number of societies. In 1862 the Deutsche Evangelische Gemeinde was established, to offer religious services to German skippers and sailors. In the same year the St. Raphaelsverein welcomed Catholic Germans. The Deutscher Turn- und Ruderverein was set up in 1870. A number of other societies with varying functions from poor relief to singing followed in the 1880s and 1890s. Around the turn of the century a German school was founded (Henkes, 1998) [5]. Many of these societies, led by Germans who stayed more or less permanently in the Netherlands, were aimed at temporary immigrants, offering them a “home” in the strange new surrounding. The membership of most societies underwent many mutations. In Rotterdam five out of six immigrants can be considered temporary migrants, defined as those who left Rotterdam within a year. The situation in Rotterdam may have been similar to that in Vienna in the same period, as characterised by the Austrian historians John and Lichtblau (1993, 66). The latter found that although the membership of several large Czech associations remained at a constant level, its composition changed dramatically within a few years.

This short description of Rotterdam explains why the city was attractive to certain German immigrants, despite the decreasing importance of the Netherlands as a destination for German immigrants in general, and the booming German economy. In the 1870s and 1880s Germans formed a small but growing part of the Rotterdam population. While the number of German immigrants in Rotterdam increased, the sex-ratio within the German population changed. In 1850 there had been more than two German men to every German woman. In 1889 there was just over one German man to every German woman.

Migration modes of German immigrants in Rotterdam

While tracing the German migrants in the population registers it soon became clear that the overwhelming majority only stayed in Rotterdam for a relatively short period. Despite the high quality of the data extracted from of the population registers it remains difficult to establish the migration modes of these temporary international immigrants. To what extent can they be classified as network, organisational or non-network immigrants? We tackled this question by looking at birthplaces.

Origin of the German immigrants in Rotterdam

Looking at the birth places, the first thing that catches the eye is the variety, and the absence of clear concentrations in one place or region. This does not mean that there are no patterns at all. The Rhine valley stands out, as does the territory of Niedersachsen (mainly the states Hannover and Oldenburg) in the North-West. From the Rhine valley came men and women in equal numbers, but Niedersachsen is a male prerogative. As the Rhine is a long river and Niedersachsen a vast area, this should not be interpreted as indirect proof for network-modes of migration in general and chain migration in particular.

Tab. 1
Absolute and relative numbers of Germans in Rotterdam

IMGIMG
Year German born % German na...IMGIMF

Map. 1

Origin of German Migrants in Rotterdam, 1870-1879

IMGIMGOrigin of German Migrants in
Rotterdam, 1870...IMGIMF

At an individual level many of the German immigrants might have known other Germans in Rotterdam who functioned as part of a chain. To find indications for this network migration we looked closer at the household that the migrant joined upon arrival in Rotterdam [6]. The population registers indicate who was the head of a household. We looked at the birthplace of the head of the first household the immigrant joined upon their arrival in Rotterdam. To begin with, most German immigrants joined households of which the head was born in the Netherlands (57%); 37% of German immigrants joined a household of which the head was like themselves, German. When we restrict our comparison to the German born, similarities stand out (Table 2).

Birthplaces of German immigrants and German heads of households 1870-1879

We tried to find matches at the nominal level between immigrants and the (mostly male) head of their household. This resulted in some concentrations: disproportionate numbers of immigrants from Niedersachsen (45%) entered a household of which the head came from the same state, whereas only 19% of all the German heads of households in the sample was born in this state. For Nordrhein-Westphalia the “matc” was less striking, but still existed (68% against 46%). But since these territories are very large, we have calculated the distance (in kilometres) between the place of birth of the migrant and that of all the German born members of the first household (Table 3).

Tab. 3
Distance in kilometres between the birthplace of the German immigrants and the German born heads of the first household

IMGIMG
Distance in kilometres N= % ...IMGIMF

These outcomes are much more telling, because it is obvious that the classic chain migration (as measured by identical birth-places) seems rather exceptional. At most 25 percent of the German migrants who lived in with German born heads of households fall in this category. As we have seen that these migrants comprised only 37% of all German migrants, in the end the number of chain migrants in total is only 9% (25% of 37%).

Occupations

Our data allow for yet another way to trace network migration. By linking the origin and occupation of the immigrants we might come across subgroups of immigrants from a well-defined area sharing the same occupation. Such a combination of chain migration and niche formation is not only a well-known phenomenon among present day immigrant entrepreneurs (Rath, 2000), but also quite common in (early) modern Europe. We find it for example among textile workers coming from the Lille area (Lucassen & De Vries, 2001), Italian chimney sweeps from Ticino and Savoy (Chotkowski, 2000; Fontaine, 1996, 114), and plasterers from Oldenburg or masons from the Auvergne (Lucassen, 1987; Schrover, 2001b).

To trace these kinds of niches we broke down our Rotterdam data to the level of specific occupations and birthplaces. As we had found little evidence of chain migration so far, it was not surprising that this test yielded predominantly negative results. Occupational sectors with sufficient numbers of (male) immigrants, such as metal, food, administration, transport, and wholesale, show a fragmented image. Only the Rhine valley could be linked to the transport sector. The only other exception were German men working in the retail trade, mainly shops. Here we find a pattern that probably points at niche formation through chain migration. Almost all of them come from a relatively small area in the North-West of Germany, in the vicinity of Oldenburg.

At first sight, the concentration of German men in the textile retail trade may be linked to a specific group of former textile peddlers, some of whom became owners of (a chain of) shops in the xix^th century. Most of these shops sold textile, but there were also shops with a more general assortment. The main area of origin of these shopkee-pers, some of whom became very successful (e.g. the founders of C&A) is formed by the triangle Münster-Osnabrück-Rheine (Oberpenning, 1996, 83). But the area north-east of this triangle, around Lingen, Meppen and Fürstenau, is also a traditional push area of peddlers (Lucassen, 1987). The origin of German men working in textile retailing in Rotterdam only partly coincides with these two areas. Most of the immigrants in the retail trade were born about 50 kilometres to the east, mainly in the southern part of Oldenburg. It is conceivable that the entrepreneurs who founded the chain of shops in the Netherlands recruited their personnel in a somewhat larger area, so that we still can speak of sector-specific chain migration.

Map. 2

Origin of German male immigrants in Rotterdam working in the retail-trade, 1870-1879

IMGIMGOrigin of German male
immigrants in Rotterda...IMGIMF

Although more research is necessary to further substantiate our findings, there is no doubt that personal network migration and organisational migration (non-personal network migration) accounted for only a small part of the German immigration into Rotterdam. Many migrants and their families came to Rotterdam without making use of pre-existing personal or professional networks. In figure 1 we have labelled this mode of migration non-network migration. The analysis of the Rotterdam data supports our view that it should be included as a distinctive category in any typology of modes of migration.

A comparative perspective: German immigrants in Utrecht

How can it be explained that much of the migration to Rotterdam was of the non-network type. The booming eco-nomy and the local opportunity structure first come to the mind, as we know that labour market structures influence the composition of the migrant population (Moch, 1992, 131-143; see also De Schaepdrijver, 1990; Menjot & Pinol, 1996; Green, 1997; and Lucassen, 2002). The relation to the mode of migration is hard to explore without the use of a comparative framework. For that reason we use the comparison with Germans in Utrecht. Utrecht was similar to Rotterdam in a number of ways. It too was connected to Germany by water and rail, and, just like Rotterdam, it had a long history of German immigration (Rommes, 1998). This tradition originated from Utrecht’s location at a branch of the river Rhine, which gave the city easy access to the German hinterland. Large vessels could sail from Cologne to Utrecht, where goods were transhipped into smaller boats for distribution within the Netherlands. But Utrecht was different from Rotterdam in one important respect, and this makes the Utrecht case particularly suited for comparison with Rotterdam. Although it became the centre of the Dutch railway system in the second half of the xix^th century, Utrecht was and remained a much smaller city than Rotterdam and more provincial. Its basic economic function was that of a regional centre, providing smaller cities and the surrounding countryside with goods and services that were not avai-lable there. There were two other diffe-rence. In first place, whereas the number of German immigrants to Rotterdam rose in the second half of the nineteenth century, the same was not true for Utrecht. The relative number declined, in line with developments in the rest of the Netherlands. Secondly, the sex-ratio within the German population in Utrecht was 1.3 in 1850 and this did not change much in the following decades. In Rotterdam, as we have shown, this ratio fell from 2.2 to 1.2.

The differences in the urban opportunity structure had important consequences for the position of German immigrants in the labour market in the two cities.

German men in Rotterdam and in Utrecht worked in industry; German women worked as domestic servants. Both in Utrecht and in Rotterdam industry was less important for German immigrants than for the male population at large. In Utrecht German men concentrated mainly in stucco-work and file making. In other occupations, such as the booming cigar industry and in the production of textile and clothing, German immigrants were conspicuously absent. Finally, German women, as a result of their strong position in the stoneware trade, were less well represented as domestics (30% against 66% in Rotterdam). Both in Rotterdam and in Utrecht German women were well represented in catering, which included prostitution. In Rotterdam, German men were much more concentrated in transport. In Utrecht “transport” meant Germans working for the railways, whereas in Rotterdam this category consisted mainly of casual workers in the harbour. In Utrecht trade was the dominant sector for men and women. It is important to note that within “trade” Germans in Utrecht (women as well as men) were almost exclusively active in retail, and virtually absent in wholesale trade and trade administration (e.g. clerks). Within retail they were concentrated in two niches: 1) the stoneware trade (35% of all Germans). All stoneware traders in Utrecht were German and there were no non-Germans active in this field; 2) retail trade in ready-to-wear clothing (20% of all Germans). Almost all large textile stores were owned by German entrepreneurs, who partly hired German personnel. In Rotterdam, trade was a men’s domain and consisted to a great extent of international transit trade. In other words the typical German commercial occupation in Utrecht was shop-assistant or street vendor, whereas in Rotterdam he (women were absent) would work as a clerk in the office of a trading firm specialised in import and export.

Origin and migration patterns of the German immigrants in Utrecht

If we take a look at the map 3, it becomes clear that German immigrants in Utrecht did generally come from the same regions as those in Rotterdam, with one striking exception. A very large part of the Germans in Utrecht came from the Westerwald in Nassau.

Comparing the geographical distribution of Germans in Utrecht and Rotterdam at this very general level, however, hides a number of important differences. These come forward when we link origin with occupation. In contrast to Rotterdam, a significant number of Germans in Utrecht can be characterised as niche-bound chain immigrants. These are groups of people from a well-defined restricted area of origin, often sharing the same occupation. The best example of this network mode of migration is the stoneware trade by peddlers from the Westerwald. These peddlers, both men and women, constituted 35% of all Germans in Utrecht. The shopkeepers and their employees (20% of all Germans in Utrecht) came from Münsterland. This was a large area that spread out across Westfalia, Oldenburg and Hannover. Since they did not come from a well-defined restricted area of origin they do not fit well within the category of niche-bound chain immigrants. Less visible in the map are the male file makers from Remscheid and surroundings, stucco-workers from Oldenburg and retail traders from Sauerland (each constituting some 5% of all Germans). The rest of the Germans are more scattered, resembling the overall Rotterdam picture. Both cities show a concentration of immigrants from the point at which the Rhine enters the Netherlands; a region commonly re-ferred to as Kleefsland. When the map for the Germans in Utrecht is split by gender it becomes clear that the importance of “Kleefsland” is for a large part accounted for by female immigrants. The German domestic servants in Utrecht mainly came from this area.

Tab. 4
Occupational distribution of German men and women in Rotterdam (1870-1879) and in Utrecht (1849-1879)

IMGIMG
Rotterdam Utrecht Sector Ger...IMGIMF

Map. 3

Origin of German migrants in Utrecht, 1849-1879

IMGIMGOrigin of German migrants in
Utrecht, 1849-1...IMGIMF

In the Rotterdam case we compared the occupation and place of birth of the immigrant with that of the head of the first household that he or she entered upon arrival. We did so in order to find indications for the existence of networks. In the Utrecht case we have more data on each immigrant. These data reveal that the comparison we chose for Rotterdam only indicates part of the networks. The numerous shop assistants in Utrecht, for example, lived in large boarding houses. The large boarding houses of the various German owned stores gave room and board to hundreds of shop assistants—both men and women—over a period of thirty years. The boarding houses were owned by the employers of the shop assistants, but these owners did not live there. The head of the household, as indicated in the population registers, was for instance a Dutch pub owner. A German shop assistant would show up as a non-network immigrant if we made the same comparison as we did for Rotterdam, because he neither originated from the same region or work in the same profession as the head of his first household. In fact he, however, was part of a network because he shared his origin and his profession both with his employer and with his co-residing fellow shop assistants in the same boarding house.

In the case of the other large group in Utrecht, the stoneware traders from the Westerwald, we also find that the comparison between the immigrants occupation and place of birth and those of the head of the first household, reveal only part of the networks. The stoneware traders lived concentrated in a small number of adjacent streets and blind alleys. The houses in these streets were often so small that the chances that a newcomer would move in to live with a co-ethnic or anyone else were slim. The stoneware traders lived very close to one another, often as neighbours, but not in the same house.

In the Rotterdam case we found that 25 to 36% of the immigrants could be considered classical chain immigrants. In Utrecht, 70 tot 75% of the immigrants fit into this model.

Explaining different patterns

From the above it is clear that both Rotterdam and Utrecht attracted German immigrants from roughly the same area of origin. Since they were both connected with the German hinterland via the Rhine River, this should not surprise us. What is striking is the fact that these cities differed sharply when we look at the mode of migration. In Utrecht personal network migration clearly dominated; in Rotterdam organisational and especially non-network migration prevailed. The comparison between the Rotterdam and the Utrecht case suggests that three explanations, that are not mutually exclusive, might account for the different modes of migration to these cities:

Diverging opportunity structures,
the period under study,
the path dependency of German migration to various Dutch cities

Ad 1: As we have argued, from the 1860s onwards Rotterdam differed from many other Dutch cities because it was a dynamic port city with vital transit functions between the German hinterland (especially the Ruhr area) and the outside world. Utrecht was also a trading city, but its trade, being primarily geared towards the surrounding area, was more limited in scope (Schrover, 2000a, 285-286). Although Germans were concentrated in the trading sector in both towns, the difference was that the traders in Utrecht were confined to retail (shops keepers and trade in stoneware), whereas in Rotterdam most of them worked for international trading firms. The larger and expanding possibilities in Rotterdam will have attracted a different set of immigrants, with a much more divers background, than the more restricted opportunities in Utrecht. Still, it is stri-king that in Rotterdam virtually no traces were found of the niches that manifested themselves so clearly in Utrecht.

Ad 2: This leads us to the second possible explanation, which may go hand in hand with the previous one: the diffe-rences in the time period. For Utrecht the years 1849-1879 were chosen as the unit of analysis. For Rotterdam we restricted ourselves to 1870-1879. We know from more general analyses of migration in the xix^th century, as well as from specific case studies (Lucassen, 1987; Schrover, 2001a; Cottaar & Lucassen, 2001), that niches, characterised by seasonal labour, dissolved at the end of the xix^th century. It is therefore possible that the results for Utrecht, being partly based on an earlier period, reflect the end of the ancien régime migration system, whereas the decade we took for Rotterdam marks the beginning of a new one, in which organisational and non-network migration were more important. The change in migration modes may furthermore have taken place earlier in Rotterdam because of the structural changes in the urban economy that took shape from the 1860s onwards.

This hypothesis is supported by data on Amsterdam. For Amsterdam we used the aliens registers, in which immigrants were registered on the moment of their arrival. In 1852, 2155 new immigrants came to Amsterdam, 62% of whom came from German areas (Lucassen, 2001). Leaving aside German sailors, who only passed through, there were 643 German immigrants. In contrast to the situation in Rotterdam twenty years later, a number of chain immigrants can be traced among them: 15% are plasterers from Oldenburg, 2% stoneware traders, 4% bakers from Hannover (mainly Ost-Friesland), and 4% shopkeepers and shop assistants from Münsterland. In total 30% of all these immigrants can be allocated to an immigrant niche. That is more than in Rotterdam in the 1870s, but significantly less than in Utrecht in the period 1849-1879. In order to further test our hypo-thesis, we therefore broke down the migration to Utrecht into two time periods; 1850-1859 and 1860-1879 (Map 4).

Map. 4

Origin of German immigrans in Utrecht. Comparison between 1850-1859 and 1860-1879

IMGIMGOrigin of German immigrans in
Utrecht. Compari...IMGIMF

When the geographical origins of the German immigrants to Utrecht in the first decade are compared with those in the later period two things stand out. In the second period the migration from Münsterland became more important. Moreover, there is no discontinuation of the earlier migration patterns; areas that were important in the first decade, remained important in the second period. The difference in time period does therefore not explain the diffe-rence between the two cities.

Ad 3: This brings us to the third explanation for the difference between Rotterdam and Utrecht, which is the path dependency of migration patterns from an earlier period onwards. Migration in an earlier period may have determined the nature of the migration in a later period. Lack of studies makes this hypothesis hard to substantiate for the Rotterdam case [7]. The continuous increase in the number of German immigrants in Rotterdam—contrary to the national trend—and the dramatic change in the sex-ratio from 2.2 to 1.2, however suggests that if their was an older pattern it is likely that it was broken in the period we studied.

For Utrecht path dependency can be shown to have played a role. The large-scale migration of Westerwalder stoneware traders started around 1800, stimulated by a number of institutional changes, such as the ridding of trade restrictions, improvement in transport and the abolition of guild regulations [8]. In 1806 about one hundred stoneware traders from the Westerwald were registered in Utrecht. If we include children, the total number of Westerwalders at that moment was twice as large. The concentration of Westerwalders that we found in Utrecht in the second half of the century can be seen as the result of this earlier migration. The presence of a large group, and the concentrated residential pattern generated an independent dynamic in the migration process that transcended the trade possibilities and the opportunity structure of Utrecht. The existence of a Westerwalder community in Utrecht was the reason more Westerwalders moved to this town.

Conclusion

Like in London and New York, (Panayi, 1995; Nadel, 1990) the Germans in xix^th century Rotterdam and Utrecht did not form a homogeneous group. Although the German population of both towns was heterogeneous, there were differences between the two towns. Whereas in Rotterdam migrants made a living in the catering industry, transport, and wholesale trade, in Utrecht Germans were concentrated in industry and especially in retail trade. This is in keeping with the differences in the opportunity structure of Rotterdam (international transit harbour) and Utrecht (provincial service town) and as such these findings are not surprising.

Much more striking are the differences in the way the migration of these Germans was patterned and channelled. In Utrecht about half of the Germans were concentrated in a small number of niches, accor-ding to the classic chain migration pattern. Rotterdam on the other hand offers a much more dispersed picture, with vir-tually no combinations of occupational and regional clustering. These non-network migration patterns are of special interest, because they touch a sore spot of the much used migration typology proposed by Charles Tilly in 1978. Moreover, it is a reminder that we should be careful not to view every migration mode as deeply embedded in personal networks. Our case studies have made clear that there is life outside the network. The question then is, what kind of life? In our three-fold “space, time and mode” typology we suggest that it might be useful to make a distinction within migration modes between network, organisational and non-network migration.

By proposing our more differentiated typology we are aware this can easily lead to a rigid and static approach to the very volatile and changing nature of the migration phenomenon. Thus individual migrants cannot only turn from local into international migrants (and back) or from temporary workers into settlers, but also often “move” between several modes in the course of their life. One could think of a historical evolution of migration flows, beginning with “solitary” or even “career” moves which with time, give origin to other modes, including chains. Our typology is only meant to include the full range of possibilities. It can serve as a tool to enlarge our understanding of different types and modes in specific historical and local contexts.

It may be clear that the concept of organisational migration is inspired by Tilly’s definition of career migration. Tilly applied his definition of career migration mainly to upper segments of society and—as the term “career” already suggests—to people who use migration for upward social and occupational mobility [9]. By broadening the definition to all migrants who are part of these kind of occupational networks, an important part of the Germans in Rotterdam can be categorised as such and are thus accounted for in our typo-logy. Especially those working as clerks and assistants in wholesale and international trading firms fit our definition of organisational immigrants. However, it also applies to apprentices in various crafts (tailors, bakers, butchers etc.). All of them were aware of specific possibilities in certain Dutch cities and did not necessarily need personal contacts and social networks to migrate. In the case of Rotterdam, and to a lesser extent also Utrecht, information about the opportunities of the urban labour market tra-velled over water, via the Rhine. It cannot be a coincidence that most immigrants in both cities came from the Rhine basin. The river and its many tributaries thus not only functioned as a logistic but also as an information network. Although information about possibilities may have been “in the air” in the second half of the xix^th century, it is also possible that employers in Rotterdam explicitly tried to recruit workers by putting adds in German newspapers or by transferring personnel from one establishment to another.

Finally, our typology leaves room for immigrants who move independent without relying on distinct personal networks, and who do not fit in organised occupational structures. Like organisational immigrants, they are aware of the possibilities that the labour market offers at their destination, but instead of specific knowledge, they rely on general information. Female domestics, people working in the catering business and those wor-king in the transport sector fall in this category. They migrate on the basis of the idea that there is always work to found in a large and booming city. A town like Utrecht would be less likely to attract this type of “adventurous” immigrants.

This takes us to the last issue we want to discuss, which is why migration scholars have focussed so much on chain migration and have disregarded organisational and non-network migration. It seems to us that there are two related causes. First of all, chain migrants fit the predilection of many (especially American) historians for ethnic phenomena. Since the 1970s many community studies have been published about various immigrant groups in American cities (Gabaccia, 1998). In this “ethnicity forever” mood, as Ewa Morawska (1990; see also Lucassen & Lucassen, 1997, 23) labelled it, attention was quite selectively focussed on manifestations of networks and organised ethnicity. Patterns that did not fit this mould were grossly neglected and mostly left aside (for some notable exceptions see Nelli, 1970, 25 and 53; Barton, 1975; Green, 1997, 287; Menjívar, 2000). The second cause, in our view, is that studies that analyse migration or immigration in a more general way, and are not restricted to one or a few ethnic groups, are not very popular among ethnic historians. Exemplary works, such as The other Bostonians by Stephen Thernstrom (1973), ob-viously did not have the appeal of the cart load of community studies that was published in the late 1970s and 1980s in the United States. This failure of students of migration to integrate the methods and insights on geographical mobility that were generated by urban historians, demographers and social geographers, goes a long way in explaining the lack of interest for life outside the chain migration networks (a notable exception is Moch, 1992). The migration modes we came across in our study of Rotterdam and Utrecht, and which will also be pre-sent in many other cities, show that it is time for students of migration to reorient and produce more balanced accounts of migration and immigration histories.

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NOTES

[1]

This article is a revised version of a paper titled “Fragmented chains”. Changing patterns in German migration to the Netherlands 1850-1900’, by Clé Lesger and Leo Lucassen presented at the HSN-workshop on Large Databases: Results and Best practices (Amsterdam, International Institute of Social History 17-18 May 2001). We thank Jan Kok, Leslie Page Moch and Marcello Borges for their critical remarks on an earlier version.

[2]

In 1990 Tilly proposed a slightly different typology, distinguishing between colonising, coerced, circular, chain and career migration (Tilly, 1990, 88).

[3]

The Rotterdam data are part of the pioneer-project on “Immigration to the Netherlands 1860-1960” (www. hum. uva. nl/ pion-imm). The project was started by Kasja Weenink, who selected the Germans from the population registers. The Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) then created the databases. The project is continued by Henk Delger.

[4]

This sample consist of about 40% of all Germans in that age cohort who came to Rotterdam in the 1870s.

[5]

Many more organisations are mentioned in the Deutsche Wochenzeitung für den Niederlanden (Amsterdam 1893-1942) which we consulted extensively.

[6]

Compare: Kamphoefner (1995) 258-272, 263.

[7]

We only know that the percentage of German marriage partners in the xviii^th century increased from 6,4% in the beginning of the century to 12,4 at the end. The precise origin in Germany, however, is still unknown (Bonke, 1996, 77). For Amsterdam in the early modern period more research had been done (Knotter & Van Zanden, 1987). These authors, although these use rather vast geographic units of analysis, come to the conclusion that most immigrants came through specific occupationally-determined chains.

[8]

This is supported by a very similar development in the niche formation of straw hat makers from Belgium and German pedlars and shopkeepers in the Netherlands. In both cases the pioneers of these niches started out in the last decades of the eighteenth century in the province of Friesland, where the guilds were much weaker than in the rest of the Dutch Republic (Cottaar & Lucassen, 2001; Oberpenning, 1996).

[9]

This restriction is even more evident from Tilly’s definition in 1990: “Career migration, finally, characterizes individuals and households that move in response to opportunities to change position within or among large structures, such as corporations, states, and professional labor markets.” (Tilly, 1990, 88)

no 104 2002/2

Is there life outside the migrant network? German immigrants in XIXth century Netherlands and the need for a more balanced migration typology [1]