Muriel Neven

The effects of siblings on the migration of women in two rural areas of Belgium and the Netherlands, 1829–1940

This study explores the extent to which the presence and activities of siblings shaped the chances of women migrating to rural and urban areas in two rural areas of Belgium and the Netherlands during the second half of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth century. Shared-frailty Cox proportional hazard analyses of longitudinal data from historical population registers show that siblings exerted an additive impact on womens migration, independently of temporal and household characteristics. Just how siblings influenced womens migration depended on regional modes of production and on employment opportunities. In the Zeeland region, sisters channelled each other into service positions. In the Pays de Herve, where men and women found industrial work in the Walloon cities, women were as much influenced by their brothers’ activities. Evidence is found for two mechanisms explaining the effects of siblings: micro-economic notions of joint-household decision-making and social capital theory.

Terra incognita: Migration of the elderly and the nuclear hardship hypothesis

This article deals with out-migration of elderly in a 19th-century rural society undergoing major economical and social changes. The first aim is to shed light on the particularities of the old-age migration, concentrating on out-migration because the migratory balance stayed negative during the entire period of observation. The migration intensity and the destination areas give a background and reopen the question of the geographical immobility of the elderly. The second goal is to identify some variables that incited some people to leave at an age when neither job nor the will to start a family could justify it. This search for explanatory factors of old-age mobility operates from a thematic scope, that of the nuclear hardship hypothesis. This article differs from demographic analyses on aging that were generally made at an aggregate level, based on national statistics. It also differs from the implicit or explicit assumption of old-age immobility found in family history studies. In the Pays de Herve, family relations and the position of the oldest in the household determined standard of living more than economic conjunctures or the social structure.

Migration, occupational identity, and societal openness in nineteenth-century Belgium

This article examines social heterogamy as an indicator of ‘‘societal openness’’, by which is meant the extent to which social origin, as defined by the social position of one’s parents, is used as the main criterion for selection of a marriage partner. We focus on two topics. The role first of migration and then of occupational identity in this selection of a partner according to social origin. And in order to evaluate the true social and economic context in which spouses lived, we do not use a nationwide sample but rather choose to examine marriage certificates from eleven cities and villages in Belgium, both Flemish and Walloon, during the nineteenth century. By observing different patterns of homogamy according to social origin we show in this article that partner selection was affected by the relationship between migration, occupational identity and class structure. It seems difficult to interpret all these divergent patterns in terms of modernization. In our opinion the historical context creates a complicated set of conditions reflected in differences in the type and strength of migration and in the sectoral composition andevolution of the local economy. The whole exerts an influence over partner selection.

Stature in Transition

Eastern Belgium provides a range of examples of early industrialization. In the nineteenth century, well-established proto-industrial textile and iron production was replaced by mechanization in rapidly growing cities. In this article we examine the consequences of this transition on heights of young men in seven communities with contrasting histories. Men in this area were unusually short in the early nineteenth century, but the trend was strongly upward. There is also some evidence that urban areas experienced setbacks when they were growing most rapidly. Comparison of heights among occupations shows dramatic differences between rich and poor. The gap between the poorest and the wealthiest was at least eight centimeters, and heights seem to reflect even small differences in childhood experience. However, gains in height were larger among the poor, reducing differences within the working class by mid-century.

Societal openness during the urban crisis. Partner selection in the 19th-century Belgian textile cities Ghent and Verviers

This paper examines the partner selection of the lower classes during an urban crisis period in early industrial Belgian cities. It was found that in this period characterized by an economic transition, overpopulation, migration and a low standard of living, social heterogamy was high, whereas social homogamy increased, or was ‘restored’, in the subsequent period. The urban crisis effect on partner selection contradicts the claims of modernization theory that there was a gradual increase in societal openness and that societal openness was typically modern, but it fits the idea of the informalization of marriage, a process marked by an increase in unmarried cohabitation and illegitimacy.

Santé et citoyenneté dans la Belgique contemporaine

: We summarize the relations between the development of health policies and the definition of citizenship in Belgium during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the limited scope of the present article we describe the main developments and offer a plausible introduction to subsequent studies. We aim to show that thanks to the scientific study of the changes that took place during two centuries, we can understand the reasons why there are currently so many contradictions in health policy. It is hoped that our findings will help us to better understand the present and prepare for the future.