Mapping Identification and Municipal Policy towards Migration in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna and Budapest (European University Institute, Florence, 7 November 2016) (original) (raw)

Different kinds of migration influenced and transformed specific municipal policies in the city quarters of fin-de-siècle Vienna and Budapest in distinctly divergent ways. These policies and practices accommodated the increased presence of diverse migrant flows and, at the same time, attempted to identify, rationalise and control them. They segregated migrants according to class, gender, ethnicity, occupation, location, appearance, and the length of their stay. Because poor relief and social welfare were primarily administered at the municipal level, the principal tools to identify and differentiate those select few deemed as ‘deserving’ from the rest of the migrants were local citizenship (Heimatrecht/községi illetőség) and the sinister coercive municipal policy of relocation. While central districts were policed largely to maintain public order and peace of the ‘respectable society’, old Jewish quarters remained places of concentrated residence of pooper, less integrated and insecure populations. At the same time, young male migrant factory labour in the worker suburbs – and not casual and seasonal workers, or women employed in much less visible urban industries – became the main subject of early municipal reforms. Overseas migrants around Vienna’s and Budapest’s main railway stations were largely segregated from the rest of the urban society and controlled by both the police and the shipping agencies. Additional, even harsher modes of identification were applied down the social and gender lines. This chapter maps these groups and the changing municipal policies towards them during the rise of the central state when traditional forms of identification and control were in flux.

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