The age at marriage of migrants during the industrial revolution in the region of liège

Abstract

The articl7e examines the cities and towns in the Liège region during industrialization in the ninteenth century, focusing on the relationship between marriage, migration, and entry of people into urban areas. The average age at marriage was higher for in-migrants than for natives, but so was the intensity of nuptiality. Thus, the average age at marriage is not the sole statistic through which to approach questions about the socio-demographic consequences of arrival into town. Towns had several, seemingly closed, marriage markets, and it is important to pay attention to differential behaviors by taking this fact into account. Moreover, in-migration to an industrial city created opportunities to contract marriage, for women as well as men. Sometimes marriages occurred in the village, and were contracted to escape the old system and to prepare for the migration to the city of the young couple. Structural as well as life-course approaches must be combined for a thorough understanding of migration to industrializing cities.

Notes

1 We use the average of extremes in the census and not the computation of person-years because we have no information about the migrations between 1831 and 1846, and there are some problems of underregistration of migrations thereafter.

2 To obtain them, we compute percentages in line on the matrix of marriages according to the origin of spouses. Thereafter, we simply divide each line by the total, or the choices of each subpopulation by the choices of the total population.

3 Among these “concubines,” men did not postpone their marriage. Their average age at first marriage is 29.1 compared to 29.4 in the total population, while for women it is 24.4 years against 24.1.

4 At the beginning of the twentieth century, Edmond Ronse (1913)(p. 58) explained in these terms the transformation of temporary in definitive migrations among the young male Fleming immigrants in France.

5 We do not speak here of integration or insertion, but simply of stability, because a lot of married people moved after their marriage to another part of the Liège industrial area where it was perfectly possible that their union helped them to realize integration in an urban way of life. This is what is suggested in the rare studies on this topic done in Sweden (see Matovic 1990; Brändström et al. 1994).

6 Perhaps, as it is noted in the litterature, the man has already made an effort alone, but we have no clear information about this in the Liège area.

7 We thank Etienne van der Straten, Muriel Neven, and George Alter, who have contributed substantially to the creation and correction of this data base.

8 For a table of the proportion of immigrants in the Walloon industrial towns (n=44), see Oris 1995b, p. 292.