PRESENTATION IN OSNABRÜCK, OCTOBER 2013

»Identity Management and Infrastructures of Migrants from Austria-Hungary in the USA around 1900«

Presentation held in German at the conference:

Lokale Migrationsregime / Migrationsregime vor Ort. Conference of the Gesellschaft für Historische Migrationsforschung (GHM) in cooperation with Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück. October 1–3, 2013.

Abstract: Austria-Hungary was among the five most important so-called sending states of migrants to the United States before World War I. Migrants from Austria-Hungary in the USA were the largest group of immigrants there between 1900 and 1910. They developed public cultures of their own in their particular languages. These public cultures were not closed. There was a constant flow of information across language boundaries. The example of the public culture of migrants who used Southwest Slavic languages demonstrates this most expicitly. The presentation shows how the fraternal organizations of these migrants provided the infrastructure both for coping with the challenges of everyday life and for political action through public communcation. Specific places like saloons, fraternal homes and churches played a special role here.

Secondly, the example of migrant marriage politics after WWI will show how the public culture of these migrants transformed and how the connection between demographic change and migrant politics can be proven in transdisciplinary analysis. The presentation is based on research that was conducted in collaboration with Annemarie Steidl (Wien) and James Oberly (Eau Claire, WI) in 2010 with support of the Botstiber Foundation at the University of Minneapolis and will be published as a book (Steidl, Fischer, Oberly, submitted).