Old and New Migrants in the Twentieth Century: A European Perspective

LEO LUCASSEN

IN RECENT YEARS complaints have been voiced by various migration scholars about the lack of interdisciplinarity in their field. Especially the gulf between historians and social scientists is regarded as deep and enduring. Notwithstanding the increasing interest of sociologists and historians in each other's disciplines, both with regard to insights and methods, the subfields still remain very much apart. As a result historians often shake their heads wearily when social scientists label certain phenomena as new and unprecedented, because in their view continuities and similarities are much more apparent. Historians stress long term developments and often unmask alleged new trends, such as transnationalism or second generation decline, as old wine in new bottles. Sociologists on the other hand have the impression that their historical colleagues lack a sufficient theoretical framework and restrict themselves to mining the archives and other sources for information about immigrants without analyzing these in a coherent paradigm. This state of the art was eloquently summarized by Ewa Morawska some ten years ago and since the "mutual alienation," seems not to have lessened, simply because the main causes, ongoing specialization and academic parochialism have not decreased. In general, historians display a greater tendency to look over the fence than their sociological brethren, as is illustrated by the work of diverse scholars as Donna Gabaccia, Nancy Green, Joel Perlmann, Ewa Morawska, Brian Gratton, Dirk Hoerder and Jose Moya, to mention a few. Most social scientists, as far as they ever integrate historical research in their analyses, tend to treat history as anecdote or background. Systematic and rigorous comparisons, such as Nancy Green's study of the garment sector in Paris and New York in the last century, are exceptions.