That's a different story: comparing letters and oral accounts of Dutch immigrants in New Zealand

Abstract

This paper examines how a combination of contemporary letters and retrospective interviews can shed light on the ways in which immigrants made and continue to make sense of their migration experiences. For immigrants of the later 20th century, research tends to focus on interviews, whereas contemporary egodocuments have often been overlooked. This paper aims to contribute to a reverse trend – recently initiated by historians of British emigration Angela McCarthy and Alistair Thomson – by means of a systematic analysis of letters alongside interviews using three theoretical notions derived from oral history debates: retrospectivity, composure and collective memory. In three case-studies of Dutch immigrants who moved to New Zealand in the 1950s and early 1960s, letter and interview materials will be compared and contrasted, focusing especially on the relationship between expectations and achievements. The combination of both types of sources offers a long-term perspective that makes clear that at various stages of the life course, different and sometimes even contradicting and ambiguous perspectives existed. But the value of these sources goes beyond the letters as an account of the past and interviews as an account of the present. They also complement each other by offering insights that help understand the information in the other sources. This study concludes that an integrated and systematic analysis of both sources can offer a rich perspective on the ways in which migrants try to make sense of their experiences, leading to better understanding of often contradictory accounts in which their own expectations, plans, successes and hardships – and those of others – play changing roles. It is well possible that a similar approach can also prove to be interesting for other topics in the field of migration studies, such as integration and identity-formation.

Keywords:

• migration
• 20th century
• egodocuments
• oral history
• life course
• New Zealand
• the Netherlands

Acknowledgements

The foundations of this article were laid during a research internship in New Zealand. The internship was funded partly by the National Institute for Demographic and Economic Analysis (based at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand) and partly by two personal research grants, one from the Kruis- of Doumaleen, a private Dutch trust fund that supports individual students who have ambitions to go abroad for scholarly research; a second one from the Stichting Nijmeegs Universiteits Fonds, which is formally connected to my home institution (Radboud University Nijmegen) but almost completely dependent on private donations. I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors on both sides of the globe – Dr Hilde Bras, Prof Peggy Koopman-Boyden and Dr Rosalind McClean – for their valuable insights and feedback. I also owe many thanks to the participants for sharing their stories, and permitting me to publish parts of the letters and interviews. Lastly, to all those who were involved in the different phases of this project through conversations, e-mails or phone calls: thank you for the ongoing advice and support.

Notes

^1. Griet W. (1953, January 14). [Letter to Mr and Mrs W.].

^2. The 1947–1966 time-frame was chosen in accordance with Van der Pas and Poot's recent definition and typology of three cohorts of Dutch immigrants to New Zealand after World War II (Van der Pas & Poot, 2011, p. 27). From the late 1940s to the 1960s, a large emigration wave from the Netherlands took place, driven by a difficult post-war reconstruction period and subsequent shortage of jobs and housing. Between 1947 and 1963 about 410,000 Dutch people emigrated, approximately 3.4% of the total population. Of this group of emigrants, about 6% went to New Zealand (Koops, 2010, p. 14). Within 10–20 years, approximately 25% returned (Elich, 1987, p. 105).The Dutch comprised almost half of the all the immigrants to New Zealand from outside the Commonwealth at the time (K. W. Thomson, 1970, p. 152).

^3. Since the early twentieth century, immigrant letters have often been studied by sociologists and historians interested in migration. In the article ‘The immigrant letter between positivism and populism’ (Gerber, 1997) David Gerber offers an excellent overview of the historiography of letters in migration studies since key works such as Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish peasant in Europe and America (Thomas & Znaniecki, 1918–1920) and Charlotte Erickson's Invisible immigrants (Erickson, 1972). Gerber's recent monograph Authors of their lives (Gerber, 2006) and the volume Letters Across Borders (Elliot, Gerber, & Sinke, 2006) give good insight in current practices among scholars working with immigrant letters. In both his book and article, Gerber emphasizes the value of letters for an understanding of the development of migrants’ personal identity, also from a gender- and modernization perspective and in connection to a larger social context. Letters Across Borders provides an introduction into new approaches to immigration letters, focussing on rhetoric strategies, styles, representativeness, mail statistics and functions of letters (e.g. in arranging marriages), to name but a few. Other work, like Tanja Bueltmann's study of correspondence of Scots in New Zealand, emphasizes the importance of letters in the creation and maintenance of transnational networks, which helped to facilitate chain emigration (Bueltmann, 2008).

^4. According to Angela McCarthy, this can be attributed to a ‘blossoming fascination with the use of oral history’ (McCarthy, 2005, p. 69).

^5. Eric Richards also writes about this in a contribution to the Letters Across Borders volume (Richards, 2006, p. 73).

^6. Jacqueline Templeton co-edited a volume for the Australian Visible Immigrants series on ‘neglected source’ in the history of 20^th century Australian immigration (Richards & Templeton, 2002), in which she deals with Italian-Australian immigrant letters. A collection of Italian-Australian immigrant letters from the period between 1860 and 1962 was also published posthumously (Templeton, 2003).

^7. See, for studies on letters of Dutch immigrants in the United States: (Brinks, 1995; DeHaan, 1998, 2001; Galema, 1996; Krabbendam, 2001; Sinke, 2002). For recent overviews of Dutch emigration to North-America in both the 19^th and 20^th century, see (Harinck & Krabbendam, 2006), (Koops, 2010) and several contributions to the 2nd issue of the 2010 edition of the Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History (Douma, 2010; Schoone-Jongen, 2010; Schrover & Van Faassen, 2010; Zwart, 2010).

^8. For an overview of research on Dutch post-war emigration, from the perspective of the Netherlands as well as the receiving societies, see (Schrover & Van Faassen, 2010). Although there is a large body of literature on post-war Dutch immigrants from the perspective of the receiving societies, Schrover and Van Faassen remark that emigration from a Dutch perspective is relatively under-researched. After a first peak in scholarly interest in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to a series of psychosocial and socio-economic studies (Groenman, 1958; Hofstede, 1964; Wentholt, 1961), there was a period of little interest until the second half of the 1980s. Publications since then are e.g. (Elich, 1987); (Smits, 1989); (Van Faassen, 2001); (Koops, 2010); (Van Faassen, forthcoming). Studies from the perspective of the main receiving societies (the USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) have from the beginning – evidently – focused chiefly on settlement and integration. Based on interviews are for example (Peters, 2001) on Dutch immigrants in Australia, (Biemond-Boer, 2008) on orthodox Protestant Dutch immigrants in Canada and (Speerstra, 2005) on Dutch post-war emigrants in general. From the New Zealand perspective, the literature follows a pattern from mostly socio-economic and quantitative studies in the 1960s and 1970s (K. W. Thomson, 1967, 1970; Trlin, 1975) towards inclusion of qualitative and cultural perspectives, e.g. (Hoogeveen & Ettema, 1984); (Kappert, 1988); (Schouten, 1992); (Johri, 1998); (Hulsen, 2000); (Kuiper, 2005); (Webster, 2007); (Donaghey & Papoutsaki, 2008); (Reymer, 2009). Although quantitative studies have also been published more recently (Priemus, 1997), (Hartog & Winkelmann, 2003), (Van der Pas & Poot, 2011).

^9. See also the previous footnote. Dutch emigration studies of the 1950s and 1960s (Groenman, Hofstede, Wentholt) as well as early New Zealand studies on Dutch immigrants (K.W. Thomson) were mainly based on questionnaires. Hoogeveen & Ettema, Kappert, Schouten, Johri, Hulsen, Kuiper, Webster, Donaghey & Papoutsaki and Reymer all (partly) use interviews.

^10. Richards (Richards, 2002, p. 10) refers here to a study that is sensitive to the spoken form of 19^th century immigrant correspondence (Fitzpatrick, 1995) and to research in which genealogical evidence based on oral family histories is combined with statistical data (Pooley & Turnbull, 1998).

^11. Alistair Thomson also pays attention to this process in a chapter on ‘letter stories’ and on ‘memory stories’, concluding – among others – that ‘at each autobiographical moment these women articulated their lives and made sense of themselves and the world around them, and their records provide rich clues about the dynamic relationships between experience, story and identity’ (A. Thomson, 2011, p. 204).

^12. David Gerber (Gerber, 1997, p. 24) stresses the importance of self-reflection in the process of letter-writing. Historian Miriam Dobson, in an overview of historical studies of letters, argues that these are ‘increasingly seen as part of attempts of individuals to give meaning to life’ (Dobson, 2009, p. 60). Alistair Thomson uses the same terminology, ‘making sense of migration’, in an analysis of audio letters of a British family in Australia (A. Thomson, 2001), and Tanja Bueltmann applies a similar perspective in her study of letters by Scottish migrants in New Zealand by looking for strategies of adjustment and the roles letters played in that process, which enabled migrants to formulate both emotional and rational responses and also contributed to the maintenance of networks and thus provided a sense of continuity (Bueltmann, 2008).

^13. A broad overview of important developments and discussions in memory studies see for example (Klein, 2000) and (Green, 2004). For interactions between memory studies and migration studies see for example also (A. Thomson, 1999).

^14. Although not many Dutch were at all times actively involved in organised networks (Schouten, 1992).

^15. This also led to the creation of several organisations that had to regulate immigration and inform potential immigrants (Van Faassen, 2001). Although information literature was limited in the first post-war years, soon many educational materials such as films, brochures and publications in emigration organisations’ journals were created, and information meetings for aspiring emigrants were organised (Schrover & Van Faassen, 2010, p. 22) See also: (Prenger, 1987), (Vanhemelrijk, 1993) and (Van Faassen, 2002). A few contemporary brochures and books for emigrants focusing on New Zealand are for example: (Nieuw-Zeeland: Een beschrijving van land en volk ten dienste van emigranten, 1949), (Mooijman, 1951), (Lodewyckx, 1952) and (Cnossen & Apperloo, 1954).

^16. I want to thank my fellow student Chantal Kleve for kindly giving me access to her share of the transcriptions we made of this vast collection of letters.

^17. Although this research project was first and foremost interested in correspondence from New Zealand to the Netherlands, the correspondence from the Netherlands to New Zealand was initially not excluded. However, the participants stated that they themselves had not collected their Dutch relatives’ letters over a longer period of time. In some cases this had to do with frequent moving from house to house, but it might also say something about the status of the immigrant letter as a testimony of something extraordinary and perhaps even exotic, which made these letters more significant than the ones sent from Holland to New Zealand - thus increasing the chances for them to be saved. This situation is unfortunate, as researchers have demonstrated that adding the return correspondence to the immigrants’ letters can enrich insights, for example in the ‘negotiation’ of the tone, content and frequency of letters (Gerber, 2006).

^18. In 1964, a postal questionnaire was held amongst Dutch immigrants in New Zealand. The returned sample represented 9.1 percent of the total number of Dutch people that were registered in the national Alien Registers, which were considered to be very complete. The sample shows that 8.3 percent of the female migrants who were married by that time, had married New Zealanders or other persons of British birth. (K. W. Thomson, 1967, pp. 96–97).

^19. Explanatory footnotes are placed where necessary to explain significant differences in meaning between the original fragment and the translated quotation. In the translated quotations of both interviews and letters, words that were originally spoken in English are displayed in italics. Longer pauses in speech are marked with three ellipses; editorial deletions are marked with three ellipses within brackets; and editorial explanations are inserted within square brackets.

^20. In the early 1950s, New Zealand authorities were very reluctant to accept immigrant families, partly because of their strict assimilation policy, and partly because there was a shortage of housing. This changed in 1955 when the so-called nomination system was introduced, which allowed churches, companies and Dutch emigration services to help families to move to New Zealand if housing and work were guaranteed (Priemus, 1997, pp. 12, 13 and 16).

^21. This interview was unfortunately not recorded due to a faulty recording device, although extensive notes offered a fair impression of the tone and content of the topics that were discussed.

^22. Trudy (1961, June 16). [Letter to her family]. NB: the word ‘family’ is used here in the restricted sense of the Dutch nuclear family, which includes the parents and any brothers and sisters that are living at home.

^23. Trudy (1961, July 23). [Letter to her parents].

^24. Trudy (1961, August 17). [Letter to her parents].

^25. Trudy (1961, September 27). [Letter to her family].

^26. Trudy (1961, October 18). [Letter to her family].

^27. Trudy (1961, November 20). [Letter to her family].

^28. Elich (1987, pp. 105, 106 and 242) has noted the difference between the images and reality of Dutch emigration. Whereas at the time, the Dutch public generally assumed post-war emigration was to a large extent an agricultural phenomenon, Elich demonstrated that this was only true in the earliest years and that more farmers went to Canada compared to Australia and New Zealand. Priemus (1997) calculated that in 1950 the percentage of Dutch agricultural immigrants in New Zealand was 43% but soon decreased to around 16% in 1951 and 7% in 1962 (Priemus, 1997, p. 24). Thomson estimated that in 1964 about 16% of the total Dutch-New Zealand population worked in agriculture, which was comparable to the proportion of the total New Zealand employed in farming. He also confirmed clustering of agricultural labourers in the Waikato region, where they often begun the climb through sharemilking to farm ownership (K. W. Thomson, 1964, pp. 97–99).

^29. In 1950, the Dutch and New Zealand authorities came to an agreement about sponsored migration to New Zealand, to which both countries would contribute. Only single men and women between 18 and 35 years old were eligible for the Assisted Passage Scheme and they had to work for two years in a job that would be assigned to them by the New Zealand government. The latter would also set annual quota for the number of Dutch immigrants that were to be accepted. For a detailed overview of numbers of Dutch immigrants and migration arrangements between the Netherlands and New Zealand, see (Priemus, 1997).

^30. The interview was conducted in Frisian, a regional language from the north of the Netherlands, which was familiar to both the interviewer and interviewer, and was recorded during two separate sessions (October 10 and October 29).

^31. Griet W. (2011, October 10). Interview.

^32. Griet W. (1951, June 09). [Letter to Mr and Mrs W.].

^33. Griet W. (1951, July 17). [Letter to Mr and Mrs W.].

^34. Griet W. (2011, October 29). Interview.

^35. Eelke and Griet had become members of the Dutch Reformed Church in Hamilton soon after its foundation in 1953. This church was most comparable to Eelke's religious background (his father was a minister for the Reformed Church in the Netherlands). Although for Dutch emigrants in North-America the role of religion in immigration has been extensively researched, for New Zealand this is a relatively under-researched perspective. (Schouten, 1992) and (Reymer, 2009) do pay more specific attention to this subject.

^36. Here, the name ‘Indonesia’ is used, which was the actual term Griet used during the interview, even though during the time she was talking about, the country was still called the Dutch East Indies.

^37. Griet W. (2011, October 29). Interview.

^38. Griet W. (2011, October 29). Interview.

^39. There were a lot of Dutch in the same (Waikato) region at the time, which was known for its dairy farming opportunities.

^40. Griet W. (1952, June 05). [Letter to Mr and Mrs W.].

^41. Griet W. (2011, October 29). Interview. Griet herself used the term ‘sad stories’ during the interview.

^42. They were interviewed together and their story shows an interesting interplay between two, sometimes diverging, accounts.

^43. Annie and Wim were both around 19–20 years old back then. At that time, if someone under 21 wanted to apply for emigration, they had to prove they had permission from their parents.

^44. Konings, W. (1953, April 26). [Letter to Mrs. M.J. Stortelers-Hijink].

^45. Konings, W. (1953, April 26). [Letter to Mrs. M.J. Stortelers-Hijink].

^46. Konings, W. (2011, November 02). Interview.

^47. Konings, W. (2011, November 02). Interview.

^48. Konings, A. (2011, November 02). Interview.

^49. Konings, W. (2011, November 02). Interview.

^50. In an article on English post-war immigrants in Australia, Mark Peel notes that the men's retrospective views on their migration were often more straightforward than women's. The - often working-class - men ‘more resolutely dislocate themselves from the “old country”’ and their story of migration is one of a ‘struggle for dignity and self-mastery’, stressing self-reliance and taking care of their family, whereas women's accounts were ‘always more ambivalent’ (Peel, 2002, p. 112).