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Project

Between local autonomy and national migration policy. Dealing with 'foreigners' in Antwerp, 1750-1914

This project aims to investigate the role of local authorities in the development of national migration policies during the period 1750-1914 by uncovering continuities and changes in the treatment of non-national migrants in the city of Antwerp in a long-term perspective. Research on national migration policies has so far been characterized by a top-down approach that privileges the legal, philosophical and political dimensions of national legislation. This project proposes a bottom-up approach by focusing on how these regulations were implemented in Antwerp where they interacted with a legacy of ancien régime practices and local interests to produce particular treatments of non-national migrants. More precisely, it focuses on interactions between local and national authorities in realising the shift from non-local to non-national newcomers as the main target of migration regulation in the course of the long nineteenth century. The general purpose is twofold: (1) to bridge the historiographical divide between social and early modern studies focusing on local forms of migration regulation and political and contemporary historians adopting a national perspective, and (2) to correct the idea of a sharp discontinuity between migration policy practices in ancien régime and 'modern' Europe.
Date:1 Jul 2011 →  31 Dec 2015
Keywords:MIGRATION, MIGRATION POLICY, URBAN HISTORY, POLICY MAKING
Disciplines:Economic history, History