TWO CITIES Urban Migration and Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

Abstract

This article examines how migrants settled and formed families in two Swedish towns—Linköping and Sundsvall—with different occupational structures during industrialization. Sex- and socio-economic differentials in the rural–urban and urban–urban migration are discussed, as well as persistence rates in the new urban environment among different social groups. Analysis of in-migration and marriage patterns shows that social and geographical endogamy are equally significant in the two towns. Migrants tended primarily to marry migrants and town-born primarily to marry town-born. Moreover, relatively closed marriage boundaries were found among the in-migrants: those that came from an urban background tended to find an “urban partner.”