This essay offers approaches to reading worker autobiographies as a genre as well as source of historical “data”. It focuses primarily on one example of worker narrative, the autobiographical notes of Eduard M. Dune, recounting his experiences in the Russian Revolution and civil war, and argues that such texts cannot be utilized even as “data” without also appreciating the ways in which they were shaped and constructed. The article proposes some ways to examine the cultural constructions of such documents, to offer a preliminary typology of lower-class autobiographical statements for Russia and the Soviet Union, and to offer some suggestions for bringing together the skills of literary scholars and historians to the task of reading workers' autobiographies.

The role of pro-strike newspapers during the first two decades of labour history in twentieth-century South Africa, an era of intense industrial strife, has not been researched in depth by labour historians. This article examines the emergence of a pro-strike press and examines its position on various strike issues. It served as a conduit for workers' grievances during industrial disputes, such as the strikes of 1911, 1913, 1914, and 1922. Such papers were often also the only means of communication between the strike committee and the strikers themselves. The article also discusses the extent to which such publications might have impacted upon their readership and actual strike action. It concludes that pro-strike literature in essence reflects a “white-labour” discourse and a fusion of the class and racial consciousness that prevailed among the white working class of South Africa.

The possibilities that poor women and men had for earning a living were oriented not only around income and professional opportunities, but around the practical competencies they possessed in an urban culture of beseeching and begging. The reform policy of the state, which sought to integrate poor-relief officials and members of the almsgiving middle class into the poor-relief administration, was directed against “politics on the street”. The introduction of municipal self-administration promoted an institutionalization of poor-relief policy that excluded woman on the basis of their sex. In the stereotypical discourses of the era, images of the “poor mother” and the “loose wench” became symbols of a new poor-relief policy. As someone who begged, the “poor mother” was the subject of a culture of beseeching and begging; as the wretched mother abandoned by her husband, she became the ideal object of an institutionalized poor-relief policy. The stylization of women as passive victims and the exclusion of women from municipal institutions worked together to establish a new order of charity.

Transnational labor history is attracting considerable interest today. Is it just another recondite buzzword or does transnational labor history offer a serious long-term program for discussion and research? This article defends the integrity of transnational labor history as a field, discusses the contributions it can make, and outlines some of the questions that it can most profitably address.

In 2002, Dirk Hoerder published his magnum opus, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham, NC, 2002). In this book, Hoerder describes and analyses, with an unusual breadth of scope, the origins, causes, and extent of human migration around the globe from the eleventh century onward to the present day, paying particular attention to the impact migrations have had in the receiving countries and the cultural interactions they have triggered. At the 28th Annual Meeting of the American Social Science History Association, organized in November 2003 in Baltimore, Dirk Hoerder's book was the winner of the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award for the best book in social science history.

In this review symposium, seven migration scholars from differing national and cultural backgrounds give their comments on Hoerder's book, with a concluding response by Dirk Hoerder.