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This book examines female migration between Eastern and Western Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Bringing together contributions from scholars working in diverse disciplines, the book focuses on the social, economic, and cultural exchanges between migrants and the inhabitants of their host countries, arguing that women were central to these interactions due to their commercial, artisanal, and intellectual skills. The chapters shed light on the various roles and professions that women undertook when migrating across Europe, providing case studies of governesses, domestic servants and caregivers, traders and merchants, doctors and scholars, and emphasising how these roles shaped their identities. The authors illustrate how social mobility was engendered by skilled migration and academic mobility, whilst also illuminating the prejudices and challenges that faced women as they attempted to integrate into their new host societies alongside their families. Taking a comparative approach to explore the experiences of migrants across a range of countries in Europe, and over a vast period from the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires up until today, this collection provides insights into the long history of migration between Eastern and Western Europe.
Nicoleta Roman is a researcher at the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History of the Romanian Academy and at New Europe College- Institute for Advanced Study, both in Bucharest, Romania. Her research interests revolve around social and economic history, gender and the history of women and children in (pre)modern Romania and Southeastern Europe.
Beatrice Zucca Micheletto is a researcher in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society at the University of Turin, Italy where she teaches Economic History of Migration. Her research focuses on economic and social history, women and gender history, migration history and labour history of early modern and modern Europe inItaly and France.
List of contents
1. Introduction. Connecting Europe: past and present.- Part I. Circulation of women and knowledge.- 2. West meets East: German women migrants - Spouses of Western European consuls in the port city of Berdyansk in the times of the Russian Empire.- 3. Traveling for work: governesses in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire from the nineteenth century to 1914.- 4. "On the move". Greek Cypriot migrant women in search of education (mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century).- 5. Rural child welfare, gendered community work, and intersectionality: Erna Eckstein-Schlossmann's migration to Turkey, 1935-1950.- 6. Women's educational migrations according to the digital (web) archive of the University of Zurich (1860s-1920s).- 7. Slovene servants/domestic workers in Italian towns, in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the twenty-century.- 8. Aspects of emancipation under socialism: Greek refugee women in Eastern Europe, 1950-1990.- 9. 'Without men?' Spatial and social (im)mobilites and cultures of migration of Romanian women in Italy (1970-2020) .- Part II. Boundaries in questions: society, economics and identities.- 10. The migration Christian and Jewish and women in Prague in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.- 11. The conundrum of the Polish-Lithuanian state. The circulation of people and knowledge: gender, ethnicity and religion (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries).- 12. Migration and translation: dowries between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires at the end of the eighteenth century.- 13.The migration of East European women to England and Wales in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and demographic change.- 14. Borderscapes of care in Europe: the case of Czech live-in care workers in Germany.- 15. Women from East Europe to Italy: perspectives from the contemporary age.- 16. What memory for migrant women in Central Europe? Gendered memoryscapes and transcultural histories between pasts and futures.
About the author
Nicoleta Roman is a researcher at the ‘Nicolae Iorga’ Institute of History of the Romanian Academy and at New Europe College- Institute for Advanced Study, both in Bucharest, Romania. Her research interests revolve around social and economic history, gender and the history of women and children in (pre)modern Romania and Southeastern Europe.
Beatrice Zucca Micheletto is a researcher in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society at the University of Turin, Italy where she teaches Economic History of Migration. Her research focuses on economic and social history, women and gender history, migration history and labour history of early modern and modern Europe in Italy and France.
Summary
This book examines female migration between Eastern and Western Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Bringing together contributions from scholars working in diverse disciplines, the book focuses on the social, economic, and cultural exchanges between migrants and the inhabitants of their host countries, arguing that women were central to these interactions due to their commercial, artisanal, and intellectual skills. The chapters shed light on the various roles and professions that women undertook when migrating across Europe, providing case studies of governesses, domestic servants and caregivers, traders and merchants, doctors and scholars, and emphasising how these roles shaped their identities. The authors illustrate how social mobility was engendered by skilled migration and academic mobility, whilst also illuminating the prejudices and challenges that faced women as they attempted to integrate into their new host societies alongside their families. Taking a comparative approach to explore the experiences of migrants across a range of countries in Europe, and over a vast period from the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires up until today, this collection provides insights into the long history of migration between Eastern and Western Europe.
Nicoleta Roman is a researcher at the ‘Nicolae Iorga’ Institute of History of the Romanian Academy and at New Europe College- Institute for Advanced Study, both in Bucharest, Romania. Her research interests revolve around social and economic history, gender and the history of women and children in (pre)modern Romania and Southeastern Europe.
Beatrice Zucca Micheletto is a researcher in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society at the University of Turin, Italy where she teaches Economic History of Migration. Her research focuses on economic and social history, women and gender history, migration history and labour history of early modern and modern Europe inItaly and France.
