Migrant Labour in Europe 1600–1900

<p><em>Migrant Labour in Europe</em> (1987) examines the movement of workers from less prosperous parts of Europe to areas with demand for their services. The author identifies seven major systems of migrant labour: the North Sea System (mainly Westphalian workers heading for the German and Dutch North Sea Coast and Walloon/French workers bound for the Belgian and Zeeland coasts); the area between London and the Humber; the Paris Basin; Provence Languedoc and Catalonia; Castile; Piedmont; and central Italy with Corsica. A detailed study of the first of these systems tracing its development and changes is brought into a synchronic relation with data for the other regions. The evidence shows major waves of immigration in the seventeenth century and a rapid diminution of migratory labour to the North Sea in the last quarter of the nineteenth century a time when new ‘pull areas’ were created by the expanding industrial complexes of Germany and labour began to come in from areas outside Europe.</p>