On the basis of nominal data from local foreigners’ files, this article examines gender differences in the trajectories of more than 3,000 single foreign newcomers to Antwerp between 1850 and 1880. The data demonstrate an overall expansion, ruralization, and feminization of the migration field over time, attuned to the evolution of the port town’s dual labor market. Foreign single women were less specialized than their skilled male counterparts and immigrated in large numbers only toward the end of the period under study, supported by the facilitation of travel via rail. Engaged in a catch-up process as well as in the founding of new patterns of migration, single female migrants emerge from this study as both followers and pioneers. By highlighting the latter’s dual role, the results shed new light on gender stereotypes in migration research and on the oft-assumed connection between migration distance and occupational specialization.

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Many historians have argued that settlement legislation was a cornerstone of poor relief administration in early modern and early industrial England and Wales. The Settlement Act of 1662 and later additions codified the criteria of local belonging inherent in the parochial system of poor relief established by the Elizabethan Poor Laws. By laying out a national scheme for parochial poor relief, financed by a compulsory tax on rateable value and administered by local overseers of the poor, the Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601 instilled a sense of communal responsibility towards the maintenance of the local poor. By defining criteria of belonging, settlement legislation in turn ensured that in principle every pauper belonged to a local community -that is, his or her settlement, which was responsible for his or her maintenance in times of need. In many cases this was the place of birth, but transfers of settlement could be provided for under certain conditions. 1 Yet, as much as settlement legislation enforced relief entitlements for those considered part of a community's 'own poor', it excluded those who did not legally belong there. Sojourners, that is, migrants residing in a place which was not their settlement, could be swiftly removed when they became chargeable, or -at least until 1795 -when they were merely 'likely to become chargeable'. The history of settlement and poor relief is therefore one not only of assistance and entitlement, but also of exclusion and removal. This ambiguity explains why historians have differed widely in their appraisals of the advantages and disadvantages of the settlement system over time. Initially condemned both by laissez-faire economists and by labour historians as a barrier to labour mobility and an instrument of popular repression, 2 the settlement-based relief system has had a considerably better press in more * The authors would like to thank Joanna Innes, Catharina Lis, Hugo Soly, the convenors of and participants in the Seminars of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, the Oxford Seminar in History 1680-1850, and the Leicester Seminar in English Local History for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.2 recent historiography. While acknowledging that removals sometimes caused considerable hardship, apologists have argued that settlement restrictions were a sorry but necessary counterpart of the development of relatively elaborate relief provisions at a time when national welfare systems were unthinkable. 3 Furthermore, they have argued that settlement restrictions represented only a selective barrier to labour mobility, restricting 'unproductive' migrations in search of assistance but tolerating or even encouraging 'productive' migrations in search of work. 4 By stimulating an efficient allocation of labour, the settlement-based relief system of England and Wales was conducive to economic growth, and is therefore sometimes considered to have made an important contribution to the country's early pathway to economic developm...

with details of the nature of the infringement. We will investigate the claim and if justified, we will take the appropriate steps.

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