Migration, Arbeit, Geschlecht [Migration, Work, Gender] functions both as a social science case study of labor migration, primarily to regions of the Habsburg lands, as well as a survey of what “foreign” meant in different periods from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. It succeeds in both endeavors, and offers other researchers some thoughts to ponder in the process. In addition, it tries to provide a more general historical background to several contemporary issues surrounding migration, particularly those relating to the inclusion of foreign groups and to gender dynamics in the migration process. A great deal of information is presented, and though the author’s writing style is unlikely to attract a broad public it will appeal to social scientists.
Hahn divides her book into three sections. First, she provides an overview of the history of migration. One segment describes the standard sources researchers use for quantitative analysis. Next comes a basic though lengthy historiography. For those versed in the field, this offers little that is new. It does, however, survey material on migration in German, including that on the Habsburg lands, research in the US, and the development of interest in the role of women (though not, as yet, so much in the role of gender) in migration in recent years. Hahn notes the prejudice shown towards the migration of women in the early years of research, which she suggests led to less attention being focused on that theme, and to the assumption that women migrants were wives but not workers. Likewise, the association of migration with urbanism and with the loss of German-speaking dominance led to a reification of stability and undergirded the racial program of the National Socialist regime. It took until the late 1980s for migration research to gain momentum in Austria, and Hahn suggests that interest in gender for that region remains limited.
The second section of the book is more surprising. Here Hahn explores the laws relating to belonging – at the city level and then at the state level. These chapters argue that being foreign had very different meanings at different times, and that the history of being foreign is largely a history of work. Hahn adopts a schema of periods of (mainly increasing) control. Initially, control of foreigners was centered in cities and related to threats: disease, war, religion, ideology. Danger could also be geographic, such as a threat posed by areas just outside cities, or it could be related to the time of day, as in after dark.
At the state level, Hahn covers the development of policing, both as a bureaucratic category of people and as a way of thinking about those who were outsiders. Registration expanded to cover first travelers, and then all foreigners living in an area. The last part of this section deals with Heimatrecht [right of domicile] during the Habsburg monarchy. Hahn’s basic argument is that this status of officially being part of a community, with all the rights and duties that implied, developed gradually as a concept in the 1700s with the imposition of state control. Migration complicated the picture. By the late nineteenth century, law and reality drifted far apart, in many cases leaving the majority of the population without an official place in a community, though they may well have developed other local networks. This section underscores the level of mobility of earlier centuries, as well as the history of people living and working for generations within a community without the option of state recognition as members of that community.
This second section diverges from the social science focus of most of the rest of the book. Only in the last subsection does Hahn explore the data on how many people actually were “foreign” for various cities, most notably Vienna, and for regions in the Habsburg monarchy. By 1900 those figures fell between 48 and 90 per cent, with most cities in the study registering close to three-quarters of the population as without right of domicile. The rest of this section reads more like a legal history, with forays into the development of neighborhood watch groups, why the fear of things French in the era around the French Revolution led to greater control of all outsiders, and how the control of foreigners reflected broader trends in state control. Much of this relies on secondary literature on policing, some recent, but also a number of older works. It does not, however, really engage the social science debates about this concept, though scholars interested in those issues can find material in the text to explore them.
The final section is the meat of the book. In twenty-two tables and two graphs, in addition to an extensive text, Hahn highlights her findings on the relationship of migration to work and gender. She divides her case studies to provide insight into several variables concurrently. One set of questions relates to the differences between large cities and small cities, towns, or villages. Within the Habsburg lands, only Vienna was among the top ten European cities in terms of population during this period, though growth rates for some other communities were higher. Migration was the key to urban growth. Hahn demonstrates that it was significantly more important for smaller localities than for large ones, and these small- and medium-sized cities attracted the bulk of migrants. Those migrants interacted with, and sometimes even married, one another, and created networks that, at least in some cases, led to forms of cooperation, including the development of a political labor movement.
A second set of questions relates to migration patterns for workers in particular occupations. Here Hahn draws on Jan Lucassen’s work on the North Sea system of labor migration. Her findings also echo other works demonstrating regional connections that, for some occupations, transcended borders. In other words, she argues that national borders made little difference in the development of regional migration systems, at least up to the early twentieth century. Her research takes as its focus not ethnic or religious groups, but rather labor markets for specific fields. Her data – most often standard demographic materials such as the census – come primarily from the areas where people worked.
Hahn chooses her examples to illustrate a range of age, regional, occupational, and family patterns. Felixdorf (partly research Hahn published many years ago) represents the textile industry. Wiener Neustadt (just south of Vienna) provides the setting for most of Hahn’s other original case studies, though she also assembles findings taken from many other (sometimes secondary) sources. According to those examples, the construction industry generally attracted men, whether from the Tyrol or Milan, who usually came for specific projects and left. Though some were married, they tended to leave their families at home. The textile industries, the most important in the industrial world of the Habsburg lands, employed men, women, and children, older and younger workers, both those with experience and those with little. Typically, several family members could find employment. This tended to lead to a much more settled working population, even if that group continued to face difficulty in integrating in other ways. Moreover, to a greater degree than in western Europe, textile production gravitated to small cities or even agrarian areas.
A final set of questions relates particularly to gender, and here Hahn makes some of her most important points. She challenges, for example, the prevalent assumption that men dominated long-distance migration in the past. Hahn finds that in the Habsburg monarchy of the late nineteenth century there were more female migrants than male ones, at least within her study groups. Here too, her examples indicate that small cities were the primary location for this kind of work. In part because of this, women outnumbered men in most cities (some industrial centers forming exceptions). Rising through the ranks of household service often involved moving to more distant locations, and over time it included larger numbers of married women, including some mothers, who would leave their families in other locations for extended periods of time. In this, Hahn illustrates that “transnational motherhood”, a literature she does not engage and which has captured attention recently, has a history that considerably predates the late twentieth century. Hahn argues, though, that that pattern of moving longer distances being associated with more qualified labor does not apply to all occupations. Her research on male metalworkers shows significant local recruitment.
In general, Hahn argues that regional labor markets varied significantly according to industry, gender, qualifications, and region. To what degree those findings might be specific to Habsburg lands remains open. Ethnicity does not disappear here, whether taking the form of a fear of all things French or a proclivity to hire crews from Italy. It does, however, become one of several factors. In any case, Hahn offers a solid example and theses for others to explore, and an important gender corrective to studies of migration.
