East European Jewish migrants and settlers in Belgium, 1880–1914: a transatlantic perspective

The Democratization of Long-Distance Migration: Trajectories and Flows during the “Mobility Transition,” 1850–1910

“…Map 1.3 shows that most of this Eastern recruitment was concentrated in what was then the Kingdom of Galicia under Austrian rule, and adjacent Polish areas under Russian and Prussian rule, a poor, predominantly rural, area with an increasingly persecuted Jewish minority, which was also heavily involved in transatlantic migration by the late nineteenth century (Steidl 2021: 133-36). Clearly, some of them were not merely passing through Antwerp on their way to the Americas (Caestecker and Feys 2010), but settled in the city, their journey facilitated by the denser rail network that connected Eastern Europe to Belgium via Germany (Martí-Henneberg 2021: 226). Although the foreigners' files did not record religious denomination, many of these Eastern newcomers likely had a Jewish background.…”

“…traveled to Antwerp directly, which was considerably more than the Germans (27%) and French (25%). This might be explained not only by the expansion and growing density of railway networks across the European continent and by economic opportunities, but also by more pronounced push factors in the region of origin and the importance of chain migration (Caestecker and Feys 2010;Steidl 2021).…”

Cities in Motion: Mobility, Migration Selectivity and Demographic Change in Belgian Cities, 1846-1910

“…By the turn of the twentieth century migration over longer distances, especially from Central Europe and Russia, was on the increase. Many of these migrants were Jews who fled their home countries in the wake of religious persecution and poverty (Caestecker & Feys 2010). Important differences continued to exist, however, in the origins of foreigners in different cities.…”

“…Although the census data do not provide indications of social background, in-depth research for Antwerp has revealed that foreign migrants from beyond border regions came to include more women, more rural-born and more unskilled or low-skilled workers by the late nineteenth century, and that they were recruited from an increasingly wider range of birth places (Greefs & Winter 2016). This process intensified in the run-up to World War I, when more people from Eastern Europe and Russia started to arrive at the port city (Feys & Caestecker 2010). The only oblique indication on a widening social profile that the census data provide for all cities under study is the disappearance of male dominance among foreigners: while the ratio of foreign-born men to women was still 133:100 in 1846, this declined markedly to only 87:100 in 1890 to eventually even out at 99:100 by 1910.…”