This book challenges three collective perceptions about migration. First, the idea that mass migration started with the formation of modern nation-states. Second, the notion that internal migration is distinct from international migration. And third, the idea that short-distance movements of people have little socioeconomic impact. By highlighting the connections between internal and external migrations, Annemarie Steidl provides one of the most holistic depictions of human mobility within and without politically negotiated borders. The contribution of this volume to the field of Central European studies is even more crucial because it fills a significant gap in the study of the Habsburg Empire. Drawing upon government statistics, census data, flow data, and ship records, Steidl demonstrates convincingly that population mobility in an earlier period was as high as in the current age. In doing so, she brings Habsburg history into conversation with a growing number of historical studies that question the newness of a mobile society.
The structure of the book is particularly appealing. Framed by an introduction and conclusion, Steidl divides her analysis into four chapters. The first three chapters are dedicated to the analysis of three types of population mobilities: within imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary, between European borders, and between continents. The fourth chapter brings the three types of migration patterns into conversation with one another, thus highlighting the linkages between different types of population mobilities. This organization permits the author to respond systematically to four distinct debates among scholars of mobility.
The first debate centers on the concept of rural exodus. Traditionally, scholars have argued that industrialization and modernization destabilized the rural countryside due to an exodus of the peasantry to big cities. This urban-centric perspective has multiple dimensions. First, it takes for granted that rural populations did not move much compared with urban populations. Second, it assumes that the direction of flow was unidirectional—from the countryside to cities. And third, it accepts that the socioeconomic structure in rural areas was opposed to the socioeconomic structure in urban areas. Although recent scholarship has challenged this position, the perception continues to hold ground in the field. Chapter 1 draws inspiration from Paul-André Rosental's pioneering research on the movements of the nineteenth-century French populace. Steidl contends that “rural and urban areas should not be considered as opposed or different economic and sociocultural entities” (45). Considerable amounts of short-distance migrations have occurred for centuries in rural areas. Servants, artisans, and agricultural workers have moved back and forth from villages to towns regularly. Many migrants viewed work in the city as part of their rural-urban life cycle. Using correlation and cartographic analyses, this chapter demonstrates that there is a strong relationship between the rates of in-migration and out-migration in imperial Austrian towns. Internal migrations were commonplace within imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. However, they were more significant in some places compared with other areas. Steidl thus contests urban-centric assumptions.
The second debate is about the significance of international migrations within European borders. Traditional research has underestimated the importance of different types of short- and long-distance migrations across politically negotiated borders. A part of this underestimation has resulted from an aversion toward researching the history of movements in certain parts of Europe. For instance, the political misuse of mobility studies between German and Austrian regions during the Nazi regime, Steidl points out, has contributed to a disinterest in the subject. More recent scholarship has sought to correct this by focusing on specific groups of migrants. Donna Gabaccia and Katharine Donato, for instance, have done considerable work on female migrants. Similarly, Katrin Lehnert's research focuses on migrants between Saxony and Bohemia. Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive account of the migrations taking place within and without administrative borders. After 1867, the administration of the Habsburg Empire was divided into imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. Administrators treated the movement between these two regions as international migration. The migration patterns between imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary and the German, Russian, and Northern Italian territories; female migration; and the migrations of various linguistic and ethnic groups reveal a rich network of itinerant traders, servants, and artisans. This chapter also demonstrates how various states sought to control migration through a set of surveillance and restriction mechanisms.
The third debate focuses on transatlantic migration of Europeans to the United States. Between 1890 and 1930, about eighteen million Europeans migrated to the United States. Scholars have long argued that World War I caused a significant decline in transatlantic migrations. More recently, Adam McKeown and José C. Moya have argued that the Great Depression rather than World War I was more crucial to understanding the decline in migration. Tara Zahra has demonstrated that governmental policies affected both the magnitude and direction of emigration to the United States. Steidl incorporates into this debate a long-ignored aspect of migration: that is, return migration. Chapter 3 illuminates not only the scale of migration between 1890 and 1930 but also the diverse motivations of different groups of migrants to travel to the United States. For instance, most Hungarians, Steidl posits, “intended to earn money in the United States to improve their lot at home” (145). Given the difficulty in finding consistent statistical data on the subject, Steidl's effort to provide a comprehensive picture of the magnitude and impact of return migration is commendable. “The decision to return was just as likely the result of a positive reason as a negative,” she argues, “and rather than being viewed as failures, return migrants should be recognized as simply a part of a global migration system in which some people circulated around the world as easily as others moved frequently within circumscribed local areas” (151).
The fourth debate with which Steidl engages centers on the isolated nature of migration scholarship. Traditionally, research on migration has comprised approximately three distinct areas: internal, continental, and transatlantic movements. The conversation between these three fields has been marginal. Recently, scholars Dudley Baines, Hermann Zeitlhofer, and others have sought to understand the relationship between different types of migrations. Having demonstrated in the previous three chapters that the Habsburg Empire experienced significant amounts of all three types of migrations, Steidl establishes linkages between them in chapter 4. Using regression analysis, Steidl reveals that complex migration structures existed in multiple regions of the empire. Some interesting results emerge from these analyses. For instance, counter to traditional histories that have favored limited migration paths, statistical analyses of data from West Galicia suggest that “migrants … had several destination options, even within small individual communities.” Such results lead Steidl to conclude that “regional mobility in the Habsburg Empire was a multidimensional phenomenon and can hardly be described as one-directional from an origin to a destination region” (209).
As with most studies on migration, this book relies heavily on statistical analyses. However, I am not convinced by some statistical choices that the author makes. For instance, in chapter 1, Steidl uses correlation analysis to establish links between in- and out-migration rates in imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. This yields a Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.76 (strong correlation) for imperial Austria and 0.007 (no correlation) for the Kingdom of Hungary. Based upon these coefficients as well as the scatter plots (Figures 1.5 and 1.6 on pages 54 and 55), the author contends that these are surprising results. According to traditional migration research, she argues, most mobility ought to occur from rural to urban areas. If this is the case, she posits, in- and out-migrations ought to be negatively correlated. But, apparently, the two results represent the opposite. The crucial point about the application of correlation analysis is that it looks for linear relationships. It can yield fallacious results in situations in which the two variables in question are in a nonlinear relationship. The details provided about the mobility patterns in the previous sections of the chapter as well as the two scatter plots suggest to me that the relationship between in- and out-migration is nonlinear. Given this, I would have liked to know the reasons for the author's decision to apply correlation analysis.
Nevertheless, given the number of difficulties involved in finding appropriate numerical data for a project of this nature, the author does a remarkable job. As a whole, the book makes a rich and important contribution to Habsburg and Austrian history because it fills several gaps in our understanding of the empire. The Habsburg Empire emerges in the pages of On Many Routes not as a static monolith but as a dynamic conglomerate of moving, living, and working communities.
