Upward Mobility Among Different Groups of Migrants and Natives in Stockholm, 1878‐1926 An Event History Analysis Paul Puschmann ‐ Per‐Olof Grönberg ‐ Jan Kok ‐ Koen Matthijs Working paper
WOG/HD/2012‐7
D/2012/1192/12 © Centrum voor Sociologisch Onderzoek (CeSO) Parkstraat 45 – bus 3601 B – 3000 Leuven All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the author Alle rechten voorbehouden. Behoudens de uitdrukkelijk bij wet bepaalde uitzonderingen mag niets van deze uitgave worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand of openbaar gemaakt, door middel van druk, fotokopie, microfilm, of op welke andere wijze ook, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever
Upward Mobility Among Different Groups of Migrants and Natives in Stockholm, 1878‐1926 An Event History Analysis Paul Puschmann Family and Population Studies Centre for Sociological Research Parkstraat 45 – 3601 KU Leuven, Belgium Room 02.205 +32 (0)16 32 34 72
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Per‐Olof Grönberg Centre for Population Studies, Umeå University Norra Beteendevetarhuset 4 trappor, Demografiska databasen SE‐901 87 Umeå, Sweden +46 90 786 93 69
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Jan Kok Economic, Social and Demographic History Erasmusplein 1, room 9.04a 6525 HT Nijmegen Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen ‐ The Netherlands
[email protected] Family and Population Studies (FaPOS) Centre for Sociological Research Parkstraat 45, B‐3000 Leuven KU Leuven ‐ Belgium
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Koen Matthijs Family and Population Studies Centre for Sociological Research Parkstraat 45 – 3601 KU Leuven, Belgium Room 02.207 +32 (0)16 32 31 73
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Table of Contents List of Tables
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List of Figures
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Abstract
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1. Introduction
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2. Migration and Integration in the 19th and early 20th Century
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3. Measuring Economic Integration of Migrants
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4. Determinants of Social Mobility among Migrants
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5. Event History Analysis
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6. Variables and Hypotheses
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7. Source and Data
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8. Historical Context
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9. Results
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10. Conclusion
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Appendix
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Endnotes
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Bibliography
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List of Tables Table 1: Results Event History Analysis for Upward Mobility
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List of Figures Figure 1: Conceptual Model: Event History Analysis Upward Mobility 8 Figure 2: Cumulative hazard according to geographic origin
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Figure 3: Cumulative hazard according to sex
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Figure 5: Cumulative hazard according to environment
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Figure 4: Cumulative hazard according to social class
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Abstract The aim of this paper is to increase the insight into the economic integration process among migrants in Stockholm during the period 1878‐1926. An event history analysis (Cox proportional hazard model) was carried out in which the timing and incidence of upward mobility functioned as dependent variable. We compared the ‘risk’ of climbing up the social ladder among natives and migrants. We selected only those natives who were continuously present in Stockholm (from birth on) and who at age 18 were unmarried and practiced an occupation. We compared these groups of natives with (mainly internal) migrants who arrived at age 18, who were unmarried at that time, but practiced an occupation. We found that migrants had a higher risk of experiencing upward mobility. Moreover, males had lower risks of climbing the social ladder compared to females. Middle class and skilled workers had lower risks of upward mobility in comparison with unskilled workers. Apart from Södermalm, we found no significant neighborhood effects. However, people who were born in the countryside had significantly higher chances of experiencing upward mobility compared to persons born in an urban environment. Last but not least, migrants from Stockholm County and wider Central Sweden had better chances of climbing up the social ladder compared to native born Stockholm dwellers. These results indicate that Stockholm was a meritocratic city during the period under investigation and that labor market adaptation was a relatively smooth process. It seems that discrimination against vulnerable groups (e.g. internal migrants, people with a rural background, unskilled workers and women) hardly existed. After all, success in the labor market was not limited to some privileged groups. Rather, the opposite was the case as all kind of ‘vulnerable’ groups enjoyed higher risks of experiencing upward mobility.
1. Introduction A few years ago, Tommy Bengtsson, Christer Lundh & Kirk Scott (2005) published a contribution on the economic integration of immigrants in post war Sweden. The conclusions these scholars reached were rather gloomy as the head title of their text ‐ ‘From Boom to Bust’ ‐ already suggests. According to Bengtsson et al., the aim of the Swedish integration policy to provide immigrants with the same opportunities and same standard of living as the native born Swedish population, has failed: “Today the exclusion from the regular labour market and unemployment among immigrants is much higher and the standard of living is much lower than among natives. However, this was not the case in the past. In the 1960s the immigrant population had a higher employment rate and had higher average earnings than the native population”(Bengtsson et al. 2005:1). Bengtsson’s, Lundh’s and Scott’s rise and fall metaphor, encompasses the transition from a ‘golden age’ of European labour immigrant integration (mainly in the 1950s and 1960s) towards a period of economic disintegration of new waves of non‐European newcomers, mainly refugees from Developing World countries. It is argued that there has arisen a mismatch between the supply and demand of immigrant labour in Sweden. Most of the recent newcomers have professional profiles, which match with unskilled jobs in sectors of the economy. These are, however, the types of jobs which are no longer growing. In the growing skilled sectors of the economy, immigrants have less chances to find jobs, since they lack highly necessary skills related to language and communication. Moreover discrimination of non‐white immigrants seems to play a role. Today’s immigrants are more
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often unemployed, their earnings are lower and they show a higher dependency on the welfare state than the native born Swedish population. In the view of Bengtsson cum suis, the decline of the industrial sector explains to a high degree the weak attachment of the latest waves of newcomers to the Swedish labour market.
2. Migration and Integration in the 19th and early 20th Century The suggestion of Bengtsson cum suis that the 1950’s and 1960 were a ‘golden age’ of economic integration of newcomers in Sweden, raises questions about how process of labour market adaptation for earlier waves of migrants evolved. It is true that Sweden only in the 1930s became a net‐immigration country. However, like many other Western European countries, Sweden started to receive already in the latter half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, thousands of immigrants (Lucassen 2005; Lucassen, Feldman & Oltmer 2006; Grönberg 2010). The largest part of these immigrants settled in larger cities notably Stockholm and Göteborg, where they were accompanied by ever growing numbers of internal migrants from the countryside, who likewise had to adapt to an alien environment (Grönberg 2010; Lucassen & Lucassen 2011). The existing literature on urban in‐migration in Western European cities during nineteenth and early twentieth century sketches a somewhat diffuse picture of how the integration of different groups of urban in‐migrants evolved. In the older literature, the integration of urban in‐migrants in the nineteenth century is presented as a highly problematic process. According to the adherents of the Chicago School of Sociology, newcomers were more or less doomed to end up at the edge of urban society, mainly because they lacked a crucial social network and because the movement from the countryside to the city had an uprooting effect (Park 1928; Park & Burgess 1967; Thomas & Znaniecki 1958; Handlin 1951). Disoriented, isolated and economically deprived, these urban in‐migrants hardly managed to keep their head above water. High rates of alcohol abuse, prostitution, illegitimacy, crime and infanticide all point at the difficulties the integration process posed to these urban newcomers (Moch 2003). Another gloomy view on the (economic) integration process of nineteenth and early twentieth century urban in‐migrants is provided by Stephan Thernstrom in the 1970’s. He formulated in The Other Bostonians the so‐called floating proletariat thesis. According to this thesis most of the nineteenth century urban in‐migrants in American cities were laborers and they enjoyed considerable less chances than the native population to climb up the social ladder. Because of limited employment opportunities for newcomers, many of these urban in‐migrants were perpetually on the move. In this apocalyptic view, the economic integration of urban in‐migrants is again portrayed as highly problematic: “…one wonders whether the exceptional earlier volatility of the American working class and especially of its least‐skilled members, does not point at the existence of a permanent floating proletariat made up of men ever on the move spatially but rarely wining economic gains as a result of spatial mobility (Thernstrom 1973: 42).”
Both the picture of the uprooted migrant and the image of the floating proletariat were originally described for newcomers in nineteenth century American cities, but found their way also in the literature on urban in‐migration in European cities for the same period of time. An excellent example of the uprooted peasant, we find in the study of Bouman & Bouman (1955) on rural‐to‐urban migration towards the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. These
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sociologists stressed that integration into urban society was all but an easy‐going process among former peasants. In their view, poverty and misery were normal states of affairs among the recently arrived rural‐to‐urban migrants in Rotterdam. Unprepared for the urban labor market and with little or no financial resources at their disposal the uprooted peasants became involved in a struggle for survival upon their arrival in the city. As day labourers in the port, in construction work, or other low‐skilled labour demanding sectors of the urban economy, these urban in‐migrants could hardly make a living. Even if the wife contributed to the family budget by performing paid labour outside the household, financial problems were far from solved if we may believe the following account, cited by Bouman & Bouman: “The first years were years of poverty. Mother had to work outside the home, cleaning offices, do the washing for other people, etc. It happened, that we kids, sat at home with empty stomachs, waiting for our mother to come home. From some woman, she worked for, she had received then, thick sandwiches, which she had preserved for us, and of which everyone got half a piece, with which we had to go to bed” (Quoted from Bouman & Bouman 1955: 33).
An example of the image of the floating proletariat thesis we find in David Crew’s social history of the German city of Bochum: “Being able to live in one community for more than a few years was thus a considerable achievement in industrial Germany, since it meant that the worker had found and kept a regular, relatively attractive job with some prospects for advancement. Yet, migrants especially those from the distant provinces found that the kinds of jobs that would make it possible for them to settle in Bochum were not readily accessible. Indeed they were usually forced to accept the most unskilled, unhealthy, irregular and hence most unsettled forms of work that the industrial community had to offer (Crew 1979: 67‐68).”
In the 1980’s a more positive picture of the integration of 19th century urban in‐migrants was gradually taking root. In this respect, William Sewell’s study on Marseille has been influential as it was one of the first studies, in which was proved that although migrants were more likely to get involved in crime, and revolutionary events, certain groups of migrants, notably stayers, prospered upon arrival in a new urban environment. Non‐Italian migrants who stayed for a longer while in Marseille were even more successful in the labor market than many natives, as they made more use of new opportunities change brought about: “In Marseille, the response to change seems to have been systematically different among natives of the city than among immigrants. Natives, in general resisted change, whereas immigrants, on the whole, accepted, explored, and exploited the opportunities that change offered. This is quite clear in the case of social mobility, where immigrants were more responsive to opportunities for upward mobility. Natives usually confined their search to familiar jobs and social categories, remaining within the same social world as their parents. Immigrants explored the entire horizon and took special advantage of expanding opportunities in clerical occupations” (Sewell 1985: 314).
Italian migrants were an exception, as their careers were rather unsuccessful. Because of limited education and discrimination their chances for social upward mobility were considerably lower than among natives and other migrants, while their risk of experiencing social downward mobility was considerably higher. Moreover, Sewell stretched that the integration of temporary migrants was also more difficult, as was proven by high crime statistics. In this sense, Sewell did not reject the floating proletariat thesis. He just
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demonstrated that the fate of stayers was much better than that of the leavers and often also better than that of natives. That stayers were rather successful has also been proven by Leo Lucassen (2004). He demonstrated that German stayers in Rotterdam were positively selected and reached even higher socio‐economic positions than many native born urban dwellers. Schrover (2002) equally found that a considerable proportion of the German migrants in Utrecht managed to become part of the city’s elite and that others fared considerably well. Apparently for some groups of migrants economic integration was a relatively easygoing process, whereas for others it was a struggle.
3. Measuring Economic Integration of Migrants One way of measuring economic integration, is to investigate the position and performance of migrants on the labour market (Münz 2008). In this respect, scholars focus on employment and unemployment rates (Chriswick, Cohen & Zach 1997), wage levels (Chriswick 1978), occupational structures (Dryburgh 2005) and social mobility (Papademetriou, Sommerville & Sumption 2009).i All these indicators can lead to a deeper understanding of intra‐ and intergenerational integration, as they allow to compare labor market performance between natives and first, second and third generation migrants on the one hand and among different groups of migrants on the other. With economic or labor market integration we mean ‘the path by which labor market performance of [im]migrants converges towards that of their native born counterparts’ (Hums & Simpson 2004: 47). Economic performance is a key indicator of integration, as it affects amongst other things social equality, social cohesion (Toye 2007), and the physical and mental wellbeing (Linn, Sandifer & Stein 1985; Clark & Oswald 1994) of individuals. Bad labour performance in terms of high unemployment and low income is interrelated with discrimination, social exclusion, health problems, and increased risks of criminal behaviour (White & Cunneen 2011). In this paper we will use the incidence and timing of upward social mobility among different groups of migrants in the city of Stockholm as a proxy of their economic integration process in the period 1878‐1926. We interpret upward social mobility as a sign of successful labour market integration. In our view, the more migrants experienced upward mobility and the earlier it took place after arrival, the easier it was for migrants to find their way in the labour market. The lower the rates of upward mobility and the longer the time‐lags between arrival and the event of climbing up a rung on the social ladder, the more difficult integration went. We are not only interested in the incidence and timing of social mobility over the life course, but also in its determinants.
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4.
Determinants of Social Mobility among Migrants
Individual Characteristics That certain groups of migrants thrived upon arrival in the city, whereas others seem to have struggled, presumes that certain categories of migrants disposed of certain characteristics which other (groups of) migrants lacked. In this respect, the literature often points at the impact of human capital. Migrants who were better educated, who had more labor market skills and more working experience are believed to have integrated more easily in the labor market (Lucassen 2005; Bengtsson, Lundh, Scott 2005:22). Social contacts also must have played a crucial role. Those migrants who had families and friends in the city they moved to, could count on assistance when they were in want of it, while individual migrants who suffered misfortune had to deal with it themselves (Darroch 1981). A network of relatives and friends might have positively influenced individual career prospects. Another factor of importance in the literature on social mobility among migrants is the migrant’s socio‐ economic position before migration. The chances of uneducated non‐inheriting farmer’s children to thrive in the city they settled, must have been many times lower than the chances of highly educated, heritable children from the local elite (Kok & Delger 1998:290). Furthermore, some individual characteristics like ambition, intelligence and industriousness, which are more difficult to measure (especially in historical data) surely must have had an impact on the chances of experiencing upward mobility. Structural Conditions Next to individual characteristics of migrants, more structural elements also seem to have had an impact on career mobility. In this respect, the openness of the labor market seems to have played a crucial role. In times of economic boom the integration of newcomers is less problematic, because the demand for labor is large. In times of recession, economic integration is more difficult, because less labor power is needed. Moreover, competition between natives and migrants, which can lead to discrimination of newcomers is more likely to rise during periods of economic decline. In general the more open a society is, the better the chances for social upward mobility are.
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Event History Analysis
Event history models are used to predict the incidence and timing of historical events (Allison 1984). We use event history analysis in order to describe and explain why certain groups of people are at a higher ‘risk’ of experiencing the event of social upward mobility. Event history analysis is an often used technique to study contemporary career mobility (Maas 2004). In historical research this method is, however, seldom used for the study of social mobility because existing sources hardly provide information on the exact timing of occupational changes. Population registers contain occupational titles at a certain moment in time, for example at marriage, but when the person in consideration started to practise this occupation remains unknown (Schultz & Maas 2010: 671.). This problem is largely absent in the data we use, since the Roteman in Stockholm updated occupational changes for all residents of Sweden’s capital on a yearly basis. In this sense, the Stockholm Historical Database is an extremely rich and scarce source for the study of historical career mobility. We use Cox (1972) proportional hazard models which is a conventional semiparametric approach to event history data (Cleves, Gutierrez, Gould & Marchenko 2010). We have
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defined the time at risk to start at age 18 for all persons in the data. That means that we selected migrants who arrived at age 18 and natives who were born in Stockholm and lived there continuously till their 18th birthday. In this way we wanted to avoid left‐censoring, which might bias the results of the analysis. Moreover, subjects are only included in the analysis if they practiced an occupation at age 18. Failure (the occurrence of the event of upward social mobility) is defined as the first occupational change of a person that led to a higher social position than the previous registered occupational title suggested according to the Hisco‐classification scheme (Van Leeuwen& Maas 2011). Downward mobility might occur before upward mobility and is not treated as a censoring moment. This decision has been taken as we are foremost interested in the economic integration of migrants and the literature on this topic suggests that an initial decline in social status (and earnings) at destination (compared to the postiation at the place of origin) is common among newcomers (Chriswick 1978). We argue therefore that the incidence and timing of career improvement at destination (rather than real improvement compared to the occupational title at the place of origin or the first reported occupation at destination) is a decent proxy for economic integration. In our approach right‐censoring occurs once a person leaves the area of observation (out‐ migration), turns age 50, dies (before age 50) or when registration ends (in 1915) In the case of women, the time at risk stops also once a female got married, since occupations of married women were hardly registered and thereby any form of upward mobility cannot be detected on the basis of our source material. Finally, analysis time is specified as the years passed since the 18th birthday. This brings us to the following conceptual model:
Figure 1: Conceptual Model: Event History Analysis Upward Mobility
Failure:
Native: Turning 18
Upward Mobility
Censoring:
Death Out-Migration Turing 50 Marriage (women) Registration End
Migrant: Arrival at age 18
Age 18
Time at Risk
32 Years (Max)
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6.
Variables and Hypotheses
Mobility Since migrants first had to adapt to the local labour market, we expect migrants to have had lower chances for social upward mobility than natives. Migrants probably first had to obtain specific local human capital. Moreover, the lack of a social network could make it more complicated to realize upward mobility. Sex In the age of the male breadwinner when females were encouraged to devote themselves first of all to reproduction and family life, we expect men to climb more often and faster on the social ladder than females. The fact, that most women stopped working once they got married, might have lowered their ambitions regarding their professional careers. Men, on the other hand were expected to be successful, as the family’s financial well‐being dependent upon them. This might have stimulated males to invest in their career. Social Class on Arrival Since migrants belonging to the upper class on arrival, cannot climb much higher on the social ladder, we expect them to experience at most very little upward mobility. In theory, the highest jumps can be made, by temporary unskilled labourers. If this type of newcomers experiences high rates of upward mobility than we have a strong indicator that Stockholm was a truly open urban society (Crew 1973:55). However, we do not expect them to make too much progress, because of their limited human capital in terms of education and skills. Skilled labourers did have more human capital, and we expect them therefore to be more often upward mobile. Period The early literature on social mobility suggested that industrialization gave rise to high intra‐ and intergenerational mobility rates. In this view pre‐industrial societies have been static when it comes to occupational mobility. Someone’s father’s occupation, determined to a very high degree the own career possibilities. The industrial revolution is believed to have opened up the road to meritocratic societies, in which someone’s own talent, capacities, and achievements are more important than the social status of previous generations. More recent research, has proven that the industrial revolution did not cause revolutionary change to the rates of occupational mobility. Nevertheless, industrialization seems to have a slight positive effect on the chances to experience upward social mobility (Kaelble 1978; Janssens 2004; Vikström 2003). We expect therefore that the incidence of upward mobility increased for those migrants who arrived later in time when the industrialization process had developed further. Environment: Rural/Urban We anticipate that migrants who were born and raised in a rural environment had more difficulties to become integrated in Sweden’s capital than migrants who grew up in a rural environment. Rural migrants might have more often ended up in the second segment of the double labour market, because they simply had less urban experience (Sewell 1985)
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Region: Country of Birth We expect that people born in Sweden experienced more often social mobility than people born abroad, because they consisted already of country‐specific human capital (Bengtsson, Lundh & Scott 2005). Furthermore migrants from other Nordic countries might have been more successful than migrants from other countries, because these migrants had no or only small language problems compared to non‐Nordic migrants. Neighbourhood Some studies have pointed out that people settling in working‐class districts often had lower chances of upward social mobility. We may therefore expect that migrants settling in Kungsholmen and Södermalm had lower chances for upward social mobility. Södermalm,. in particular, hosted the city’s poorest inhabitants and migrants going there can be assumed to have arrived with less human capital than people settling in other city districts. Östermalm was a district that to a large extent attracted people with a higher social status; their chances to “climb” were limited. In addition, the area can be assumed to have had some “locked” structures for less well‐off migrants. Gamla Stan experienced economic decline during our period and may therefore have provided limited chances for upward social mobility among migrants. Klara, the area that ‘received’ many of the new businesses, was hypothetically the district where migrants had the highest chances of upward social mobility. Although the population decreased, the new activities of this district provided employment opportunities, to a large extent within occupations that can be characterised as skilled worker or middle‐class ones. Klara was, hypothetically, the ‘best mix’ of migrants with appropriate amounts of human capital and an occupational structure that was relatively open for social advancement.
7.
Source and Data
The source for this study is the Stockholm Historical Database (SHD) whose base is the Roteman registration system, in operation in the city between 1878 and 1926. In 1878, Stockholm was divided into 16 rotar (wards) with between 8.000 and 10.000 inhabitants. Forty‐eight years later, when the system was abolished, this number had increased to 36. Every rote was assigned a roteman, who carried out two main duties; being a population registrar and a ‘social worker’ carrying out certain social welfare services. The background of this system was Stockholm’s extraordinary population growth, in the wake of large‐scale industrialisation in late 19th and early 20th century. Local authorities needed to ‘keep track’ of the population and thereby organise policies regarding for example city planning, sewage management, and poor relief. The Church Examination Registers were regarded as insufficient in coping with population increase as well as extensive in‐, out‐ and intra‐city migration (Fogelvik & Geschwind, 2000: 207‐208). Everyone who lived and was registered in Stockholm during the time period mentioned above was recorded by the rotemen in a longitudinal population register (ledger) for all real estates inside the rote’s boarders. The main ledgers were completed with special ones on births and deaths as well as in‐ and out‐migration. The ledgers, and thereby the database, contain information on names, sex, birthplaces, birthdates, occupational titles, civil status, family relations, head of household markers, and migrations to and from the properties. A roteman continuously updated ‘his’ (women were not eligible to be rotemen) ledger and
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noted migrations to and from the properties as well as when children were born and when people died. Information in the ledgers were also updated every year, at the time of the yearly census registration (Fogelvik & Geschwind, 2000: 208‐209). As these updates included occupational changes, SHD provides an unusually good source for a comparative study of social mobility among migrants and natives. The dataset originates from a 2011 SHD retrieval, which includes every fifth person having their first date of entrance, i.e. a birth, an in‐migration, or simply being present in the ‘covered’ area of Stockholm when registration began, at some moment in time between 1878 and 1915. From this retrieval we have chosen all migrants (n=3172) who arrived at age 18 and all natives (n=936) who were continuously present from their birth till their 18th birthday. Next, we selected only those migrants and natives who were unmarried at age 18 and practiced a registered occupation. For all these persons a person‐period file was created to which the following background variables were added: birth date, birth place and birth county (and country for foreign‐born migrants), place of departure (and county/country) and occupational title. On the basis of these variables, we created the following independent variables: mobility, sex, social class, period (year at which someone turned 18), neighbourhood (in which one lived at age 18) and environment (rural or uban) & region (in which one grew up).
8. Historical Context Trade and craft dominated urban Sweden in the 18th and early 19th century. Factories became however more common and many of the new industrial establishments were sugar refineries and textile factories, usually located close to waterfalls. Stockholm’s lack of water power was one major reason behind its relatively slow early 19th century industrial development. However, as steam power developed and proved superior to water power, Stockholm rose to a major industrial city, a development that was intensified with the large‐scale industrialisation from the 1870s onwards. In the mid 1890s, Stockholm hosted around 600 industries with a total of about 21.500 industrial workers. Ten years later, the number of industries had increased to about 750 and the number of workers employed to around 31.000. In addition, Stockholm’s immediate suburbs also experienced a considerable industrialisation. The capital and its vicinity represented 15% of Sweden’s industrial output value around 1905 and remained the country’s most pronounced industrial district in the earliest decades of the 20th century. Stockholm’s manifold industry can partly be explained by the capital position. Scientific and cultural institutions facilitated foreign contacts, and technological innovations often reached Stockholm earlier than other parts of Sweden. Local industrialists were able to utilise from this situation. Engineering industry was one important cornerstone; large mechanical workshops such as Bolinders, Atlas, the shipyards, and later some of the so‐called ‘genius industries’ – telephone manufacturer L. M. Ericsson and AB Separator – provided employment. The food and stimulus industry played another major role; Stockholm’s breweries experienced for example a period of prosperity in the latter half of the 19th century. Well‐off circles around the Royal court and the civil service departments contributed to keep up the demand for foodstuffs. Like in most countries, the graphic industry in general and the printing‐houses in particular, constituted typically capital‐based industries whose vitality was safeguarded by the demands of the government, the parliament and the civil service departments (Högberg 1981: 91‐95, 98‐99, 104‐115; Ahlenius & Kempe 1909: 874). .
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Stockholm’s port was undoubtedly important for the local economy; no other Swedish city was as dependent of shipping in the 19th century. Early 19th century Stockholm was a major port for exports of iron from the nearby Bergslagen district and timber from northern Sweden. However, the importance of Stockholm’s merchant navy and the capital as a port for exports gradually declined in favour of Gothenburg. The capital remained however the country’s major port of imports and it was not uncommon that fully loaded ships arriving in Stockholm had to leave the port in ballast. “Daily” shipping was of course also important; dairy products, fish and berries as well as wood, hay and building materials came with yachts and rowing‐boats from the archipelago and other parts of Sweden. (Högberg 1981: 130‐133) The port was of course also of importance for migrants. One thing was that it provided employment opportunities. Employment in the port was depicted as hard, unhealthy and poorly paid in the beloved novel suite about Stockholm from mid 19th to mid 20th century by author Per‐Anders Fogelström (Fogelström & Bäverstam, 2000). This was almost certainly true for the lumpenproletariat, of whom many could only count on temporary employment. A lot of the loading and unloading of ships was however carried out by workers organised according to the statutes of a guild. Over time, stevedore firms began to push these organised dock workers aside, but storehouse workers, measurers and measurers working with weighing were often able to remain in work and so were heavers of grain. Stockholm’s steamship connections with nearby regions, remoter areas of Sweden, Finland, as well as with foreign cities like Sankt Petersburg, Reval and Lübeck were of course important for also important for migrants. The steamship leaving for Lübeck once every fortnight provided a comfortable connection to continental Europe at an early stage (Högberg, 1981: 133‐136, 141) Urban in‐migration explains to a considerable degree how the capital city in eastern central Sweden grew from about 93,000 inhabitants in 1850 into a metropolis of over half a million souls in 1930. The proportion of non‐native born has been high from around 1850, also by international standards. Although international migrants were relatively well represented among the newcomers, a huge majority of the urban in‐migrants were internal migrants. In the 1910 census, it was stated that Sweden’s remoteness led to one of the lowest numbers of ‘strangers’ in Europe and Hammar (1964: 17‐22) concludes that only one percent of the country’s interwar population was born abroad. The Swedish newcomers, for a considerable part of rural descent, equally had to adapt to Stockholm’s urban labour market. At first sight, internal migrants seem to have had some advantages compared to international migrants, since they had Swedish‐specific human capital in terms of language and communicational skills at their disposal. Moreover, internal migrants in Stockholm might have become less isolated upon arrival since their movement to the capital was more likely part of a wider chain of migration and because their language skills enabled them to get into contact with a wide range of Swedes living in Stockholm. A more closer look, at the countries of birth of international migrants, suggest, however, that at least half of the international newcomers might have had few communicational problems, since they either had Swedish (Finland‐ Swedes and return migrants) or another Scandinavian language as their mother tongue. In this study, six districts covered by the Stockholm Historical Database are included. The Old Town (Swedish: Gamla Stan) is located in the middle of the city and experienced economic decline during our period. Shipping and retailing were however still important and some public administration remained. Old Town’s population decline was not high in
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numbers, but the area experienced a relative decline in its share of Stockholm’s population. As the city became ‘modernised’, many people began to regard this ‘medieval’ part as dark, overcrowded, less airy, and non‐comfortable. The Klaradistrict, in the lower north, was a major ‘receiver’ when banks and businesses moved out of the Old Town. Residential apartments were vacated to give way for an urban office landscape, and this conversion involved population decrease; the number of inhabitants roughly halved between 1870 and 1930. Employment was offered by numerous newspapers and printing houses, but also at hotels, restaurants, and at the city’s main railway station and post office. Östermalm was one of Stockholm’s richest districts and developed into a residential area for wealthy people in the 19th century. Domestic work provided employment opportunities as upper‐class families could afford civil servants. Several public institutions, such as the country’s most prestigious technical university, were located this district. In numbers, the population decrease in this district was relatively moderate, but it went from hosting every seventh‐sixth inhabitant in the city in 1880 to every twentieth in 1920. Kungsholmen, the island in the west, was a sparsely populated area until industrialisation made it into the city’s fastest growing district in the late 19th century. The population more than sevenfold from 1870 to 1930 and the share of Stockholm’s total population doubled. Major industries like Bolinders and Separator provided employment in this working‐class district. Early in the 20th century the area gradually changed character and to be dominated by administration. Södermalm, the island in the south, was Stockholm’s most pronounced working‐class district and hosted the city’s poorest inhabitants. It was also Stockholm’s most populous district. Its share of the city’s total number of inhabitants lay between 28% and 30% through the period, but the population grew with 270%; more or less the same as for the city at large. Shipyards, electro‐technical industries and other mechanical workshops as well as chemical factories and breweries offered employment. Brännkyrka, finally,was a former ‘rural’ district about six kilometres south of central Stockholm that was incorporated in the city in 1913. Industrialisation transformed the area in the late 19th century and the earlier dominating estates and landed properties were divided into industrial and housing allotments. Some minor farming remained however until the mid 20th century. This part had about 3.500 inhabitants in 1915; and about 5.500 fifteen years later.
9. Results Before starting to interpret the results of the event history analysis, it is important to realize that these outcomes only refer to a specific group of people in Stockholm: those natives who were continuously present in Stockholm, unmarried and practiced an occupation at age 18 and those migrants who arrived as singles at age 18 and practiced an occupation on arrival. Consequently, these results might not apply for migrants who arrived earlier or later, natives who were not continuously present in Stockholm, people who were married at age 18, people who were unemployed or still studying at their 18th birthday. Finally, foreign migrants are highly underrepresented, because of the applied selection criterions. With the above shortcomings in mind, we found the following remarkable results. Migrants had a 23,4% higher chance on upward mobility for every next year of analysis (according to model 1 and even 24,9% according to model 2). Males had lower hazard ratio’s than females and the ‘risk’ of social mobility was higher in the period 1890‐1905 compared to the years 1905‐1915. When it comes to social class, people from the middle class, and skilled workers
13
had a smaller risk of experiencing upward mobility compared to unskilled workers. Because of a very small number of observations (n=13), the results for the elite were not significant. We did not find remarkable effects of the neighborhood in which someone lived at age 18 on the incidence and timing of upward mobility. Apart from Södermalm, the results in model 2 were not significant for neighborhood. People in Södermalm had a 19,9% higher chance of upward mobility compared to the inhabitants of Östermalm The environment in which someone grew up, by contrast, seems to have mattered, and again, in an unexpected way: people who were born in the countryside enjoyed considerably better chances of experiencing upward mobility than people who grew up in a city. According to model 4, the region in which someone was born also had an effect on the timing and occurrence of upward mobility. Migrants from Stockholm County and wider Central Sweden turned out to have had better chances of climbing up the social ladder than natives. The results for international migrants and migrants from other regions within Sweden were not significant. In the case of international migrants this can be ascribed to a limited number of observations.
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Table 1: Results Event History Analysis for Upward Mobility
Model 1 Haz. Ratio St.Err. 0.776
Sex
Native Migrant (Ref) Male
Social Class
Female (Ref.) Elite
Period
Middle class Skilled Unskilled(Ref.) 1878‐1890
Neighborhood
Mobility
15
Environment Region
No. of subects No. of Failures Log likelihood LR chi2 Prob>Chi2
0.802
Model2 Model 3 Model 4 P>z Haz.Ratio St.Err P>z Haz.Ratio St.Err. P>z Haz.Ratio St.Err. P>z 0.072 0.006 0.751 0.072 0.003 0.0715 0.013 0.788 0.071 0.008 0.798 0.074 0.016 0,800 0,71 0.012
0.192
0.193
0.101 0.205
0.456 0.551
0.072 0.059
0.000 0.459 0.000 0.554
1.056
0.113
0.608 1.054
1890‐1905 1905‐1915 (Ref.) Brännkyrka
1.276
0.121
0.010 1.276
Klara Kungsholmen Old Town Söderlmalm Östermalm (Ref.) Rural Urban (Ref.) Abroad and Unknown Central Sweden Northern Sweden Southern Sweden Stocholm County Sockholm City (Ref.)
0,206 0.115 0.213
0.215
0.125 0.200
0.201
0.109
0.077 0.063
0.00 0.00
0.458 0,548
0.072 0.059
0.000 0.000
0.118
0.651 1.060
0.114
0,588
0.135
0.006 1.270
0.122
0.013
0.816
0.122 0.011 1.313 0.584 0.777
1.160 1.077 1.179 1.199
0.181 0.153 0.192 0.129
1.335
0.127
0.001
0.454 0.145 0.234 0.137 0.196
0.667 0.001 0.940 0.512 0.003
3434 639 ‐4659.7727 53.50 0.0000
0,073 0.000 0.467 0,060 0.000 0.567 0.114 0.627 1.052
3424 639 ‐4658.0262 56.99 0.0000
0.343 0.600 0.311 0.092
3081 593 ‐4261.6419 57.24 0.0000
0.778 1.392 0.982 1.086 1.478
3424 639 ‐4655.3918 62.26 0.0000
10. Conclusion As we have stated earlier we should be careful with the interpretation of our results, since several social groups are underrepresented in our sample. Nevertheless, we think that our analysis makes assumable that Stockholm was a very open society in the period 1878‐1926, where there was little room for discrimination. After all, all kind of ‘vulnerable’ groups ranging from women, unskilled workers and all sorts of newcomers, enjoyed higher chances for social upward mobility than the majority groups. Migrants, more precisely rural‐to‐urban migrants, especially from Central Sweden, including Stockholm county, had higher hazard ratio’s than native born Stockholm dwellers for the event of social upward mobility. The economic integration of newcomers within Sweden, especially also former country dwellers seems to have happened smoothly. These results are in line with results from Leo Lucassen (2004) and William Sewell (1985) for the port cities of Rotterdam and Marseille in the latter half of the 19th century. These authors likewise found that certain groups of urban in‐migrants enjoyed even higher rates of upward mobility than natives. Our results, by contrast, contradict the ideas expressed by the Chicago School of Sociology on the fate of rural‐to‐urban migrants. We found no evidence, that the integration process of urban newcomers with a rural background faced almost insurmountable barriers to integration in the city. Rather the opposite seems to have been true, in the case of Stockholm. However, these conclusions are preliminary. We must take into account that migrants who upon arrival became unemployed or were still studying do not make part of the analysis. They could alter the over‐all picture. Moreover, in order to make better grounded conclusions about the economic integration of migrants, it would be wise to investigate also other proxies of economic integration like unemployment rates and wage levels. Nevertheless, for the moment it looks like what Chriswick has described for post‐war migrants in America is also applicable to migrants in Stockholm in the period: 1878‐1915: “… economic migrants are described as tending on average to be more able, ambitious, aggressive, entrepreneurial, or otherwise more favourably selected than similar individuals who choose to remain in their place of origin.” (Chriswick 1999:181)
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Appendix: Nelson‐Aalen cumulative hazard estimates for upward mobility Figure 2: Cumulative hazard according to geographic origin
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
Nelson-Aalen cumulative hazard estimates
0
10
20
30
analysis time natives
migrants
Figure 3 Cumulative hazard according to sex
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
Nelson-Aalen cumulative hazard estimates
0
10
20
30
analysis time females
males
17
Figure 4: Cumulative hazard according to social class
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
Nelson-Aalen cumulative hazard estimates
0
10
20
30
analysis time unskilled workers middle class
skilled workers elite
Figure 5: Cumulative hazard according to environment
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
Nelson-Aalen cumulative hazard estimates
0
10
20
30
analysis time unknown/missing rural
urban
18
Endnotes i
Investments, entrepreneurship and personal capital, savings, remittances, etc. can equally be used as indicators of labor market performance (among migrants).
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