University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Internationalizing Working-Class History since the 1970s: Challenges from Historiography, Archives, and the Web

Harzig, Christiane; Hoerder, Dirk

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/4596

Description

Title
Internationalizing Working-Class History since the 1970s: Challenges from Historiography, Archives, and the Web
Author(s)
  • Harzig, Christiane
  • Hoerder, Dirk
Issue Date
2008
Keyword(s)
  • Labor relations
  • Working-class publications
  • Alternative print culture
Abstract
In this essay the communication practices of labor migrants and their evolution from nineteenth-century print media to late twentieth-century electronic media provide the frame for a discussion of the limitations of national approaches to collection and interpretation. Multiple languages and knowledge of cultures of origin are required, cooperative library and research projects are necessary. On the basis of the Labor Newspaper Preservation Project it is argued that analysis of the bibliographic data by themselves, without going into the contents of the newspapers, revises current assumptions about processes of migration, acculturation, and internationalist class positions. The classic North American immigrant labor press came to an end in the 1970s. New patterns, feminization of migration and mobility to domestic and caregiving work, and new patterns of communication led to an ascendancy of electronic publications. Electronic publications and global rather than hemispheric migration will require different collecting strategies. These, like their printed predecessors, provide a perspective on migrants that differs from ethnicity and state-side approaches. Human rights rather than class struggles and migrant remittances rather the denationalization are the themes, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) rather than labor organizations are the publishers.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/4596
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2008 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 56 (3) Winter 2008: Alternative Print Culture: Social History and Libraries PRIMARY
Library Trends 56 (3) Winter 2008: Alternative Print Culture: Social History and Libraries. Edited by Wayne A. Wiegand and Christine Pawley.