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Thursday 13 April 2023 08.30 - 10.30
L-5 ETH07 Negotiating Belonging: Local Administrative Practices of Migration Control in Modern Europe
C24
Network: Ethnicity and Migration Chair: Hilde Greefs
Organizers: Beate Althammer, Sigrid Wadauer Discussant: Hilde Greefs
Beate Althammer : Policing Migrants in Prussian Cities (ca. 1850 to 1914)
In the German states, local police authorities had far reaching powers to reject and expel both foreigners and (newly arrived) internal migrants. Depending on the circumstances, also other authorities such as superior administrative bodies and courts were involved; but in the first place, the local police were responsible for registering ... (Show more)
In the German states, local police authorities had far reaching powers to reject and expel both foreigners and (newly arrived) internal migrants. Depending on the circumstances, also other authorities such as superior administrative bodies and courts were involved; but in the first place, the local police were responsible for registering newcomers, for detecting doubtful individuals, and for investigating, deciding and executing cases. So far, however, we know little about how these powers functioned in practice. While there exists a relatively broad historiography on the emergence of “national” migration policies in the German Empire, much less attention has been paid to the everyday workings of migration control at the local level. What bureaucratic instruments did police authorities develop to monitor masses of fluctuating people? Whom did they target as unwelcome, and with what effects? This paper will trace the shifting patterns of local migration control in the second half of the nineteenth century, taking major Prussian cities (Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf) as examples and focussing on two questions. First, I ask how state policies related to local interests. The Prussian central state constantly issued instructions on which categories of foreigners were to be treated as undesirable, with an increasing emphasis on “nationality” in the sense of ethnic origin. For municipalities, by contrast, other criteria appeared much more relevant, above all the ability of persons to sustain themselves and their families, irrespective of where they came from. How did everyday practices accommodate these divergent goals of migration control? Second, I ask how individual migrant men and women contested police decisions to exclude them from their home of choice. Based on protests against expulsion orders, the paper argues that the divergence between central-state and municipal priorities gave expulsion candidates a certain room to negotiate: they could either appeal to the high ranks of government, or seek allies in local society – sometimes with success. (Show less)

Levke Harders : Translating Migration—Negotiating Belonging
In my research project “Narratives of Foreignness and Belonging: Migration as a Discursive Process in Western European Border Regions (1815–1871)”, I am working on European mi-gration in the nineteenth century, asking: Who was mobile and why? How did the state, local communities, and residents deal with migration? What strategies did ... (Show more)
In my research project “Narratives of Foreignness and Belonging: Migration as a Discursive Process in Western European Border Regions (1815–1871)”, I am working on European mi-gration in the nineteenth century, asking: Who was mobile and why? How did the state, local communities, and residents deal with migration? What strategies did migrants use to be included after they crossed a border?
In my paper, I would like to further develop the idea of migrants as “translated be-ing[s]” (Paul F. Bandia 2014) in order to contribute to a concept of translation in/of migra-tion. While translation is rarely named as such in the sources I study, it played an important role for processes of migration and belonging: In what language/s did migrants communi-cate not only with neighbors and employers, but more importantly with the administration? How did local bureaucrats deal with migrants who settled?
Drawing on a case study each from French Alsace and Danish Holstein, my paper will shed light on how migrants tried to create belonging by ‘correctly’ communicating with the bureaucracy of their new home country. Both migrants and administrators needed transla-tion as a transfer of knowledge, but both groups also experienced the limitations of transla-tion (in a broad sense). Combining case studies with theoretical reflections, I will argue that translations were a social practice in migration and settlement processes that shaped—and sometimes complicated—belonging. (Show less)

Christina Reimann : Migration Policy in Late Nineteenth Century Antwerp and Rotterdam
This paper investigates the space of maneuver used by local actors in late nineteenth century Antwerp and Rotterdam for the shaping of migration policy by studying two practices situated at the core of migration policy: the administrative practice of migration control and the local management of applications for naturalization.
In ... (Show more)
This paper investigates the space of maneuver used by local actors in late nineteenth century Antwerp and Rotterdam for the shaping of migration policy by studying two practices situated at the core of migration policy: the administrative practice of migration control and the local management of applications for naturalization.
In the first part, I focus on local authorities’ approaches to identifying and registering mobile people, to shed new light on the often-presumed shift in migration control in this period. Scrutiny of the paperwork used and produced by local authorities tasked with migration control suggests that administrative practice does not fit into coherent narratives of high modernity characterized by the increasing relevance of nationality, border control management, and a growing impact of the nation-state. Instead, this era is characterized by the layering of control practices: resilient practices – some dating back to pre-modern times, some lacking coherence; the practices of individual police agents; and national policies.
In the second part, I argue that, in a context marked by the often-claimed rise of the nation state, when national legislation concerning nationality and citizenship was shifting, local authorities and citizens played an important but still underestimated role when it came to enforcing the naturalization of foreign nationals. Applications for naturalization in both Antwerp and Rotterdam were firmly rooted in the local context, and economic performance was key to the police commissar’s support of an applicant’s case towards the national authorities. By comparatively analyzing individual applications for naturalization in Antwerp and Rotterdam, I argue that the close relationship between the nation-state and the mechanisms of legal inclusion and exclusion on which it rested, has to be relativized. (Show less)

Sigrid Wadauer : The Bureaucracy of Belonging (Late Habsburg Monarchy/Austria)
Citizenship rights in the late Habsburg Empire were complex and layered. The legislation was familiar with the categories of imperial citizenship, state citizenship (either in the Austrian or Hungarian part) and Heimatrecht (local citizenship or right of residence). Heimatrecht – the focus of this paper – was fundamental for a ... (Show more)
Citizenship rights in the late Habsburg Empire were complex and layered. The legislation was familiar with the categories of imperial citizenship, state citizenship (either in the Austrian or Hungarian part) and Heimatrecht (local citizenship or right of residence). Heimatrecht – the focus of this paper – was fundamental for a citizen’s status, rights and possibilities within the state territory. It determined the only place in which a citizen had an unconditional right to undisturbed domicile and an entitlement to public poor relief. This was also the place where a person regarded as destitute or as a threat to public security could be deported to. The Heimatrecht was inherited or acquired by marriage, and although municipalities could award it, they almost never did so voluntarily when it came to poor residents. As a result, by the end of the 19th century a growing share of citizens did not have a Heimatrecht at their place of domicile. Their legal belonging did not mirror social reality or actual belonging but instead contradicted the ‘right of free movement’, as contemporaries put it. Yet, while these regulations did not prevent mobility, they caused inequality and vulnerability. It was only after a law reform of 1896 that entitlement could be achieved by usucapion. That reform fundamentally restricted the municipalities’ autonomy to decide who was a member or a resident while still leaving considerable space for municipalities’ discretion.

Up to now, research on the Heimatrecht (which remained in effect in the first Republic of Austria) has mostly focussed on legal or political debates at the level of the central state. However, the administration of procedures on the local level – an often complex and lengthy matter – has rarely been studied in a systematic way. In such procedures, the review of the formal criteria – an uninterrupted and voluntary stay of ten years in which a person did not become dependent on poor relief – relied on identity papers and registers. But such documents frequently turned out to be patchy, incoherent, and incomplete. When they had to be interpreted, further inquiries and interrogations were required. In this context, municipalities often showed creativity in producing arguments and reasons for rejecting applicants, not all of which were correct or legally relevant and not all of which – in case an appeal was filed – passed the scrutiny of district authorities. These types of records allow us to draw a nuanced picture of the role municipalities claimed and actually played in controlling settlement within their territories. They give insight into their criteria, permitting one to access the authorities’ ambitions and options for administering and “pinning down” citizens. At the same time, such records allow us to study and differentiate how citizens – diverse in many respects – (strategically) interacted and negotiated their cases with authorities in this context, as well as how they could use documentation (or lack of it) for their purposes, while evoking and justifying their belonging. Although such interactions were certainly asymmetrical, I will show that each of the involved parties were able to make use of administrative loopholes. (Show less)



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