Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:22:38.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Joining the Urban World: Occupation, Family, and Migration in Three French Cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Leslie Page Moch
Affiliation:
University of Michigan—Flint
Louise A. Tilly
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research

Extract

Historians and sociologists have long been aware of variability in family structure and behavior and curious about the effects of large-scale change on the family. Nineteenth-century social scientists from Frederic LePlay to Lewis Henry Morgan interpreted family change in an evolutionary framework: LePlay discerned what he believed was the baleful effect of changes in the law on family life, Morgan, the progress due to changing economic and environmental factors. The twentieth-century revival of family history received its impetus from Philippe Ariés, who in both his early Histoire des populations françaises and the later Centuries of Childhood maintained the evolutionary perspective.

Type
Work and Social Roles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 LePlay, Frederic, La réforme sociale en France déduíte de l'observation comparée des peuples européers (Paris: Dentu, 1867)Google Scholar; Morgan, Lewis Henry, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism (London: Macmillan, 1877)Google Scholar; Ariès, Philippe, Histoire des populations françaises et de leurs attitudes devant la vie depuis le XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Self, 1948)Google Scholar; idem, Centuries of Childhood. A Social History of Family Life, Baldick, Robert, trans. (1960; rpt. New York: Vintage, 1962)Google Scholar. It should be noted that Ariès modified the present-minded interpretation of his Histoire des populations françaises in a later edition (Paris: Senil, 1971.)Google Scholar

2 Anderson, Michael, Family Structure in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Darroch, Gordon, “Migrants in the Nineteenth Century: Fugitives or Families in Motion?” Journal of Family History, 6 (Fall 1981), 257–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hareven, Tamara, “The Historical Study of the Family in Urban Society,” Journal of Urban History, 1 (05 1975), 259–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Family Time and Industrial Time: Family and Work in a Planned Corporation Town,” Journal of Urban History, 1 (05 1975), 365–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

3 Tilly, Louise A. and Scott, Joan W., Women, Work, and Family (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978)Google Scholar, compares industrial cities with service/commercial ones, but does not discuss migration. See Elder, Glen H., Jr., “History and the Family: The Discovery of Complexity,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 43 (08 1981), 496–99, for a comparative review of studies of this type, and a brief for the extension of the method.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Tilly, Charles, “Migration in Modem European History,” in Human Migration: Patterns and Policies, McNeill, William and Adams, Ruth, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 4874.Google Scholar

5 Nominal lists of the 1906 census, to be found (for Nîmes) in Archives départementales du Gard (hereafter cited as ADG), (for Roubaix) in Archives départementales du Nord (ADN), and (for Amiens) in Archives municipales d'Amiens (AMA). A systematic sample of individuals in 10 percent of the households in Amiens and Roubaix, 5 percent in Nîmes, was coded in machine-readable form using a modified version of R. Burr Litchfield and Howard Chudacoff, “Comparative Cities Code Book,” Brown University, 1976, manuscript.

6 See also Anderson, Michael, “Some Problems in the Use of Census-type Material for the Study of Family and Kinship Systems,” in Time, Space, and Man: Essays on Microdemography, Sundin, Jan and Söderlund, Erik, eds. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979), 6980.Google Scholar

7 Nîmes was unique among French cities because its citizens included a substantial Protestant minority. Over a fifth of the population was Protestant.

8 For information about Nîmes and its hinterland, see Dugrand, Raymond, Villes et campagnes en Bas-Languedoc (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963)Google Scholar; Moch, Leslie Page, Paths to the City: Regional Migration in Nineteenth-Century France (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1983).Google Scholar

9 Here as elsewhere in this paper, child refers to household position—relationship to head of household—rather than to an age category.

10 See Moch, , Paths to the City, appendix 1.Google Scholar

11 For information about Amiens, see d'Avesne, Albéric de Calonne, Historie de la ylle d'Amiens (1906; rpt. Marseille: Lafitte Reprints, 1976)Google Scholar; Demangeon, Albert. La Picardie, 4th ed. (Paris: Guenegaud. 1973)Google Scholar; Deyon, Pierre, Amiens, capital provinciale; étude sur la société urbaine au 17e siéele (Paris: Mouton, 1967).Google Scholar

12 Important sources for the history of Roubaix and the region are Fermin Lentacker, La frontière franco-belge: étude géographique des éffets d' une frontière internationale sur la vie des relations (Lille: Morel et Corduant, 1974)Google Scholar; Trenard, Louis, Histoire dune métropole: Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing (Toulouse: Privat. 1977)Google Scholar; Revue du Nord, 51 (1969), special issue on Roubaix.Google Scholar

3 Franchomme, Georges, “L'évolution démographique et économique de Roubaix de 1870 à 1900,” Revue du Nord, 51 (1969), 210.Google Scholar

14 Pred, Allen, “Behavior and Location. Foundation for a Geographic and Dynamic Location Theory,” Lund Studies in Geography, 27, Series B (1967).Google Scholar

15 See Hartwell, R. M., “The Tertiary Sector in the English Economy during the Industrial Revolution,” in L'industrialisation en Europe, Pierre Léon, Crouzet, Francois and Gascon, Raymond, eds. (Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S., 1972), 213–27.Google Scholar

16 Bravard, Yves, “Sondages à propos de 1'émigration dans les Alpes du Nord,” Revue de Géographie Alpine, 45:1 (1957), 91112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moch, , Paths to the City, ch. 2Google Scholar; Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenehmen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 210.Google Scholar

17 Moch, , Paths to the City, ch. 2.Google Scholar

18 For biographies and fictionalized accounts of such life stories, see, for example, Chamson, André, The Road (New York: Scribner's, 1929)Google Scholar; Chamson, Lucie Mazauric, “Belle Rose, Ô Tour Magne” (Paris: Plon, 1969), 6869.Google Scholar

19 Fossier, Robert. Histoire de la Picardie (Toulouse: Privat, 1974), 380Google Scholar; Moch, , Paths to the City, ch. 5.Google Scholar

20 Michelet, Jules, The People (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 76.Google Scholar

21 ADG, series 10 M, 260–62, census of 1906, city of Nîmes.

22 McBride, Theresa, The Domestic Revolution (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976).Google Scholar

23 ADG, series 10 M, 260–62, census of 1906, city of Nîmes; Archives départementales de la Lozère, series E, Etat civil; Mouitlon, Marthe-Juliette, “Un exemple de migration rurale: de Ia Somme dans la capitale. Domestique de la Belle Epoque à Paris (1904–1912),” Etudes de la région parisienne, 44 (07 1970), 19.Google Scholar

24 France, Ministère du Travail et de Ia Prevoyance Sociale, Office du Travail, Enquête.sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la chaussure (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1914), 5960Google Scholar; Moch, , Paths to the City, ch. 5.Google Scholar

25 Sewell, William, Jr., “Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century European City,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (Autumn 1976), 217–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Archives Nationales (hereafter cited as AN), series C 7318, dossier 1922, Amiens papers, December 1904, from the Enquête Parlementaire sur l'industrie textile; Chambre de Commerce d'Amiens, “Rapport de la Chambre syndicale”; AN, series C 7319, dossier 1424, “Grouper d'industries textiles … personnel dans les principaux centres”; France, Ministère du Travail, Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la chaussure, 373–78.Google Scholar

27 ADG, series 14 M, 584, procès-verbaux, infractions; France, Ministère du Travail et de la Prevoyance Sociale, Office du Travail, Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la lingerie (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1911), IV, 309–10.Google Scholar

28 Aftalion, Albert, Le développement de la fabrique et du travail et domicile dans les industries de I'habillement (Paris: Larose et Tenin, 1906), 7475.Google Scholar

29 France, , Ministère du Travail, Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la lingerie, III, 158.Google Scholar

30 Mouillon, , “Un exemple de migration rurale,” 8.Google Scholar

31 France, , Ministère du Travail, Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la lingerie, III, 214–18.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., IV, 309–10.

33 Ibid., III, 156–58.

34 Bid., III, 309–10.

35 AN, series C 7318, dossier 1434, “Relèves de salaires, Roubaix, 1904” (from the papers of the Enquête Parlementaire sur I'industrie textile); Descamps, Paul, “La Flandre francaise. L'ouvrier de l'industrie textile,” La Science Sociale, 24e année, 59 (06 1909), 917Google Scholar; Tilly, Louise A., “Rich and Poor in a French Textile City,” in Essays on the Family and Historical Change, Moch, Leslie Page and Stark, Gary, eds. (College Station: Texas A and M University Press, 1983), 6590.Google Scholar

36 Ironically, the statement comes from Amiens, where most textile work was specialized and skilled and the industry hired mostly adult men; only the small industrialized spinning sector employed mostly women and children. Family employment was rare in both areas. AN, series C 7318, dossier 1922, “Audition du syndicat des ouvriers tisseurs d'Amiens.”

37 ADN, M 625/1, “Rapport de la Chambre syndicale ouvrière textile de Roubaix et environs, à la Commission d'Enquête Parlementaire textile,” undated. The commission visited Roubaix on 20 January 1904. Descamps, “La Flandre francaise”; Tilly, Louise A., “Occupational Structure, Women's Work, and Demographic Change in Two French Industrial Cities, Anzin and Roubaix, 1872–1906,” in Time, Space, and Man, Sundin, and Söderlund, , eds., 114–26.Google Scholar

38 See, for example, Dublin, Thomas, Women at Work (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Saxonhouse, Gary and Wright, Gavin, “Two Forms of Cheap Labor in Textile History,” Department of Economics, University of Michigan, 1982Google Scholar, manuscript; Wallace, Anthony, Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978)Google Scholar; Vanoli, Dominique, “Les ouvrières enfermécs: Les couvents soyeux,” Les révoltes logiques, 2 (Spring-Summer 1976), 1939Google Scholar; Reyband, Louis, Etudes sur le regime des manufactures (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1859).Google Scholar

39 Tilly, Louis A. and Dubnoff, Steven J., “Families and Wage Earning in Amiens and Roubaix, 1906: Measures of Income Adequacy and Household Response in Two French Cities” (Paper delivered at Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Columbus, Ohio, November 1978).Google Scholar