This project traces sources on migration in the 19th century in the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives.
Funding
Research Network for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies (first)
Duration
September – December 2020 and January – April 2021
Principal Investigator
Researchers
Walpurga Friedl
Leonhard Engelmaier
Description
As long as the concept of migration is not narrowed down to the crossing of state borders, it is an area of research that in many respects lies at odds with the historical classification systems of official archives. The project will track down archive holdings relevant to migration history, initially in the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives, and it will focus on rural and small-town areas. In addition to supra-regional and long-term migrations, the project will also consider small-scale and short-term movements, thus paying attention to overlapping areas between the history of migration and the history of mobility. The period under investigation is the long 19th century.
The project will result in an online guide to archive holdings. With its thematic and temporal focus, the guide will prepare the terrain for empirical studies which have been important desiderata in historical migration studies so far.