Outcast or Embraced? Clusters of Foreign Immigrants in Belgium, c. 1840-1890

In this project, the focus will be on foreign migrants who were working in one of the most internationalised labour market segments during the nineteenth century, the maritime labour market. The marked growth of maritime trade during the 19th century in the wake of commercial and industrial expansion went hand in hand with important technological and organizational innovations in shipping and the institutionalization and professionalization of maritime employment and education. Although there was a marked growth of maritime shipping in the wake of Belgium's commercial and industrial expansion in the 19th century, we know very little on the growing and often seasonal labour market for sailors on Belgian ships, where foreigners played an important part. Studying the migration patterns and trajectories, but also the recruitment patterns, profiles, career developments of foreign sailors offers a very specific way to study interactions between a particularly mobile group of migrants and one of the most internationalized labour market segments of the 19th century. Tracing the individual trajectories of foreign sailors will in turn provide insights into social networks and encounters of this diverse and transnational community both at sea and ashore, where their presence is considered a typical hallmark of the cosmopolitan aura of port cities. This project is part of a broader research project "Outcast or Embraced? Clusters of Foreign Immigrants in Belgium, c. 1840-1890", which aims to investigate the scale and nature of socio-cultural encounters and confrontations that emanated from foreign migration to Belgium between c. 1840 and 1890 by cross- and interdisciplinary analysis and valorization of a series of exceptionally rich but underexploited series of the federal historical heritage. The project aims (1) to map the scale, chronology and profiles of foreign migration to 19th-century Belgium, and (2) to investigate the political, economic, social and cultural dimensions of interactions of foreigners with different layers of Belgian society. Its underlying assumption is that increasing international mobility and circulation – rather than one-off migration – had a profound influence on the economic, political, cultural and social history of 19th-century Europe in general, and Belgium in particular

Keywords:MIGRATION, HISTORY

Disciplines:Curatorial and related studies, History, Other history and archaeology, Art studies and sciences, Artistic design, Audiovisual art and digital media, Heritage, Music, Theatre and performance, Visual arts, Other arts, Product development, Study of regions

Project type:Collaboration project