East European Jewish migrants and settlers in Belgium, 1880–1914: a transatlantic perspective

This article analyses whether the Jews leaving Tsarist Russia and the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, part of the transatlantic mass migration of the end of the nineteenth century, became subject to state control. Most emigrants from Eastern Europe in this period passed through the ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Antwerp. In the 1880s only a few emigrants were not welcome in America and sent back to Europe, but economic competition and the supposed health threat immigrants posed meant the US became the trendsetter in implementing protectionist immigration policy in the 1890s. More emigrants were returned to Europe because of the newly erected US federal immigration control stations, but many more were denied the possibility to leave for the United States by the remote control mechanism which the American authorities enforced on the European authorities and the shipping companies. At the Russian–German border and the port of Antwerp, shipping companies stopped transit migrants who were deemed medically unacceptable by American standards. The shipping companies became subcontractors for the American authorities as they risked heavy fines if they transported unwanted emigrants. The Belgian authorities refused to collaborate with the Americans and defended their sovereignty, and made shipping companies in the port of Antwerp solely responsible for the American remote migration control. Due to the private migration control at the port of Antwerp transit migrants became stuck in Belgium. The Belgian authorities wanted these stranded migrants to return “home.” It seems that the number of stranded migrants remained manageable as the Belgian authorities did not make the shipping companies pay the bill. They were able to get away by making some symbolic gestures and these migrants were supported by charitable contributions from the local Jewish community.     

The interrupted chain: traditional receiver countries,migration regimes,and the East European Jewish diaspora, 1918–39

This article focuses primarily on countries that had been, prior to 1914, among the most favored destinations for East European Jewish migrants: chiefly the United States, Canada, Palestine, Brazil and Argentina. In the inter-war years, these ceased to be the only ports of final entry for Jewish migrants. However, despite restrictive migration regimes and unfavorable economic conditions, traditional receiver countries continued to absorb the largest share of such migrants (the U. S. and Palestine, between them, accounting for over 800,000). Jewish migration to countries other than the United States peaked around 1933; was just about equal to the U. S.-bound migrant stream by 1938; and fell off in 1939–1940. The Jewish case raises several theoretical and methodological issues, including the definition of migrant motivation as well as the framing of immigration policy as products of mixed factors – both political and economic.     

The “Turkish Model” of Sociology: East–West Science, State Formation, and the Post-Secular

The field of sociology in Turkey has a history that is perhaps unique to Europe (and the “West”) in its co-founding with a modern nation-state, and yet its story is more central to the discipline’s general development than that of a marginal “outlier.” Positioned at an East–west crossroads, Turkey, and its sociological tradition, have been in an ongoing conversation between the two cultural poles. Drawing on Edward Said’s Orientalism, this article traces the discipline’s history through the lens of an East–west gaze. Touching on the lived public social questions that this story invokes, regarding ethnic relations, gender, migration, democracy-building, religion, and international relations, this article surveys the growth and present state of the discipline, including methodological trends and current issues.     

‘The Slavery of East and West’: Abolitionists and ‘Unfree’ Labour in India, 1820–1833

This article explores abolitionist treatments of East Indian slavery in the 1820s. It argues that rather than resulting from a lack of information or a conception of the qualitative difference between East and West Indian slavery, ambivalent and muted abolitionist responses to this issue prior to 1833 were conditioned by the wider imperatives of the anti-slavery campaign. Abstentionist substitution of ‘free-grown’ East India sugar for morally tainted West Indian produce, together with wider economic arguments about the equalisation of the sugar duties and the potential of India to provide a free labour alternative to the West Indian slave system, marked points of intersection between abolitionist and East India economic interests that relied on the assumption that labour in India, however cheap, was fundamentally ‘free’. As a result, rather than engaging with the various forms of slavery in India, abolitionists focused on discursively distancing them both from sugar production and from their campaign. This response suggests that abolitionist ideology was intersected by pragmatic political, economic, and discursive imperatives that precluded the universal application of humanitarian anti-slavery ideals.     

The press and public relations through the lens of the periodicals, 1890–1930

This paper explores and analyzes the intellectual debate and discussion about the slow reveal of public relations and both the perceived threat to journalism and the corruption of public opinion in American life as it appeared in the periodicals in the early twentieth century. Despite Edward L. Bernays complaint that a “conspiracy of silence” prevailed in the mass media about the growing field of public relations prior to 1930, this review found more than a hundred essays and articles about public relations. The topics ran the gamut from historical explanations and explorations of what were essentially the early beginnings of our contemporary information society to discussions, debates, and warnings about the ramifications of public relations in the commercial, governmental, political, and social areas of life.     

Britain and the Jewish community of Iraq, 1948–51: An aspect of British policy in the Middle East

British policy after the Second World War was designed to maintain her influence in the Middle East. As a result, she worked to prevent any destabilization of the region's nations and especially to preserve the existent pro‐British regimes.

The Iraqi royal government was weak, depending mainly on its army. The riots of January 1948 proved how tenuous the government's position was. Here Britain invested great efforts in preventing conditions from damaging the regime or destroying it. This explains why the British were not active on behalf of the Jewish community, which at the time suffered from a policy of discrimination and persecution.

The British assumed that the problem of the Jewish minority in Iraq could not be divorced from overall Jewish‐Arab relations or those between Israel and the Arab states, and that the Iraqi Jewish community's fate was inevitable given the events in Palestine. Moreover, despite the pressure from extremist quarters in Iraq to banish all the Jews and expropriate their property, the Iraqi government's policy was not that extreme, and it sought at least to defend their lives and prevent a recurrence of the June 1941 pogrom. Despite this, Israel exploited the Iraqi Jewish community's situation to attain her own political and economic ends.     

First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester,Massachusetts, 1862–1900

This article situates the 1850–1851 cholera epidemic in the British colony of Jamaica within prevalent debates about the moral condition of Jamaicans of African descent, the economic crises of the 1840s and 1850s, and ultimately the effectiveness of emancipation. Through close readings of Scottish physician Gavin Milroy's reports, juxtaposed against correspondence between colonial officials and local public health authorities, this article argues that the cholera epidemic not only provided another venue to air critiques of Jamaica's transition from slavery to freedom, but also revealed as essential one particular solution – sanitary reform – to two major issues: cholera and the island's economic decline.     

“Live in Israel. Live the Dream”: Identity,Belonging, and Contemporary American Jewish Migration to Israel

Most current sociological literature on migration examines international moves to the United States and internal migration. Scant research addresses religious migration out of the United States. Utilizing in-depth, semi-structured interviews, we explore motivations behind recent American Jewish migration to Israel and how Jewish identity plays a role in the decision to move. We find that a combination of religious and cultural factors, Zionism, social networks, and the desire for a new start play a major role in motivating migration to Israel. Jewish identity is a common thread across these motivations. Many participants created a strong bond between their Judaism and Israel, viewing their connection to Israel as a way to belong to a larger community and demonstrate their attachment to Judaism. We discuss the implications for studying religious emigration from the United States that move beyond traditional economic models.     

Towards Body–Mind–Spirit Integration: East Meets West in Clinical Social Work Practice

Contemporary trends in clinical practice are moving more toward an integrative approach that views the mind, the body and the spirit as inter-connected entities. There is an increasing interest in approaches that utilize physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual components in assessment and treatment. This paper presents an integrative body–mind–spirit approach in clinical social work practice which is informed by the Eastern philosophical traditions of Daoism, Buddhism, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Our work with a bereaved elderly woman is presented to illustrate how the three key intervention principles: (1) promoting a dynamic balance within the individual through multi-modal intervention; (2) fostering strengths; and (3) facilitating meaning-making can be effective in helping people in a clinical setting.     

Sociological ambivalence: The case of East European peasant-immigrant workers in America, 1880s–1930s

The paper develops an understanding of the tensions experienced by East European immigrants by drawing on the concept of sociological ambivalence: being pulled in cognitively and emotionally opposed directions generated by the social situations in which the actors are located. Using a variety of sources created by East European peasant-immigrants themselves—letters, diaries, poems, prayers, newspaper articles, and oral history collections—the paper discusses four kinds of sociological ambivalence experienced by the immigrants: (1) resulting from the multiplicity of interests incorporated in different social positions occupied by the same person; (2) induced by the opportunity structure characterized by the disjunction between culturally prescribed aspirations and socially structured avenues for realizing these goals; (3) generated by conflicting values and goals contained in a group's cultural system and in normative role expectations prescribed for its members; and (4) resulting from individuals' simultaneous orientation to several different sets of cultural values and reference groups.I wish to thank Renée Fox and Robert Merton for their very helpful comments on the original version of this paper.     

Global walls and global movement: new destinations in Jewish migration, 1918–1939

Research often argues or implies that the First World War suddenly discontinued the age of Jewish mass migration and led to increased sedentarism. Indeed, the former main destinations like the USA drastically cut down on the arrival of East European Jews. This did not, however, result in the end of Jewish mass migration. This article will demonstrate that it rather led to manifold attempts to circumvent the newly introduced and increasingly exclusive measures, to a rising complexity of transnational movement patterns, and finally to the emergence of new destinations and Jewish communities all over the globe. This movement, however, was overshadowed and impacted by the almost global rise of xenophobia and fascism. Based on local histories, statistical and legal sources, as well as reports and communications by delegates of Jewish relief organizations, this article presents a social history of the intersection between global Jewish migration and politically motivated migration management. It leaves behind the focus on “departure” and “arrival” in Jewish migration history and elaborates on the relevance and dynamics of transmigration, the dominance of migrant networks and the complex relationship between national policies and migrants' agency.     

Settlers: New Zealand Immigrants from England,Ireland and Scotland 1800–1945

Shamit Saggar, Race and Politics in Britain (London: Harvester Wheat‐sheaf, 1992). Pp.xxi + 236. ISBN 0 7450 1206 X

Virginia Yans‐McLaughlin (ed.), Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology and Politics (New York, Oxford University Press [USA], 1990). Pp.viii + 342. £11.95. ISBN 0 19 505511 X

Gary P. Freeman and James Jupp (eds.), Nations of Immigrants: Australia, the United States and Migration (Melbourne, Oxford University Press [Australia], 1992). Pp.xi + 250. £15.95. ISBN 0 19 553483 2