Frank Caestecker

Female Domestic Servants as Desirable Refugees: Gender, Labour Needs and Immigration Policy in Belgium, The Netherlands and Great Britain

The immigration policies adopted by Western European states during the interwar period were marked by increasing restriction, especially after 1933. One notable exception to this was the relatively generous treatment afforded to women who were prepared to take up employment as domestic servants. This article looks at the reasons behind this anomaly and compares the responses of three states that were in the front line of the refugee efflux from Germany and Eastern Europe in the years leading up to the Second World War.

Partner Type Attitudes of Parents and Adolescents: Understanding the Decline in Transnational Partnerships among Turkish Migrants in Flanders

This article describes an unprecedented decline in transnational partnerships among Turkish migrants in Flanders, using population data on all marriages between 2001 and 2008. Studying parental preferences regarding partner selection, we examine attitudinal mechanisms behind this decline. Based on a representative survey, our first result is that (direct) parental involvement in partner selection is lower among the more recent marriage cohorts. Second, parents and adolescents have moved away from a focus on the origin country in partner selection, while ethnic homogamy remains preferred. Third, openness toward mixed partnerships is found among a small but salient proportion of parents and associated with the religious attendance of male parents. We conclude that an attitudinal shift has occurred from a focus on the origin country to an orientation toward the local (ethnic) community. This decline in transnational partnerships is more a product of intense attitudinal change than a reflection of a policy change in the direction of discouraging partner migration and has implications for the integration and demographic characteristics of Turkish ethnic minorities in Flemish society. Additionally, international migration patterns are affected as the character of long-lasting migration from Turkey to Europe is changing and partner migration, one of the most accessible channels to enter Europe, is rapidly decreasing.

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

This article analyses whether the Jews leaving Tsarist Russia and the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, part of the transatlantic mass migration of the end of the nineteenth century, became subject to state control. Most emigrants from Eastern Europe in this period passed through the ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Antwerp. In the 1880s only a few emigrants were not welcome in America and sent back to Europe, but economic competition and the supposed health threat immigrants posed meant the US became the trendsetter in implementing protectionist immigration policy in the 1890s. More emigrants were returned to Europe because of the newly erected US federal immigration control stations, but many more were denied the possibility to leave for the United States by the remote control mechanism which the American authorities enforced on the European authorities and the shipping companies. At the Russian–German border and the port of Antwerp, shipping companies stopped transit migrants who were deemed medically unacceptable by American standards. The shipping companies became subcontractors for the American authorities as they risked heavy fines if they transported unwanted emigrants. The Belgian authorities refused to collaborate with the Americans and defended their sovereignty, and made shipping companies in the port of Antwerp solely responsible for the American remote migration control. Due to the private migration control at the port of Antwerp transit migrants became stuck in Belgium. The Belgian authorities wanted these stranded migrants to return “home.” It seems that the number of stranded migrants remained manageable as the Belgian authorities did not make the shipping companies pay the bill. They were able to get away by making some symbolic gestures and these migrants were supported by charitable contributions from the local Jewish community.