1

Ad Knotter (Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg/Maastricht University)

Labour migrants and cross-border commuters. Comparative perspectives on mining

labour markets in the Belgian-Dutch-German borderland in the twentieth century Abstract

In the Belgian-Dutch-German borderland, known today as the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, four coalfields

were situated close to each other: the Campine and Liège areas in Belgium, the mining region around

Aachen in Germany, and the Dutch basin of South Limburg. In this article the spatial structures of

international migration and cross-border commuting to these mining areas are related to the

institutional impact of state borders. There appears to have been a hierarchy of preferred recruitment

areas, with international migration at the lowest end. This does not mean, however, that these

preferences invariably resulted in a ‘dual labour market’, restricting migrants to a secondary market

segment within the mining industry only. Migrants and commuters were recruited for a variety of

reasons, depending on the phase in the life cycle of exploitation in a specific basin. A series of

migration regimes are suggested, related to the ‘start’, ‘expansion’, ‘consolidation’, ‘war intermezzo’,

‘rebuilding’, and the ‘closing’ of the mines. The general conclusion is that there were large differences

in the migration regimes of the areas concerned, and that national borders played an increasingly

important role in the labour market strategies of both miners and mining companies.

CV

Ad Knotter (1952) is director of the Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg and professor of

comparative regional history at Maastricht University. Email: a.knotter@shcl.unimaas.nl

In all mining regions in North-western Europe the recruitment of labour was a returning

problem. Labour intensity, together with the often remote location of exploitation, forced

mining companies to look for labour beyond the limits of local or regional supply. The

recruitment of migrant labour, both from a short and a long distance, was a necessity, and

therefore a common characteristic of mining districts. Very often this concerned migrants

from foreign countries. International labour migration was a common phenomenon in almost

every mining area in North-western Europe since the nineteenth century.1 The Polish

migration to the Ruhr area, and later also to Northern-France, the Netherlands and Belgium, is

perhaps the best known example.2 Italy was an early recruitment area as well, for instance for

the Luxembourg and Lorraine iron mines before the First World War.3 After the Second

World War Italians became the largest group of migrants in coalmining in North-western

1 Carl Strikwerda, The troubled origins of European economic integration: international iron and steel and labor

migration in the era of World War I, in: American Historical Review 98, 1993 pp. 1106-1129. See also: René

Leboutte, Des ‘travaillers étrangers’ aux ‘citoyens européens’. Mobilité et migrations dans les bassins industriels

en Europe aux 19ème

- 20ème

siècles, in : Espace, Populations, Sociétés, 2001/3 pp. 243-258; idem, Vie et mort

des bassins industriels en Europe 1750-2000, Paris 1997, esp. ch. IX: Croissance démographique et migrations. 2 Christoph Kleßmann, Polnische Bergarbeiter im Ruhrgebiet 1870-1945. Soziale Integration und nationale

Subkultur einer Minderheid in der deutschen Industriegesellschaft, Göttingen 1978; Paul Brassé, Willem van

Schelven, Assimilatie van vooroorlogse immigranten. Drie generaties Polen, Slovenen, Italianen in Heerlen, ’s-

Gravenhage 1980; Janine Ponty, Polonais méconnus. Histoire des travailleurs immigrés en France dans l’entre-

deux-guerres, Paris 1988; A.P. Versteegh, De onvermijdelijke afkomst? De opname van Polen in het Duits,

Belgisch en Nederlands mijnbedrijf in de periode 1920-1930, Hilversum 1994; Philip H. Slaby, Industry, the

state, and immigrant Poles in industrial France, 1919-1939, Ann Arbor 2005; Leo Lucassen, The immigrant

threat. The integration of old and new migrants in Western Europe since 1850, Urbana/Chicago 2005; L. Beyers,

Opgroeien in de schaduw van de mijn. Integratie en identiteit van jonge Polen in Belgisch-Limburg tussen 1925

en 1955, in: Studies over de Sociaal-economische Geschiedenis van Limburg / Jaarboek van het Sociaal

Historisch Centrum voor Limburg LI, 2006, pp. 135-158. 3 Gérard Noiriel, Longwy. Immigrés et prolétaires, 1880-1980, Paris 1984.

2

Europe. In a comparative approach to the history of regional mining labour markets migration

is an important issue.

In this article I will concentrate on a comparison of migration to the four mining

districts in the border region known today as Euregio Meuse-Rhine. For convenience sake,

this fairly recent name will be used for the whole period under research. The Euregio Meuse-

Rhine consists of the Belgian provinces Limburg and Liège, the southern part of the Dutch

province of Limburg, and the adjacent German area around the city of Aachen. In the twentieth

century coal mining had an enormous influence in all of these parts of the Euregio. There was a

tradition of mining around Liège and Aachen (including the old ‘Domaniale’ mine, just across

the Dutch border in Kerkrade), while in the Dutch and Belgian provinces of Limburg it did not

develop on a large scale until the twentieth century. Before the nineteenth century coal mining

in the Liège basin was restricted to the slopes of the Meuse valley, but since the invention of

drainage pumps it became possible to win coal underground. Coal mining was developed

together with the industrialisation of the Liège area, mainly by coal companies of relatively

small size. Aachen and nearby Kerkrade mining both originated in the early coal mining by the

Rolduc abbey in the valley of the river Wurm. Since the 1830s the Aachen mines were

exploited by the Eschweiler Bergwerks Verein and the Vereinigungsgesellschaft für den

Steinkohlenbergbau an der Wurm. Their mines produced domestic and industrial coal, at first

mainly for iron and zinc factories in the surroundings (in Eschweiler and Stolberg) and for

railway companies; in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Aachen coal became

important for the coal consuming Luxembourg steel industry (the ARBED company). In the

beginning of the twentieth century a new phase of expansion started with the merger of the

Eschweiler Bergwerks Verein and the Vereinigungsgesellschaft für den Steinkohlenbergbau

an der Wurm (1907), and the opening of new mines in 1915 (Sophia-Jakoba), 1919 (Carolus-

Magnus) and 1921 (Carl Alexander).

Apart from the exploitation by the Rolduc abbey and later the Domaniale mine in the

Wurm valley at the Dutch-German border,4 coal mining in the Dutch province of Limburg

was much more recent. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century

new mines were opened in the eastern part of South-Limburg by private companies under

French or Belgian ownership. However, from 1902 onwards only the Dutch State was allowed

to start new companies. It did so both in the eastern and western part of South-Limburg. These

modern State Mines operated on a large scale. In the Belgian Limburg Campine area modern

large scale mining started in the 1920s. In these mines French and Walloon capital was

engaged, partly from coal consuming steel companies.

The different origins and histories of mining in these regions had great impact on the

structure and the development of mining labour markets. In the beginning of the twentieth

century, the mining population in the Liège and Aachen districts (including the Dutch border

town of Kerkrade) was well established. In the other districts in the provinces of Limburg, both

in the Netherlands and Belgium, mining developed in thinly populated agricultural regions.

Compared to the Liège and Aachen basins these were areas of exploitation only, without related

industrialisation (based on steel, for instance), and alternative forms of industrial employment.

However, there is a remarkable contrast between the qualitative differences and the

geographical proximity of these areas (see map 1). From the east (Eschweiler east of Aachen) to

the west (Beringen in Belgian Limburg) the distance is just 100 kilometres; from the north

(Geleen in Dutch Limburg) to the south (Seraing near Liège) the distance is about 60

kilometres. In a straight line, the Dutch mining towns of Kerkrade and Geleen are about ten

kilometres away from their German and Belgian counterparts Alsdorf and Eisden at the other

side of the Dutch-German and Dutch-Belgian borders.

4 B.P.A. Gales, Delven en slepen. Steenkolenmijnbouw in Limburg: techniek, winning en markt gedurende de

achttiende en negentiende eeuw, Hilversum 2004.

3

Map 1. The coalfields in the Belgian-Dutch-German borderland

Labour supply in these areas could not provide for the enormous demand for miners in

the expanding mining industry. With or without governmental support mining companies

were forced to recruit miners from outside the area. This article compares patterns of

recruitment of foreign workers and their effects on the structure of the mining population in

each area. It is based on PhD-research at the universities of Aachen, Brussels and Maastricht,

with the ultimate aim to arrive at a comparative and cross-border analysis of mining labour

markets in the border region as a whole.5 Central questions are: what was the contribution and

origin of foreign workers, and how did these develop in time? How can we explain

differences in each area? There are two main themes: firstly: can we find elements of a ‘dual

labour market’, with migrants operating in a secondary segment?; secondly: how important

was cross-border labour, and how did it relate to international labour migration?

Comparative and cross-border research

The border being so close, one of the more interesting aspects of these mining areas is that

‘abroad’ could be very near, as was the case in several other Northwest-European mining

regions. After all, there is no relationship between the drawing of state borders and geological

formations underground. There was also much cross-border exchange of labour between coal

mines in the north of France and the adjacent Walloon mining districts, and between the iron

5 In the project called ‘Mining labour markets in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine in the 20th century’ four PhDs write

dissertations tutored by professors Paul Thomes (RWTH Aachen), Peter Scholliers (Free University of Brussels)

and Ad Knotter (Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg/Maastricht University).

4

mines in Lorraine and Luxembourg.6 If relevant, these cross-border regions will be referred to

in this article too. Cross-border commuters and labour migrants from the Borinage in Belgium

(near Mons) worked in the coal mines of Northern France, in de départements du Nord/Pas-

de-Calais. ‘Avec moi, travaillent essentiellement des Belges’, recalled the Polish miner

Tomasz Olszanski from his early years (1912) in a French mine in Courrières (near Lens).7

Research in the mining settlements of Sallaumines and Noyelles-sous-Lens (also near Lens)

made clear:

L’essor interrompu de 1856 à 1911 fut nourri par les gens des campagnes environnantes du

Pas-de-Calais et des régions plus lointaines, […] surtout de Belgique. […] Après la première

guerre mondiale, Sallaumines et Noyelles poursuivirent leur progression jusque 1931 […]

grâce à l’accueil de la population étrangère, polonais en majorité, représentant presque la

moitié des habitants dans les deux villes.8

The Lorraine iron mines employed many Belgian frontier workers as well. Already before

1914 they acquired a better position than the Italian migrants:

Dans les nouvelles agglomérations minières et industrielles du plateau de Briey l’élément

italien était devenu, à la vieille de la guerre [1914-1918] , absolument prépondérant. Pourquoi

eux? Peut-être parce que le réservoir belge est presque tari…9

While in 1896 the larger part of the foreigners in Longwy were still coming from Belgium

and Luxembourg (71.7 percent), in 1931 their position was taken by Italians (66.7 percent).10

French locaux and Belgian frontaliers now occupied the ‘better’ jobs, in the steel factories

among others, and left mine work to the Italian immigrés.11

All the same, cross-border

mobility among Italian miners in this so-called Saar-Lor-Lux border region (Saarland,

Lorraine, Luxembourg) was so intensive, that for this group of migrants a truly cross-border

labour market emerged.12

6 For the Luxembourg-Lorraine border region see: Noiriel, Longwy, and Stefan Leiner, Migration und

Urbanisierung. Binnenwanderungsbewegungen räumlicher und sozialer Wandel in den Industriestädten des Saar-

Lor-Lux-Raumes 1856-1910, Saarbrücken 1994; for Belgian and French Hainaut: Gérard Dumont, Une

immigration fondatrice: les Belges, in : M. Cégarra e.al., Tous gueules noires. Histoire de l’immigration dans le

bassin minier du Nord-Pas-de-Calais [Centre historique minier du Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Collection ‘Mémoires de

Gaillette’ 8], Lewarde 2004, pp. 17-31, and Firmin Lentacker, La frontière franco-belge. Étude géographique des

effets d’une frontière internationale sur la vie de relations, diss. Lille 1973, pp. 477-478. 7 ‘I mainly worked with Belgians’, cited by: Janine Ponty, Les Polonais: une immigration massive, in : Cégarra

e.al., Tous gueules noires, p. 58. 8 ‘The permanent growth between 1856 and 1911 was made possible by people from the surrounding

conutryside in Pas-de-Calais and areas further away, […] mainly in Belgium. […] After the First World War

Sallaumines and Noyelles were able to continue their progress until 1931 […] thanks to the arrival of foreigners,

mostly Poles, who at that time were almost half of the population in these two settlements’. Claude Dubar,

Gérard Gayot, Jacques Hédoux, Sociabilité minière et changement social à Sallaumines et à Noyelles-sous-Lens

(1900-1980), Revue du Nord LXIV, 1982, pp. 363-463, cit. 404-405. See also: Pierre-Jean Thumerelle, La

population de la région Nord-Pas de Calais. Étude géographique IV vol., Lille 1982, pp. 744-748. 9 ‘Just before the war [1914-1918] the Italian element in the newly populated agglomerations around the mines

and factories on the plateau of Briey had become absolutely predomnant. Why ? Perhaps because the Belgian

reservoir had been exhausted …’. Cited by: L. Delmas, R. Martinois, S. Sutera-Sardo, ‘Petites Italies’ en

Lorraine sidérurgique au début du XXe siècle, in: Judith Rainhorn, ed., Petites Italies dans l’Europe du Nord-

ouest. Appartenances territoriales et identités collectives, Valenciennes 2005, pp. 76-97, cit. p. 79 nt. 2. 10

Leboutte Vie et mort des bassins industriels, p. 279 ; see also Noiriel, Longwy, p. 172; 11

Ibidem, pp. 39, 68-69, 80, 130, 152, 172, 215-217. 12

Leiner, Migration und Urbanisierung, pp. 180-181. See also : idem, Wanderungsbewegungen im

Saarländischen-lothringisch-luxemburgischen Grenzraum 1856-1914, in: René Leboutte and Jean-Paul Lehners,

eds., Passé et avenir des bassins industriels en Europe, Luxembourg 1995, pp. 121-138.

5

The research questions addressed in this paper also concern cross-border mobility of

mineworkers, both as commuters and as settling migrants. This question is related to a more

general question in our research project, that is: to what extent were mining labour markets in

the Euregional border area connected across borders? To put it another way: was there an

integrated cross-border (international) labour market for work in the mines? The question can

also be turned around: to what extent did the existence of state borders hamper the cross-border

clearing of regional labour markets in each country? With these questions labour market

research and historical border studies can be combined. Border studies focus on the impact of

(state) borders on the extent and frequency of cross-border interaction (like selling and buying

labour power) in border regions. In a typology of border regions based on this criterion, the

American historian Oscar Martinez differentiated five types: closed, alienated, co-existent,

interdependent, and integrated border regions.13

The permeability of borders is determined by

institutional, geographical, cultural, and economic factors, that both can impede or stimulate

cross-border interaction.14

In this sense, the extent of cross-border integration of labour

markets can also give insight into the general characteristics of a border region. Differences in

the recruitment of migrant labour reflect the extent of regionalisation of labour markets and

the impact of (state) borders

Spatial differentiation

In this article, the degree of cross-border integration of labour markets and the impact of state

borders will be examined by analysing differences in the number and the composition of foreign

labour migration in each area. We suppose that these differences are a consequence of

inequalities in available labour supply in each district, and of the extent to which these

inequalities were cleared by cross-border labour mobility. The idea is that a completely

integrated cross-border labour market would even out shortages in each region by cross-border

clearing, and that, as a consequence, the need for foreign labour would also be more or less

equal in each region. Great differences in the number and share of international labour migrants

would therefore give an indication of the degree of border closure.

At the opposite of a model of cross-border market integration, we can assume a (more

or less) closed spatial labour market in each region. A labour market can be considered

regionally closed when companies recruit the majority of their workforce in the region itself,

when the journey to work does in general not cross regional boundaries, and when

information on vacancies and supply are mainly exchanged on a regional basis, be it by means

of official labour exchanges or otherwise. The issue of regionalisation of labour markets does

not only concern the closure of state borders, however, but also other mining districts, in or

outside the countries concerned, that could also exchange mining labour with the regions in

the Euregio Meuse-Rhine. This relates especially to the Belgian Walloon basins around Mons

and Charleroi, the French mining districts around Lens and Valenciennes, and the German

Ruhrgebiet. These are not too remote from the Euregio for the labour markets to connect:

Aachen is about 130 kilometres removed from Bochum in the Ruhr, Liège about 250 kilometres

from Lens in northern France.

13

O.J. Martinez, Border people. Life and society in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Tucson/Londen 1994, pp. 5-

10. 14

Cf. Ad Knotter, Paradoxen van de grens. Ongelijke ontwikkeling, grensoverschrijdende mobiliteit en de

vergelijkende geschiedenis van de Euregio Maas-Rijn, Studies over de sociaal-economische geschiedenis van

Limburg. Jaarboek van het Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg XLVI, 2001, pp. 159-174.

6

Between the two extreme models of a completely closed regional and an integrated

cross-border labour market, we eventually arrived at a spatial differentiation of five levels of

labour market exchange. As to the region of recruitment we can differentiate between miners:

1. from each mining district in the Euregio;

2. from other regions within national boundaries (be it mining regions or not);

3. from bordering mining districts within the Euregio Meuse-Rhine;

4. from mining districts (more or less nearby) outside the Euregio;

5. foreign labour migrants or ‘guest workers’ from countries further away.

The different areas of recruitment can be considered ‘leaking containers’,15

that relate together

as communicating vessels in a hierarchical order. If the local or regional labour market (1) fails,

at first supply of (non-experienced) workers from elsewhere in the country concerned is called

upon (2), or from mining districts across the border at a short distance (3), subsequently miners

from mining districts outside the Euregio are called in (4), or, lastly, labour migrants from a

greater distance (5). Developments in the Liège district provide an example of this alternate

sequence, be it that they concern crossing a language border, and not a state border. Until the

1920s the Liège coal mines attracted many Dutch speaking (Flemish) miners from Belgian

Limburg (just north of Liège) and from Brabant (the so called Hageland near Louvain to the

northwest).16

Because of the growth of mining in Belgian Limburg itself, migrant and

commuting flows were redirected to the new mines there, and Liège had to recruit more and

more migrants from other countries, like Poland.17

Something like this occurred in the Aachen

district, be it in this case with a state border in between: before the First World War many Dutch

miners were employed there as frontier workers, but with the expansion of Dutch mining, after

1906 labour from this source became scarce; they were replaced by newly recruited labour from

the (then) Austrian Empire and Italy.18

In the 1920s the cross-border flow of labour was turned

around: the Limburg mines attracted many Germans from Aachen because of hyperinflation,

which made the Dutch guilder an attractive currency for cross-border workers to be paid in.

After 1923 many miners from the Ruhr area moved to Aachen because of redundancies after the

French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr and a wave of rationalisation in the Ruhr mines. For this

reason, the number of foreign workers in the Aachen district recruited directly from their

homelands could remain small. In the 1930s the percentage of non-German miners varied

between two and three percent. In 1938/39 their share grew to 4,8 percent because of a sudden

rise in the number of commuters from the Dutch mining district in South-Limburg.

As an extra element in this spatial model we have to consider that precisely foreign

labour migrants, the Poles for example, who formed an important migrant group in the mining

industry everywhere, were also very mobile between the different mining district in North-

15

The metaphor of the ‘leaking container’ has been taken from: P.J. Taylor, The state as container: territoriality

in the modern world-system, in: Progress in Human Geography 18, 1994, pp. 151-162. 16

Michel Poulain, Michel Foulon, ‘L’immigration flamande en Wallonie: evaluation à l’aide d’un indicateur

anthroponomique’, in : Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis XII, 1981, pp. 204-244, esp. 226; Yves

Quairiaux, L’image du flamand en Wallonie. Essai d’analyse sociale et politique (1830-1914), s.l. 2006, pp. 123-

149. Pascal Verbeken, Arm Wallonië. Een reis door het beloofde land, Antwerpen/Amsterdam 2007. 17

Frank Caestecker, Arbeidsmarktstrategieën in de Belgische mijnindustrie tot 1940, and Leen Roels,

Buitenlandse arbeiders in de Luikse steenkolenmijnen, 1900-1974, both in: Tijdschrift voor Sociale en

Economische Geschiedenis 5/3, 2008, pp. 30-52 and 104-125. See also: Frank Caestecker, Vervanging of

verdringing van de buitenlandse mijnwerkers in Limburg. De emancipatie van de Limburgse mijnwerkers.

Migratie naar het Limburgse mijnbekken. Een vergelijking met de migratie naar de Waalse mijnen (1920-1940),

in: Limburg - het Oude Land van Loon 77, 1998, pp. 309-326, esp. 312 en 315. 18

Kirstin Klank, Secondary labour force or permanent staff? Foreign workers in the Aachen coal mines, in:

Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 5/3, 2008, pp. 126-154.

7

western Europe.19

As a consequence, it is not always possible to differentiate between cases (4)

and (5). Among the Aachen miners from the Ruhrgebiet, so-called Ruhr-Polen were prominent.

They, or their parents, had settled in the Ruhr in an earlier phase of expansion from the east of

(then) Germany.20

They also turned up in Belgium and the Netherlands.

In interregional labour mobility distances were as important as borders. Therefore we do

not only have to reckon with the interrelationship of larger recruitment areas (nationally or

internationally), but also with sub regional variations within mining districts themselves. Thus,

the exchange of mine workers between the South-Limburg and Aachen basins was in fact

restricted to the mining district in the eastern part of South-Limburg (around the towns of

Kerkrade and Heerlen); the exchange between Belgian and Dutch Limburg mines effected only

the western part of the Dutch Limburg mining district around Geleen and the Belgian Limburg

mines around Eisden near the Dutch-Belgian border. When the Belgian wages lost value

because of the devaluation of the Belgian currency (the frank) in 1926, cross-border commuting

from the Netherlands immediately came to a near standstill. After that, the Eisden mines had to

recruit more foreign workers than the Belgian mines in the western part of the Campine area,

that were able to recruit sufficient labourers from the surrounding countryside and areas in

Belgium further to the west.21

Lastly, an analysis of spatial and cross-border mobility has to take into account that in

the course of the twentieth century labour markets became much more nationally organised.

Because of the increasing importance of the national state in welfare arrangements and social

insurance, and of growing state interference in the exchange and recruitment of labour, the

institutional setting of labour markets became more and more nationally bounded. Wages and

labour conditions became regulated by governmentally organised systems of national collective

bargaining. It is hardly feasible that this did not influence the possibilities and restraints of

cross-border labour. We may even suppose that the nationalisation of labour markets, especially

since the 1930s, hampered cross-border recruitment of labour, and that precisely this effect

caused mining companies to turn to foreign labour migrants at a greater distance after World

War II. In this respect the bilateral recruitment contracts that national governments agreed to

after the War, at first with Italy, later also with other Mediterranean countries, are a paradoxical

effect of this process of labour market nationalisation.

Migration and labour turnover

The involvement of labour migrants led to a very diverse mix of the mining population. To

determine the extent and composition of this mix, we first had to answer some very simple

quantitative questions: how many miners were working in the mines in each region, and of

which origin? How did this develop in the course of the twentieth century? How did the

spatial hierarchies mentioned above work out? Apart from the geographical aspects the social

position of migrants was important too. Was there a difference in their contribution above and

below ground? What was their position in the occupational hierarchy? How about skills?

What was the role of migrants in the introduction of new skills? Next to a differentiation of

work above and below ground, skill, and occupational choice, variations in the length of

19

More on the mobility of Polish miners between the Ruhr area, Nord-Pas-de-Calais and the Euregional

minining districts in: Kleßmann, Polnische Bergarbeiter im Ruhrgebiet, pp. 165-166; idem, Comparative

immigrant history: Polish workers in the Ruhr Area and the North of France, in: Journal of Social History 20,

1986, pp. 335-353. 20

Versteegh, De onvermijdelijke afkomst?, pp. 183-185 21

Bart Delbroek, Op zoek naar koolputters. Buitenlandse mijnwerkers in Belgisch-Limburg in de twintigste

eeuw, in: Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 5/3, 2008, pp. 80-103.

8

employment are relevant to determine the migrants’ social position. Like in other

occupational groups, perhaps we can discern three types of miners: steady workers attached to

one mining company (in an internal labour market; called feste Stamm in German); mobile

miners moving from mine tot mine; and casual labourers who combined mine work with other

jobs, mainly on the farm. The position of labour migrants in this structure can be determined

by research into the labour turnover, especially among (young) migrants in the mines. In

expanding mining districts, with a growing demand for labourers, a high degree of turnover is

a common and well-known phenomenon.22

In these circumstances a discrepancy emerged

between the need to attract new labour migrants and a policy of binding miners to the

company as steady and reliable workers. To have workers stay and settle mining companies

stimulated family migration and company housing, as an element of their recruitment

policies.23

Der verstärkte Zechenwohnungsbau wurde nicht nur zur leichteren Gewinnung der benötigten

Arbeitskräfte betrieben, sonder auch, um die ungewöhnlich starke Fluktuation unter den

Belegschaften einzudämmen und einen im Falle von Streiks ‘zuverlässigen’ Arbeiterstamm zu

haben,

writes Kleßmann on the Ruhr area.24

In northern France it was the same:

Housing policies, above all, sought to stabilize the labor force […] Seeking to bind the most

reliable workers to their labor force, companies devoted most of their resources to lodge

miners with families.25

Local workers as steady miners: was there a ‘dual labour market’?

In the Netherlands, the enormous turnover in expanding mining districts elsewhere was

associated from the beginning with all kinds of unfavourable characteristics of ‘uprooted’

young migrants, like immorality, criminality and socialist rebelliousness. There was a fear

that migrants would withdraw themselves from social control in the company, the community,

and the church. In this respect, labour market policies of the mining companies to control their

work force coincided with church policies to keep workers within the church.26

One of the

main goals of state exploitation in the Netherlands was to control the expansion of mining and

to regulate recruitment without foreign labour. To build a balanced work force recruitment

should be restricted to the population in the province in Limburg itself.27

State Mines

managed to do so only before the First World War, however; after 1914 they were forced to

employ miners from elsewhere. But they did not leave the principal aim to employ only

Dutchmen. In 1929 director Frowein of Dutch State Mines wrote:

It is in the interest of the mines themselves to employ only Dutch workers, because, beside

other considerations, it can be expected that foreign labourers will be the least stable. Because

22

Cf. L.H.M. Kreukels, Mijnarbeid: volgzaamheid en strijdbaarheid. Geschiedenis van de arbeidsverhoudingen

in de Nederlandse steenkolenmijnen, Assen/Maastricht 1986, pp. 66-67. 23

Ibidem, pp. 105-106. 24

Kleßmann, Polnische Bergarbeiter, p. 47. 25

Slaby, Industry, the State, and Immigrant Poles, p. 48. See also : Dubar e.al., Sociabilité minière, p. 457:

‘Refaire le groupe social fut la préoccupation permanente des compagnies minières […], c’est-à-dire leur

reproduction sur place’(‘To make [the miners] a social group was the permanent preoccupation of the mining

companies […], that means : their local reproduction’). 26

This is the central theme of Kreukels, Mijnarbeid. 27

Ibidem, 80-83.

9

of the importance the mines attach to the establishment of a steady labour force, the

employment of foreign labourers is not recommendable, as generally speaking such labourers

disappear again after a shorter or longer time span.28

In Belgian Limburg the employers also tried to create a steady labour force, based on miners

from the surroundings:29

‘Les Charbonnages feront tous leurs efforts pour donner, en toutes

occasions, la préférence aux ouvriers belges, et spécialement limbourgeois’.30

The Belgian

Limburg mines were less successful in achieving this aim than the Dutch, however.

After World War II the Dutch mines kept recruiting foreign labour. The big turnover

of migrant workers and the fact that the rhythm of their recruitment fluctuated with the

conjuncture of the mining industry in the 1950s and 1960s indicate that their were additional

work force.31

In labour market research this is called a ‘split’ or ‘dual’ labour market.32

This

means that there are in fact two separate labour markets or market segments: one of steady

labourers with a regular, long time employment, and a fringe of casual and flexible workers,

without much mobility in between. Preferences for local labour could result in a ‘dual labour

market’, restricting migrants to a fluctuating secondary market segment. However, in the

areas of our research migrants were certainly not always relegated to a secondary segment. In

some cases they were recruited because there was a shortage of skilled labour in the local

population, as was the case in the pioneering phase in both Dutch and Belgian Limburg. In the

Liège basin after World War II, the supply of local miners was so few, that there was a

permanent and structural need for foreign labour on a massive scale.

Migration regimes and development cycles

The character and the development of migration patterns in mining in the Euregio and

elsewhere can be related to the phase of the cycle of exploitation each mining district went

through. Specific migration regimes reflect the stages of the developmental or life cycle of a

mining region. On the basis of the Dutch case an ideal type of a developmental cycle and

connected migration regimes will be described under the headings start, expansion,

consolidation, war intermezzo, rebuilding, and closing phase. If this description has any

general value for mining districts in the Euregio or Europe as a whole requires further

research. Below I will give a first try.

Starting: migrant miners introduce skills in the pioneering phase

In the starting phase of Dutch mining before the First World War, migrants from German

mining districts, among whom also ethnic Poles, were employed mainly to introduce mining

skills. In the 1920s, at least in the private Oranje Nassau Mines, skilled Poles were recruited

directly from Poland for work underground.33

Many Dutchmen, who had arrived in the mines

28

Letter of the board of State Mines, 19-12-1929, cited by G.C.M. Vromen, Personeelsbeleid bij de Nederlandse

mijnen tijdens de jaren dertig, in: Studies over de sociaal-economische geschiedenis van Limburg / Jaarboek van

het Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg XXXII, 1987, pp. 27-79, cit. P. 27. 29

Caestecker, ‘Vervanging of verdringing’, p. 320. 30

‘The mining companies do their utmost to privilege, in any case, Belgian, especially Limburg workers’.

Association Charbonnière de la Campine 11-2-1931, cited by ibidem, note 23. 31

Cf. Serge Langeweg, Bekende buren en verre vreemden. Buitenlandse arbeiders in de Nederlandse

steenkolenmijnen, 1900-1974, in: Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 5/3, 2008, pp. 53-79. 32

The ‘dual labour market’ is a leading concept in my dissertation: Economische transformatie en stedelijke

arbeidsmarkt. Amsterdam in de tweede heft van de negentiende eeuw, Amsterdam/Zwolle 1991. 33

Versteegh, De onvermijdelijke afkomst?, pp. 225-227. On Polish migration in Limburg see also the memoirs

of F. Wojciechowski, Voor brood en vrijheid. Honderd jaar Polen in Zuid-Limburg, 1900-2000, Heerlen 2000.

10

as unskilled labourers, acquired their skills by working together with these foreign coworkers.

In this way the Limburg mines could build a core of skilled and steady miners of Dutch

origin. Gradually they became less dependent on skilled underground workers from abroad.

Only after 1926 recruitment policy of the Dutch mines was redirected toward unskilled

foreign workers.34

The Dutch mining town of Kerkrade, on the other hand, which had a mining tradition

connected to the bordering German district around Aachen, had sent skilled miners as

pioneers to the Liège mining village of Tilleur (near Seraing) already in the 1840s and 1850s.

Although Kerkrade was a Dutch (border) town, and did not belong to Prussia, Tilleur was

called Petite Prusse because of the German dialect spoken by these migrants.35

Specialised

migrants were important in the formation of a mining workforce elsewhere as well. Mining in

northern France owed its development in the eighteenth century to the migration of miners

from the Borinage and Charleroi districts just across the border in today’s Belgium.36

In the

Belgian Limburg Campine area mining was pioneered by Walloon miners,37

but these were

often experienced Flemish commuters who had formerly worked in the Liège mines.38

Polish

migration to the Ruhr areas started around 1870 with the recruitment of skilled miners from

(then still German) Upper-Silesia. The first Polish migrant workers arrived in Bottrop from

the Silesian mining town of Rybnik. Through chain migration a privileged relationship

emerged with the effect that the core of skilled miners in Bottrop were Polish for a long

time.39

The massive migration of Poles to the Ruhr area after the pioneering phase consisted

mainly of unskilled labourers from rural Posen and East- and West-Pussia, however. But this

type of migration belongs to the second phase.40

Expansion: pouring in of newcomers with a big turnover

During the expansion phase of Dutch coal mining during the First World War and the 1920s

many new migrants were recruited, most of them from Germany, with a big labour turnover.

The same phenomenon has been observed in Belgian Limburg in the 1920s.41

Elsewhere, this

was the case as well: ‘Le turn over constitue […] le principal moyen de résistance à

l’exploitation’, writes Gérard Noiriel about the Italian miners in Longwy in the beginning of

the twentieth century.42

In the Ruhr area the expansion phase before the First World War was

34

Langeweg, Bekende buren en verre vreemden, pp. 67-68. 35

Georges Philippet, Étude démographique de la commune de Tilleur, in: Annuaire d’histoire liégeoise 21, 1953,

cited by W. Rutten, Werken over de grens, in: Weet je nog koempel? De mijnen in Limburg 19, Zwolle 2005, p.

444. 36

Dumont, ‘Une immigration fondatrice: les Belges’ ; Leboutte, Vie et mort des bassins industriels, pp. 85 and

395. 37

Versteegh, De onvermijdelijke afkomst?, pp. 131, 136. 38

Caestecker, Vervanging of verdringing, p. 312. 39

R. C. Murphy, Guestworkers in the German Reich: a Polish community in Wilhelminian Germany, New York

1983, cited by Kleßmann, Polnische Bergarbeiter, p. 38, nt. 92; Versteegh, De onvermijdelijke afkomst?, p. 85. 40

In the United States Fishback describes a comparable pattern: ‘Immigrants from the British Isles and northern

European countries played major roles in the early development of the U.S. coal industry in the mid 1800s. Most

British immigrants came with coal mining experience and helped train American workers’. After 1890

inexperience European miners (like Italians, Hungarians, Czechs and Poles) and blacks form the South were

recruited. Price V. Fishback, Soft coal, hard choices. The economic welfare of bituminous coal miners, 1890-

1930, New York/Oxford 1992, pp. 172 ff. 41

Bart Pluymers, De Limburgse mijnwerkers (1917-1939). Ontstaan en consolidatie van de arbeidsmarkt voor

mijnarbeid, Diepenbeek 1996. See also: Delbroek, Op zoek naar koolputters. 42

‘Turn-over was […] the most important act of resistence against exploitation’. Noiriel, Longwy, p. 130. Like

Noiriel, Fishback considers mobility of miners in the US as a betterment strategy (‘exit’), and an alternative voor

trade union membership (‘voice’): ‘The movement of individual miners between competing mines and in and out

of the industry also aided the miners in preventing exploitation’. Fishback, Soft coal, hard choices, pp. 28-31 and

pp. 222-223.

11

characterised by an unstable labour force as well: ‘[Die] Fluktuation wies bis 1914 absolut

und prozentual eine steigende Tendenz auf’. Especially Polish migrants often changed

workplace:

waren doch gerade sie in besonderem Maße von Umstellungsschwierigkeiten in der

ungewohnten Arbeit und Anpassungsproblemen an die neue Umgebung betroffen, die den in

den Jahren guter Konjunktur ziemlich risikolosen Entschluß förderten, abzukehren und das

Glück auf der nächsten Zeche zu suchen. Auch der hohe Anteil an Unverheirateten unter den

Polen spielte dabei eine wichtige Rolle.43

Labour turnover among the Poles was strongly reduced during the First World War, and

subsequently during the period of diminishing employment opportunities because of the

rationalisation and the economic crisis since 1923/24,44

which for that reason can be

considered the consolidation phase of Ruhr mining.

Consolidation: expulsion of migrants and formation of a stable core of workers

Rationalisation and redundancies in the Dutch mines in the 1930s resulted in a consolidation

and reorganisation of the labour force by expulsion of migrants and the formation of a stable

core of workers from the region itself. In the depression years foreigners were the first to be

dismissed; they were repatriated to their homelands alone or with their families.45

Between

1931 and 1935, the number of workers of foreign origin diminished from 12,248 to 5,179;

according to the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs this was ‘a reduction, which, relatively

spoken, no other industrial industry or branch in our country has achieved’.46

The expulsion

of foreigners had partly been effected under pressure of the Ministry. One of the intended

results was that labour turnover could be reduced drastically.47

Mine management were now

able to select severely, while before, during the upswing of mining, miners could make

choices. When the economy recovered after 1935, mining companies favoured young workers

from the region itself, educated directly after primary school at industrial training schools of

the mines (in Dutch: Ondergrondse Vakscholen or OVS).48

In the 1930s vocational training of

young Limburg boys was developed and expanded systematically, especially aimed at sons of

already employed miners. The aim was to become less dependent on migrant workers and to

build a stable core of miners’ dynasties, a feste Stamm of labourers attached to each

company.49

As a result, the number of foreigners declined steeply: in 1930 they were almost a

third of the workforce; in 1939 they were only a tenth.50

In the long rum this resulted in a

thorough and fundamental change of the composition of the work force, especially compared

to the Belgian mines: after World War II the Dutch Limburg mines could build on a large

majority of regional supply.

In Belgian Limburg in the 1930s mining companies also actively aspired to replace

foreign by indigenous workers, partly under pressure of the trade unions and the Belgian

government.51

A xenophobic discourse was also very prominent among pro-Flemish catholics

43

Kleßmann, Polnische Bergarbeiter, p. 48. 44

Ibidem. 45

Vromen, Personeelsbeleid, p. 39. 46

Cited by Kreukels, Mijnarbeid, p. 414. 47

Ibidem, 413; zie ook Vromen, ‘Personeelsbeleid’, 41-43. 48

Kreukels, Mijnarbeid, p. 420; see also: Vromen, Personeelsbeleid, p. 48. 49

Ibidem, pp. 71-74 50

Ibidem, p. 39. 51

F.Caestecker, Vakbonden en etnische minderheden, een ambigue verhouding. Immigratie in de Belgische

mijnbekkens, 1900-1940, in: Brood en Rozen. Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van sociale bewegingen, 1997/1,

pp. 51-63, cit. 60.

12

in Belgian Limburg.52

Between 1931 and 1937 the proportion of foreign workers in the

Campine mines diminished from 29 to 24 percent. In this period, mining companies

succeeded in employing former peasant-miners completely to the mines as full time miners.53

Nevertheless, the relative number of migrants remained much higher than in the Netherlands.

In other mines in Europe as well, there was a preference in the 1930s to dismiss

foreigners and to send them home, especially unmarried migrants. For this reason

unemployment in mining districts was less ‘visible’ than elsewhere. Noiriel writes in this

connection about the ‘”francisation” de la classe ouvrière’ in the Lorrain iron mines:

Sous le poids de la crise, les Français sont de plus en plus nombreux à accepter ce métier jugé

auparavant inacceptable. De 23 %, leur part dans l’effectif des mineurs de Meurthe-et-Moselle

mont à 35 % en 1936. Le taux d’Italiens baisse de 33 à 27 % et celui des Polonais de 37 % à

30 %.54

According to Noiriel, as a consequence of the employment crisis labour turnover in Longwy

was reduced also, and miners could be attached more and more to one company :

Dans les mines […] , le coefficient d’instabilité qui dépassait 90 % à la fin des années 20,

chute brusquement à 26 % en 1932, soit 4 fois moins! Dans les exploitations du bassin de

Longwy, les ouvriers ayant moins d’un an d’ancienneté constituent un tiers de l’effectif en

1930 et seulement un sixième en 1938 ; par contre, ceux qui ont plus de trois ans de présence

passent de 37,6 % à 46,7 % aux mêmes dates.55

Elsewhere he writes:

il faut souligner les effets de la stabilisation, qui a commencé à partir de 1931. Jusque-là,

l’hétérogénéité et l’instabilité avaient été la règle dans cette région. La crise puis la guerre

provoquent l’arrêt de l’immigration.56

As said before, the consolidation phase in the Ruhr area had been initiated at an earlier date,

after the occupation crisis of 1923 and the following wave of rationalisations and

redundancies in coal mining. The effect of this crisis was that Poles, who were the first to be

dismissed both for political and economic reasons, moved to the northern French mines in

great numbers, where at that time existed a shortage of labour, and also to Belgium and the

Netherlands.57

After the First World War the Belgian migrants and cross-border workers had

left the mines in northern France; therefore, these had to look for new sources of labour

52

See: Beyers, Opgroeien in de schaduw van de mijn, p. 137 about the influential priest Karel Pinxten; see also:

Luc Vandeweyer, Steenkoolmijnen, politiek en migratie in Limburg. Een historische bijdrage betreffende

politieke macht … en de vrees ze te verliezen, in: Limburg – het Oude Land van Loon 77, 1998, pp. 327-357,

esp. 352. 53

Caestecker, Vervanging of verdringing, pp. 315-316. 54

‘Under pressure of the crisis the occupation [of miner] has been accepted by ever more Frenchmen, who

would consider this unacceptable before. Their share in the workforce in the mines of Meurthe-et-Moselle rises

from 23 to 35 % in 1936. The share of Italians diminishes from 33 to 27 % and that of Poles from 37 to 30 %’.

Noiriel, Longwy, p. 270. 55

‘The instability in the mines, more than 90 % at the end of the 1920s, suddenly lowered to 26 % in 1932, so 4

times less! In the Longwy basin in 1930 a third of the mining labourers stayed less than a year with one

company; in 1938 this was only a sixth; in that period the number of workers that stayed more than three years

with one company rose from 37,6 % to 46,7 %’. Ibidem, p. 273. 56

‘The effects of the stabilisation after 1931 have to be emphasised. Before this year heterogeneity and

instability was endemic in this regio. The crisis, and then the war, meant the end of immigration’. Ibidem, p. 327. 57

Kleßmann, Polnische Bergarbeiter, pp. 161-168; see also p. 249, nt. 139. Versteegh, Onvermijdelijke afkomst,

pp. 137, 149.

13

supply. Apart from Ruhr-Polen, called Westphaliens in France, Polish miners were also

recruited directly in Poland.58

But here also, the depression of the 1930s, that hit the French

mines some years later, led to the expulsion of Polish migrants that had arrived during the

boom period in the 1920s. This was effected partly as a consequence of national legislation

(1932), issued to diminish the number of foreign workers.59

It is remarkable that developments in the Walloon coalfields took a completely

different turn: in the 1930s the number of foreign workers employed there grew. Caestecker

argues that the Walloon mines became more dependent on foreign workers than those in

Belgian Limburg because of a reorientation of the Flemish commuters from the Dutch

speaking Belgian provinces of Brabant and Limburg, who, thanks to the anti-foreigner

policies of the Belgian Limburg mining companies, were now able to establish themselves as

experienced workers there, but also because of the ‘desertion’ of the Walloon miners families

who simply did not want to send their sons into the mines anymore, and had adapted their

family size to achieve this goal.60

In the Campine mines the position of the skilled migrants

was taken by local and commuting Flemish miners, who in this way could move upward in

the workers’ hierarchy. In the Walloon mines the Flemish workers had been subordinate to

the experienced locals. The locals’ ambition to move out of the mine, together with the

reorientation of the Flemish workers towards the Belgian Limburg mines, created room for

growth of the number of foreign workers in the Walloon coalfields.61

After the Second World

War this would result in a really dramatic rise of the number of foreign workers in the Liège

mines.

War intermezzo: forced labour, but not in the Netherlands

In the period of German occupation (which in the Dutch and Belgian mining districts lasted

from 1940 to 1944), the Nazi government did its utmost to incorporate Belgian and Dutch

coal production into its war economy. To increase production as much as possible forced

labourers were brought in almost everywhere, especially so called Ostarbeiter and Sowjet

prisoners of war. This was the case in Germany itself, as in the Aachen mines,62

and also in

the Belgian Limburg and Walloon mines;63

not, however, in the Netherlands. This divergence

can be explained by the structural differences between the Dutch and the Belgian mines with

regard to labour scarcity. As described above, the Belgian mines faced a structural shortage of

labour, to be compensated by migrants, while the Dutch were able to engage sufficient

workers from the Limburg area itself.64

The extent to which the Belgian mines had to deal

with shortages became clear again after the War: the involvement of forced labour was

58

Cf. Ponty, Les Polonais, pp. 61-64. 59

Ibidem, pp. 69-72; see also Slaby, Industry, the state, and immigrant Poles. 60

Caestecker, Vervanging of verdringing, pp. 316, 313. 61

Ibidem, p 322. On the position of the Flemish miners a typical citation from 1926 : ‘Il est typique que les

Wallons désertent peu à peu les pénibles travaux des houillères, où ils sont remplacés par des Flamands, pour se

consacrer davantage à la métallurgie ou à une profession réclamant une main-d’œuvre qualifiée que les

Flamands ne peuvent fournir encore’, cited by Quiairiaux, L’image du flamand, p. 411, nt. 941; see also

Leboutte, Vie et mort des bassins industriels, pp. 269-270: ‘Les ouvriers flamands non qualifiés remplacent peu à

peu la main-d’œuvre locale qui glisse de la mine vers la métallurgie’. 62

Cf. Thomas Müller, Vom Grenzgängerwesen zur Zwangsarbeit. De Ausländereinsatz im Aachener Bergbau

während des Zweiten Weltkrieges, in: Klaus Tenfelde und Hans-Christoph Seidel (Hrsg.), Zwangsarbeit im

Bergwerk. Der Arbeitseinsatz im Kohlenbergbau des Deutschen Reiches und der besetzten Gebiete im Ersten

und Zweiten Weltkrieg, Essen 2005, pp. 161-192. 63

Cf. Nathalie Piquet, ‘Priviligierte’ Zwangarbeiter. Sowjetische und serbische Arbeitskräfte im

nordfranzösichen und belgischen Steinkohlenbergbau während der deutschen Besatzung, in: ibidem, pp. 467-

493. 64

Willibrord Rutten, ‘Russen’ nich erwunscht. Der gescheiterte Einsatz sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener im

niederländischen Bergbau während des Zweiten Weltkrieges, in: ibidem, pp. 513-536.

14

continued, this time with German prisoners of war (until 1947).65

Rebuilding the post war economy: organised recruitment of labour migrants

After the Second World War coal was in great demand as a source of energy until the so

called coal crisis of 1957. In this period of post war reconstruction (called bataille du charbon

in France and Belgium) organised recruitment of second country labour migrants on the basis

of bilateral agreements became very important. Recruitment of foreign labour was made

easier by the European Coal and Steel Community (founded in 1951), but, in spite of pressure

by the Italian government, freedom of movement was restricted to coal- and steelworkers. The

foundation of the European Economic Community in 1957 did not result in the abolishment

of national restrictions on migration before 1968. The coal producing countries in North-

western Europe held on to national labour market policies.66

Characteristic for the post war

reconstruction period were bilateral recruitment agreements with the Italian government.

France and Belgium made such contracts already in 1946, to exchange coal supplies for the

transfer of migrant workers. Dutch State Mines made an agreement with Italy to recruit

miners in 1948. This levy of Italians, mainly young single men from the south of Italy, had no

experience with mine work at all, and left the mines as soon as possible.67

Turnover among

these migrants was very high. In the case of Belgian Limburg Bart Delbroek shows that in the

period 1946-1956 more than 28,000 Italians were recruited, but that there were only at most

7,000 employed at the same time (on December 31st 1951). For this reason, but also because

the arrival and the return of Italian migrants was dependent on the economic cycle, mining

companies were again unable to build a stable workforce. Nevertheless, in the first half of the

1950s, the share of ‘guest workers’ in the Belgian Limburg mines was high: between 24 and

31 percent. After the mining disaster in Marcinelle (near Charleroi) in 1956 the Italian

government discontinued emigration to Belgium; after that new bilateral recruitment

agreements were made with Spain and Greece.68

In Dutch Limburg the proportion of foreign miners remained relatively low. At the

apex of post war coal mining it was 14 percent, so a lot less than in the Belgian basins. The

Dutch mining companies were able to train young people from the region itself in their

Ondergrondse Vakscholen, more so than their Belgian counterparts. Besides, they succeeded

to recruit Dutch workers from other parts of Limburg and the Netherlands.69

In the early 1950s, foreign labourers in the Aachen mines were mainly German

speaking Aussiedler and other refugees from Eastern Europe. The first Italians arrived only in

1956 (based on a recruitment agreement of the FRG with Italy); thereafter followed (also

based on bilateral agreements) workers from Yougoslavia (1957-1961), Spain (1960), Greece

(1963), Turkey (1963 and 1964), and Morocco (1962-1965). A rather special group in Aachen

was formed by South-Coreans, who came under the terms of a development programme.

65

Delbroek, Op zoek naar koolputters, pp. 94-95; Roels, Buitenlandse arbeiders in de Luikse steenkolenmijnen,

pp. 115-116. 66

Cf. Simone A.W. Goedings, Labour market developments, national migration policies and the integration of

Western Europe, 1948-1968, in: René Leboutte (ed.), Migrations et migrants dans une perspective historique.

Permanences et innovations, Brussel 2000, pp. 311-329. See also: idem, Labor migration in an integrating

Europe : national migration policies and the free movement of workers 1950-1968, Den Haag 2005. 67

Rudy Damiani, Les Italiens: une immigration d’appoint, in: Cégarra e.a., Tous gueules noires, pp. 85-109 ; A.

Morelli, L’appel à la main d’œuvre italienne pour les charbonnages et sa prise en charge à son arrivée en

Belgique dans l’immédiat après-guerre, in: Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis XIX, 1988, pp. 83-

130. 68

Delbroek, Op zoek naar koolputters, pp. 96-99. 69

Langeweg, Bekende buren en verre vreemden, pp. 70-72.

15

Kristin Klank calculated percentages of foreign workers in several Aachen mines: around

1965 they varied between 15.6 and 19 percent, so much lower than in Belgium.70

Run-down and closing: migrants bringing up the rear

The coal crisis of 1957/58 introduced a difficult period, resulting in the closure of mines and

the end of coal mining from the 1960s/70s. The Netherlands were early in this respect: the

Dutch mines were closed between 1966 and 1974. In this closing phase the flight from the

mines of local, especially young miners, obliged companies to attract new groups of ‘guest

workers’, mainly from Morocco.71

Just like the Poles in the Ruhr area and other European

basins, and the Italians in the Saar-Lor-Lux region, national borders did not hamper the

mobility of Moroccan miners. The first Moroccan miners in the Netherlands arrived

spontaneously from mines in Northern France, where a tradition of Moroccan and other

Maghreb labour migration had existed from the period between the World Wars;72

later they

were also recruited on a systematic basis in Morocco itself. The same happened in the Belgian

and German mines.73

There, also Turkish miners were employed, more so than in the

Netherlands. In spite of the diminishing employment opportunities, mining companies were

unable to hold a local workforce.74

In the Belgian Limburg basin the proportion of foreign

underground workers increased to about half. In the Netherlands the situation was not so

different, be it that the number of migrants remained much lower than in Belgium. In the

rundown phase few young Limburgers were prepared to go down the mine to work until

closure. Therefore, even in the 1970s - the last mine closing in 1974 - new groups of

Moroccans had to be called in. Langeweg calculated the proportion of foreign migrants in

these years at 25 to 28 percent.75

In Aachen the situation developed in an analogous way.

Between 1958 and 1969 miners negatively assessed future opportunities in coal mining, and,

fearing redundancies, started to look for employment outside the mines. Migrants had to be

called in to compensate for shortages of local workers. Their share in the labour force in

Aachen mining rose from 6.4 percent in 1959 to 21.6 percent in 1966. After the recession of

1967 it decreased again, but in 1969 they were still 15 percent of all workers.76

The

70

Klank, Secondary labour force or permanent staff?, pp. 148-152. 71

Tanja Cranssen, Marokkaanse mijnwerkers in Limburg, 1963-1975, in: Studies over de sociaal-economische

geschiedenis van Limburg / Jaarboek van het Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg XLVIII, 2003, pp. 121-

148. According to Leboutte, Vie et mort des bassins industriels, p. 503 this was a general European problem: ‘…

les charbonnages trouvent de moins en moins de candidats ‘nationaux’ et doivent se tourner vers l’Italie et

l’Espagne (1945-1960), puis vers le Maghreb et la Turquie après 1960’. 72

Marie Cégarra, Récession et immigration: les mineurs marocains, in: Tous gueules noires, pp. 111-135; a

somewhat adapted version in : Jean-François Eck, Peter Friedemann, Karl Lauschke (eds.), La reconversion des

bassins charbonniers. Une comparaison interrégionale entre la Ruhr et le Nord/Pas-de-Calais [Revue du Nord.

Hors série. Collection Histoire 21], Lille 2006, pp. 157-164); see also: idem, La mémoire confisquée. Les

mineurs marocains dans le Nord de la France,Lille 1999. In the steelindustry in Longwy we see a comparable

phenomenon: Noiriel, Longwy, p. 345: ‘Après 1968 (alors que le nombre total des salariés de la sidérurgie locale

est en régression), une nouvelle vague d’immigrants fait son apparition, composée de Portugais, d’Espagnols et

surtout de Marocains’ ; see also pp. 371-373. 73

Cf. Karim Azzouzi, Les Marocains dans l’industrie charbonnière belge, in : Brood en Rozen. Tijdschrift voor

de geschiedenis van sociale bewegingen 2004/4, pp. 35-53; Anne Frennet-De Keyser, La convention belgo-

marocaine du 17 février 1964 relative à l’occupation de travailleurs marocains en Belgique, in: Courrier

hebdomadaire CRISP 1803, 2003, pp. 5-45. 74

M. Bruwier, Que sont devenu les mineurs des charbonnages belges? Une première approche: problématique et

méthodologie, in: Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis XIX, 1988, pp. 173-203. 75

Langeweg, Bekende buren en verre vreemden, p. 77. 76

H.-D. Indetzki, Regionaal-economische gevolgen van het stilleggen en inkrimpen van steenkolenmijnen en

van de in het Bezirk Aken getroffen maatregelen tot herstructurering [Commissie van de Europese

Gemeenschappen, geschiften over industriële omschaleing nr. 20], Brussel 1972, pp. 21 and 67 (table 11). See

also: René Leboutte, Dossier Pédagogique: La problématique des bassins industriels en Europe, in: Espace,

Populations, Sociétés, 2001/3, pp. 399-419, cit. 417-418 for a comparable phenomenon in the Ruhr.

16

development of the Liège (and Walloon) mining labour force after World War II can also be

interpreted in this way, but on a very large scale. Continuous decline in the 1950s (after a

short revival during the bataille the charbon just after World War II) intensified the flight of

autochthonous miners, resulting in a sharp rise in the number of foreign workers. .

Conclusion

Migration regimes in coal mining in today’s Euregio Meuse-Rhine can be related to phases of

the development of exploitation, but this qualitative relation could work out quite differently

in numbers. Quantitative differences had to do with the spatial aspects of the development of

Euregional mining labour markets mentioned earlier: border-crossing, regionalisation, and

internationalisation on a national basis.

Border-crossing as a way to equalise labour markets had been important in the years

before the First World War. Before 1914 there had been an extensive movement from the

eastern part of South Limburg in the Netherlands to the mines in Aachen and the Ruhr area at

the one hand, and from Belgian Limburg to the Liège basin on the other hand. In this period it

is possible to speak of integrated cross-border labour markets for these two border regions.

The strong Dutch-German connection is also apparent in the fact that the Christian Miners

Union in Limburg was part of the German interconfessional miners union.77

However, there

was no mutual connection whatsoever between these two cross (language) border labour

markets.

In the 1920s mobility across the Dutch-German border turned around: a sizable

movement developed from Aachen to the Dutch mines because of hyper-inflation in

Germany. The changing rate of exchange stimulated cross-border commuting from Germany.

After 1930 cross-border labour diminished sharply because of the depression and the anti-

foreigners policies of the mining companies and the Dutch government. Commuting would

never be resumed on the same scale. Only in certain specific moments discrepancies in wages

and employment opportunities led to border-crossing during a restricted period. In 1939

several hundreds of Limburgers went to work in the nearby Aachen mines, attracted by

favourable labour market conditions because of German war preparations. In 1956 and 1957

this happened again, when the so called Bergmannsprämie (a bonus for miners) in Germany

enlarged the already existing gap between Dutch and German wages. This cross-border labour

market connection had unexpected consequences: in April 1957 the Catholic Miners Union in

Limburg organised a sit down strike, demanding a pay rise mainly to prevent good Catholic

miners leaving for Germany to be replaced by other, non-Catholic Dutchmen, or foreign

workers.78

Commuting of Dutch workers to the Belgian Limburg Eisden mine, close to the

border, came to a halt in 1926, and the inner-Belgian connection across the language border

between Belgian Limburg and Liège stopped around 1930, as since the 1920s Flemish

commuters increasingly went to the Belgian Limburg mines. Thereafter, labour shortages in

both Belgian basins became so pressing, that it made no sense to try to recruit new workers in

neighbouring regions in Belgium itself. Liège did try to tap the supply of miners in the

bordering Dutch (and German) regions in the 1940s and 50s, and because of extreme wage

77

Kreukels, Mijnarbeid, pp. 157-158, 178, 198. 78

Ad Knotter, Grenzen aan de loonpolitiek. De langzaam-aan-actie van de Nederlandse Katholieke Mijnwerkers

Bond (1957) tussen nationale integratie, grensligging en katholiek regionalisme, in: Studies over de sociaal-

economische geschiedenis van Limburg / Jaarboek van het Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg LIII, 2008,

pp. 117-157.

17

differences with some success,79

but, just as the incidental increases in commuting to

Germany, this is more an indication of market discrepancies than of integration of cross-

border labour markets.

In the 1930s cross-border mobility, both from Germany to the Netherlands and from

Belgian Limburg to Liège, was replaced by a conscious policy of regionalisation of mining

labour markets in Dutch and in Belgian Limburg, that was most successful in the Netherlands.

In this respect there is a striking difference with the Liège basin (although this was just some

fifty kilometres away), as a comparison by Leen Roels and Serge Langweg shows.80

In

Limburg, local supply, at least the potential labour force, was abundant because of natural

population increase. By means of a sophisticated strategy of training and binding of young

miners to the branch, Dutch mining companies succeeded in attracting this potential regional

supply of young males to the mines. The construction of a supposedly Limburg mining

tradition and culture in the 1950s was also helpful in this respect.81

In contrast to Liège,

fertility in Limburg was high, and there were hardly any alternative employment opportunities

(like the steel industry in Liège). In the 1950s and 1960s the willingness of the Liège

population to work in the mines reached an all time low. The number of foreign migrants in

the mines rose to more than 60 percent of the work force. Attempts to attract miners from

Germany and the Netherlands had only limited success. The extreme postwar situation in the

Liège labour market makes clear that the system of cross-border labour exchange, as it had

functioned before World War I and to a lesser extent in the 1920s, had come to an end.

Because of the general scarcity of labour in the 1950s and 1960s it could not relieve specific

regional shortages anymore. The solution was found in an extension of international

recruitment with the help of national recruitment arrangements, especially with the

Mediterranean countries. This kind of internationalisation on a national basis was necessary

because the international cross-border labour markets in the Euregio - at least for mining - had

disappeared.

The contrasting development of foreign labour in each region demonstrates that

regional mining labour markets in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine functioned largely on their own,

without much mutual contact. Only in rather specific situations cross-border labour exchange

between specific regions could connect supply and demand, but in a very uneven way. Those

border crossings were no signs of market integration, but precisely a consequence of extreme

discrepancies that emerged at certain moments in market and wage relations between the

various regions, for instance because of changes in currency values, or other political

decisions on a national level, like the Bergmannsprämie in Germany in 1956, which had an

instant effect on wage differentials between neighbouring countries. We can conclude that

national differences and territorial borders were extremely important in these border areas.

According to the typology of Martinez (see above) this border area can be considered

interdependent, and not integrated.

Decisive were structural differences between regional labour markets. These were

conditioned by the availability of a regional labour supply and the extent to which this could

be mobilised for mining. This, in its turn, was dependent on demographic developments, the

availability and attraction of alternative employment opportunities in the region, the relative

79

W. Rutten, Alsof de taalgrens niet bestond. Limburgse koempels in de Luikse kolenmijnen na de Tweede

Wereldorlog, in: Het Land van Herle. Historisch Tijdschrift voor oostelijk Zuid-Limburg 59, 2009, pp. 114-124. 80

Serge Langeweg, Leen Roels, Ad Knotter, Regional labour markets and international labour migration

twentieth-century Europe: the cases of coal mining in Liège (B) and Limburg (NL) compared, in:

Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen 40, 2008, pp. 101-120. 81

Jos Perry, Van vader op zoon, in: Wiel Kusters, Jos Perry, Versteende wouden. Mijnen en mijnwerkers in

woord en beeld, Amsterdam 1999, pp. 83-96; idem, Limburg kolenland. Een collage van oud en nieuw, in:

Studies over de sociaal-economische geschiedenis van Limburg / Jaarboek van het Sociaal Historisch Centrum

voor Limburg XLV, 2000, pp. 65-78.

18

openness of a region, and recruitment policies of the mining companies. I already mentioned

the extreme contrasts between the situations in the Dutch and the Liège coalfields: since the

1930s the Dutch mining companies could profit from a relatively closed regional and more or

less continuous supply of labour because of high fertility and a favourable age structure. This

supply had in fact few other opportunities in Limburg than to go to the mines. For a long time

(until the closing period) migrants were needed here as additional work force only. In Liège,

the situation was completely opposite: birth control was much more common here and

influenced fertility from the end of the nineteenth century. This was only one of the reasons

for regional supply to stagnate. During the industrial boom in the 1950s and 1960s supply

could also easily shift towards the Liège steel and metal industries, which had a higher status

than mining. These differences resulted in a much bigger share of foreign labour in the Liège

mines (see graph 1). Migration became a structural phenomenon. Belgian Limburg (the

Campine area) and - not in the graph - Aachen were somewhere in between the two extreme

positions of Liège and the Netherlands.

.

Source: Serge Langeweg, Leen Roels, Buitenlandse arbeiders in de steenkolenmijnen van Luik en Nederlands-

Limburg in de twintigste eeuw: een vergelijking, in: Studies over de sociaal-economische geschiedenis van

Limburg / Jaarboek van het Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg LIII, 2008, pp. 89-115, graph 3.

Because of the large differences between mining areas labour market positions of

migrants can not unambiguously be explained by the existence of a dual labour market.

Migrants were considered additional work force everywhere, and often acted as a buffer in the

labour market, but in many cases lack of experience of the local population, or unwillingness

to go to the mines, caused migration to become a structural element in labour supply.

Developments in Liège, as described above, are a striking example. The old-fashioned mines

in Liège and the backward labour conditions explain the unpopularity with the local

population, and suggest that the industry as whole can be considered ‘secondary’. But even

here the rhythm of arrival and depart of migrants clearly followed the cycle of production, as

Leen Roels showed.82

The need to recruit migrants for the Belgian Limburg mines was less urgent than in

Liège and other Walloon basins.83

There were apparently less shortages of regional supply,

82

Roels, Buitenlandse arbeiders in de Luikse steenkolenmijnen, p. 118. 83

Delbroek, Op zoek naar koolputters, pp. 98-100.

Graph 1. Percentages of foreign miners in the Dutch, Campine and Liège mines, 1905-1992

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1905 1909 1913 1917 1921 1925 1929 1933 1937 1941 1945 1949 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1973 1977 1981 1985 1989

Netherlands Liège Campine area

19

perhaps for the same reasons as in the Netherlands since the 1930s: a lack of alternative

employment and large families, that were ready to send their sons to the mines. Both in the

Netherlands and Belgian Limburg regional supply could not meet demand completely,

however, so a new demand for foreign labour emerged, especially in boom periods (1955-

1957 and 1961-1965). The big turnover makes clear that in these cases migrants were

considered secondary workforce, and that in this period there was a dual labour market in the

Limburg mines. While migrants were recruited as skilled pioneers until the 1920s, after the

consolidation of regional supply in the 1930s, the labour market position of (unskilled)

migrants changed to an additional workforce, recruited and discarded according to

conjuncture needs.

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