Journal of Interdisciplinary History, LIII:2 (Autumn, 2022), 225–265.

Marco H. D. van Leeuwen and Ineke Maas

Social Mobility through Migration to the Colonies:
The Case of Algeria Many Europeans left their homeland
during the age of mass migration to try their luck in the Americas
or in the colonies. Most of them intended to improve their eco-
nomic and social position, especially those who recently migrated
to the United States and Europe. But how successful were
migrants, and which enjoyed the greatest success? They often
entered the labor market in the country of destination at relatively
low-status positions. During their lifetime, many indeed improved
their social status, paving the way for the generations that followed
them to do so as well.

European migrants to the colonies differed from recent
migrants. They entered the labor market not at the bottom but
at the higher echelons of society; the lowest positions tended to
be ﬁlled by the native population or, although not the case in
Algeria, by unfree laborers from other countries. Since these colo-
nial migrants may also have originated from higher classes than the
average recent migrant, we cannot be sure whether migration
enabled them to perform better than their parents did. Since the

Marco H. D. van Leeuwen is Professor of Sociology, University of Utrecht. He is the author
of Mutual Insurance 1550–2015—from Guild Welfare and Friendly Societies to Contemporary Micro-
Insurers (New York, 2016); with Ineke Maas, Danièle Rébaudo, and Jean-Pierre Pélissier,
“Social Mobility in France 1720–1986: Effects of Wars, Revolution and Economic Change,”
Journal of Social History, XLIX (2016), 585–616.

Ineke Maas is Professor of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and University of
Utrecht. She is the author of, with Maaike Hornstra, “Does the Impact of the Family Increase
or Decrease over the Life Course? Sibling Similarities in Occupational Status across Different
Career Points,” Research in Social Stratiﬁcation and Mobility, LXXV (2021), available at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2021.100643; with Sanne Boschman, J. Cok Vrooman, and Marcus H.
Kristiansen, “From Social Assistance to Self-Sufﬁciency: Low Income Work as a Stepping-
stone,” European Sociological Review, XXXVII (2021), 766–782.

The authors thank Jean-Pierre Pélissier and Daniele Rébaudo for their assistance. They
also thank Alessandra Curto, Willemijn Dortant, Sophie Douven, Victoire Jacquet, and
Andreu Roses for helping to collect data and Ulbe Bosma for co-supervising interns at the
International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and kindly commenting on an earlier
version of this article. They are also grateful to Chris Gordon for his editing skills, and to the
referees for their excellent suggestions.

© 2022 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary
History. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
license. https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01833

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descendants of colonial migrants, unlike the descendants of many
recent migrants, did not start at the bottom of society either, they
were also less likely to have fared better than their parents; they
may not even have been able to retain their parents’ relatively pri-
vileged positions. Moreover, whereas recent migrants often do
better in their country of destination than they would have done
had they not migrated, the same is not necessarily true for Euro-
pean migrants to the colonies, who generally were not moving
from a less-developed to a more-developed country.

This study draws inspiration from recent work in the sociol-
ogy of migration by Güveli et al. who compared the status of
Turkish men who migrated to Europe, as well as that of their chil-
dren and grandchildren, with that of Turkish men who did not
migrate. Their research design resembles ours, though the context
is different. Güveli et al. study low-skilled Turkish people who
relocate to countries where the indigenous inhabitants speak a dif-
ferent language and have a different dominant religion. Our study
deals with European migrants, predominantly French, moving to a
French colony. For those of French origin, the ofﬁcial language
and dominant religion in the colonial society were the same as
those in their motherland. We address central questions regarding
both present-day and historical migration: Were colonial migrants
more successful than non-migrants, both citizens resident in the
colony of destination (Algeria) and those who stayed behind
(in France)?1

We answer our research questions using data from French
civil marriage registers for both mainland France and the Algerian
towns of Algiers, Bône, Constantine, and Oran, comparing the
periods 1870–1872 and 1910–1912, when Algeria was ofﬁcially
neither a colony nor a “protectorate” but three départements of
France. Algeria at the time, however, was a de facto colony, as
indicated by both the French conquest and the failed Algerian
war of independence and as signaled by the exclusion of the Muslim
population from the registers. Citizens of European descent in
Algeria’s départements lived under the same vital registration system
as did inhabitants of mainland France. This registration system

1 Ayse Güveli et al., Intergenerational Consequences of Migration (London, 2016). See also
Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder, What Is Migration History? (New York, 2009); Khalid
Koser, International Migration: A Very Short History (New York, 2007).

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 227

affords us the opportunity to consider anew the question of whether
colonial migration pays dividends. The data permit a comparison of
those who stayed in France with those who migrated to Algeria
from France and other countries, as well as a further comparison
of those migrants with Christians and Jews born on Algerian soil.
We look only at men, since the majority of women in our data
had no registered occupation from which we could derive a histor-
ical measure of social status (see below).2

To derive testable hypotheses from the data about both the
sending French population and the out-migrants, we survey two
distinct strands of scholarship, that of sociologists of migration and
that of economic historians. We compare the average occupational
status of men born in France and other European countries who
immigrated to Algeria with the average occupational status of two
population groups—(1) French citizens born in Algeria (mostly
second-generation French immigrants and non-Muslim Algerians
who had been granted French citizenship) and (2) French citizens
born in mainland France who remained there.

The approach herein—including the categorization of
migrants, the theories, and hypotheses derived from the economic
and sociological literature about migration, and the research
design—contributes to methodological and substantive issues in
literatures that are not yet well connected. These general theories
and methods can contribute to a better understanding of historical
migration patterns. Speciﬁc historical case studies, like this one
about French settler history in Algeria, can also illuminate or
reﬁne more general theories and the historiography of colonial
societies. Our article seeks to advance dialogue between historical
and contemporary studies about intergenerational social mobility,
migration, and the formation and ﬂux of colonial societies. It also

2 The focus on men is a broad research tradition in sociology and history. For the impor-
tance of occupations in Algeria, we follow David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism
in Bône, 1870–1920 (New York, 1990), 165: “The work a person performs, his or her occu-
pation, is arguably the single best indicator of a person’s place in society. Colonial society is
typiﬁed both by a high degree of vertical occupational stratiﬁcation and by a large measure of
functional occupational specialization. To assume that Italian ﬁshermen, Jewish jewellers,
Maltese milkmen, Berber dockers, Arab peddlers, and French colonial ofﬁcials inhabited
one and the same job universe is to assume they had more in common than they actually
did, but to make in-depth comparisons between ethnic groups offers nonetheless telling
insights into the social structure of colonial Bône.”

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| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

injects an interesting Francophone case into streams of literature
dominated by the histories of English-speaking settlers.3

COLONIAL ALGERIA The major Algerian cities studied herein are
situated in Algeria’s littoral zone, a fertile strip of land—not unlike
that of the Mediterranean shores of France, Spain, and Italy—
stretching from Tunisia in the east to Morocco in the west. This
region had been a powerhouse of grain cultivation since antiquity.
Most of the population was comprised of Arabs and Berbers (Arabs
or indigènes in French), with a small native Jewish community and
a small and sundry mix of Europeans of various Mediterranean
nationalities. The French remained a minority among the Euro-
peans until the late nineteenth century, and the Europeans were
much in the minority among the population.4

In 1830, the French attacked and captured Algiers, expelling its
ruler (the dey) and thus ending the Ottoman era. At ﬁrst, the French
tried to populate the country by convict labor, but virtually all the
French convicts left Algeria as soon as their prison term had ended.
Colonization started with the inﬂux of migrants from Paris and other
French cities, and of poor migrants from nearby European states,
notably overpopulated Malta. According to Sessions, colonial pro-
motion booklets published by settlement agencies stated, “Without
claiming that Algiers is the promised land, we can guarantee that
with a little [ﬁnancial] advance, intelligence, and perseverance, any
hard-working man will be able to create an easy life for himself in the
colony.” Many beautifully illustrated publications imprinted this
rosy image on the inner eye of potential French migrants.5

See, for example, Fiona Barclay, Charlotte A. Chopin, and Martin Evans, “Introduction:
3
Settler Colonialism and French Algeria,” Settler Colonial Studies, VIII (a special issue about
French Algeria) (2018), 115–131.
4 Kamel Kateb, Européens, “Indigènes” et Juifs en Algérie (1830–1962): Représentation et réalités
des populations (Paris, 2001).
5 Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 65–66; Stacey Renee Davis, “Turning French Convicts
into Colonists: The Second Empire’s Political Prisoners in Algeria, 1852–1858,” French Colo-
nial History, II (2002), 93–113; Marc Donato, L’émigration des Maltais en Algérie au XIXème siècle
(Montpellier, 1985); Jean-Maurice di Costanzo, Allemands et Suisses en Algérie 1830–1918 (Nice,
2003); Gérard Crespo, Les Italiens en Algérie, 1830–1960: Histoire et sociologie d’une migration
(Nice, 1994); idem and Jean Jacques Jordi, Les Espagnols dans l’Algérois, 1830–1914: Histoire d’une
migration ( Versailles, 1991); Julia Clancy-Smith, “Exoticism, Erasures, and Absence: The Peo-
pling of Algiers, 1830–1900,” in Zeynep Çelik, Clancy-Smith, and Frances Terpak (eds.), The
Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City through Text and Image (Los Angeles, 2009), 19–61; Jennifer
E. Sessions, By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (Ithaca, 2011), 220.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 229

Companies emerged in France to recruit colonial emigrants.
In the mid-1830s, the French government sponsored the free pas-
sage of migrants from certain provinces to Algeria. Although local
French governments initially preferred to send paupers, they soon
began accepting only desirable emigrants on board subsidized
ships. Sessions writes that as early as 1834, “An administrative net-
work… stretched from new colonial settlements through Algiers
and Paris into the smallest villages of rural France.” Algerian pol-
icymakers preferred wealthy settlers, but the Parisian authorities
reminded them that well-off men were unlikely to migrate. Many
relatively poor migrants ended up in poverty in Algeria, too, and
had to be repatriated.6

By the 1840s, the migration system was working smoothly;
the permis d’embarquement issued in Paris were carefully tailored
to the quality and quantity of demand in Algeria. Of the c.
1,200 adult, able-bodied men without families (the target group)
with permits in 1840, most went to Algiers (c. 700), Philippeville
(200), Oran (100), or Bône (100). Almost all of them (c. 1,000)
were manual laborers, once called manoeuvres. These navvies were
in great demand for building and road construction. Despite the
inﬂux of migrants, large landowners still desperately needed labor.
The land made available to them had belonged to Turkish beylik
or Islamic charities, or they were expropriated common lands
thought to be waste. Re-assessed individual property rights usually
devolved to Europeans rather than native Algerians.

The registers kept by the Directorate of Algerian Affairs disclose
the provenance of 20,000 persons granted free passage between 1841
and 1845, most of whom were urban workers, especially from
Paris, and unmarried men from the Rhineland. The German stream

Sessions, By Sword and Plow, 267. See also Gérard Noiriel, “Surveiller les déplacements ou
6
identiﬁer les personnes? Contribution à l’histoire du passeport en France de la Ie à la IIIe
République,” Genèses, XXX (1998), 77–100; Sessions, “Le paradoxe des émigrants indésirables
pendant la monarchie de Juillet, ou les origines de l’émigration assistée vers l’Algérie,” Revue
Histoire du XIXe siècle, XLI (2010), 63–80; Emile Temine, “La migration européenne en
Algérie aux XIXe siècle: Migration organisée ou migration tolérée,” Revue de l’Occident musul-
man et de la Méditerranée, XLIII (1987), 31–45; Hugo Vermeren, “Les migrations françaises et
européennes vers l’Algérie au début de la Troisième République: Peupler avec des Français,
construire avec des étrangers,” in Abderrahmane Bouchene et al. (eds.), Histoire de l’Algérie à la
période coloniale (1830–1962) (Paris, 2012), 287–295; J. Bautista Vilar, Los Españoles en la Argelia
francesa: 1830–1914 (Murcia, 1989); Andrea L. Smith, Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe:
Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France (Ithaca, 2006).

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230
dwindled in size before growing signiﬁcantly after Germany seized
the Rhineland in 1870. Many men who voluntarily relocated from
Paris to Algeria in 1848 lived in poor parts of the city and made their
living as woodworkers or clothiers. Katan suggests that they left to
escape poverty, lured by colonial propaganda.7

The 1848 French Constitution declared Algeria to be an inte-
gral part of France, under French law and French administration,
with arrondissements and municipalities (communes). Most laborers
working on the land and in the mines, docks, and factories were
economically and politically marginalized indigenous Arabs and
Berbers. After a failed rebellion, Algeria became, in the words of
Ageron, “‘a small French Republic’ in which only the interests
of the French settlers counted. The voter’s card became the title
of nobility in this feudal system.” The growing number of Jeunes
Algériens, Muslim natives in Algeria who had received French-style
education, pushed for citizenship after 1870 but to no avail.8

Many Europeans, preferably Frenchmen, were needed to popu-
late Algeria—speciﬁcally, to administer the colony; to serve in the
army; to introduce and supervise new agricultural activities; and to
build and man the post ofﬁces, railways, and other service sectors.
Kateb notes that this demand was fueled by mortality rates that were
higher than those in mainland France. The colonial government there-
fore offered free land in rural areas on condition of residence. The ﬁrst
to receive this offer were Frenchmen driven from Alsace-Lorraine after
its German annexation during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/1, but
few of them were interested. The subsequent colonial policy targeting
peasants from the southeast of France, as well as the French living in
Algerian cities, however, was successful; within ten years, the govern-
ment had allotted 347,000 hectares to them and created 197 settler
villages with 30,000 inhabitants.9

Sessions, By Sword and Plow, 283, 296, 300; Yvette Katan, “Les Colons de 1848 en Algérie:

7
mythes et réalités,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, XXXI (1984), 177–202.
8 As late as 1923, among the c. 1,500 workers in the Djebel Kouif mines, 60% were Alger-
ians, 20% convicts, 9% Italian, and 7% French. Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 101; Charles
Robert Ageron, Modern Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present (London, 1991), 53.
9 Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine: 1830–1970 (Paris, 1974); Laura Maravall, “Factor
Endowments on the ‘Frontier’: Algerian Settler Agriculture at the Beginning of the 1900s,”
Economic History Review, LXXIII (2020), 758–784; Chopin, “Embodying ‘The New White
Race’: Colonial Doctors and Settler Society in Algeria, 1878–1911,” Social History of Medicine,
XXIX (2016), 1–20; Boussad Aïche, “Metal Construction in Algiers: The Durafour Factory,”
Journal of North African Studies, XXV (2020), 797–809; Kateb, Européens, “Indigènes” et Juifs en
Algérie (1830–1962); Ageron, Modern Algeria, 57–63.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 231

We selected the four Algerian cities in our study—Bône,
Constantine, Algiers (Alger), and Oran (Figure 1)—to cover a
broad stretch of the littoral zone and thus a diversity of colonial
life, including settlers from diverse European countries. Our
period begins in 1870, the start of French colonial society’s heyday,
with ethnic groups that were still highly distinct. Apart from the
Berbers and the Arabs, who were not included in the civil-
registration records, the population included Jews (close in status
to the Arabs) and Frenchmen (the top of the colonial social hier-
archy), followed by the Spanish, the Italians, the Maltese, and a
host of other smaller groups of European descent. This situation,
sketched by Prochaska, was not unlike that in Morocco, as related

Fig. 1 Algeria under French Rule, 1830–1956

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SOURCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:French_Algeria_evolution_1830-1962_map-fr.svg.

232

| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

by Abu-Lughod. By the early twentieth century, a fully formed
settler culture encompassing all Europeans, the so-called pieds-
noirs, had emerged. According to Prochaska, with reference to
Baroli’s work, “The formation of a colonial society recognizably
Algerian occurred between 1890 and 1914. It included all the
Europeans—French, Italian, Spanish, Maltese—and excluded Jews
as well as Muslim Algerians. Contemporary observers perceived a
melting-pot effect, a fusion of the European ethnic groups which
resulted in a new race.” At this time, the settlers began to refer to
themselves as Algériens (as opposed to indigènes) and to express
themselves in an Algerian dialect, pataouète, with words borrowed
from Arabic, Spanish, Italian, and the patois of southern France.10

IS MIGRATION BENEFICIAL TO MIGRANTS? Except in cases of war
and pogrom, people generally migrate only to marry or to ame-
liorate their economic situation. Since migrating involves substan-
tial ﬁnancial and social costs, the gains also need to be substantial,
more so than when just moving to the next town. Hence, the ﬁrst
question to address in this study is, “Do migrants attain a better
status than comparable residents who remain in their country of
origin or who move within that country?”11

Many of the sociological studies that compare the status of
newly arrived migrants with that of residents in the country of
destination often provide evidence of an “ethnic penalty” for

10 Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 153; Janet Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid in
Morocco (Princeton, 1981), 172–173; Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 206, with reference
to Marx Baroli, La vie quotidienne des Français en Algérie 1830–1914 (Paris, 1967), 173–176,
213. The Algerian settlers’ press at the turn of the century sought to unify the variety of Euro-
pean settlers under the term Latin, which excluded Algerian Muslims and Jews: “By using
their ‘Latin’ identity to underline, at once, their similarity to and their difference from the
French of the Metropole, settlers sought to defend their cultural and administrative autonomy
without ultimately renouncing French political authority and the protection it afforded them
as a demographic minority.” See Chopin, “Pages without Borders: Global Networks and the
Settler Press in Algeria, 1881–1914,” Settler Colonial Studies, VIII (2018), 154. See also Dónal
Hassett, “Proud Colons, Proud Frenchmen: Settler Colonialism and the Extreme Right In
Interwar Algeria,” ibid., 195–212, which focuses on the writer Louis Bertrand arguing that
the settlers constituted a new “Latin race.” Maltese pied-noirs in France still speak pataouète
among themselves. See Smith, Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe, 31, 53.
11 Douglas S. Massey et al., “Theories of International Migration: A Review and
Appraisal,” Population and Development Review, XIX (1993), 431–466; Barry R. Chiswick,
Yew Liang Lee, and Paul W. Miller, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Immigrant Occupational
Mobility: A Test of the Immigrant Assimilation Hypothesis,” International Migration Review,
XXXIX (2005), 332–353; Güveli et al., Intergenerational Consequences of Migration.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 233
migration—having to work in a low-status occupation or in an
ethnic niche of the labor market, at least upon arrival and for a
period afterward. One explanation for the low status of migrants
is their disadvantage in language proﬁciency, education, the
cultural codes of the new country, social contacts, and the rich
knowledge needed to obtain higher-level employment. Even
migrants with a relatively good education in their country of
origin may fare worse than residents with fewer years of schooling;
the skills learned at school align most closely to the society of the
teachers. Nor are school diplomas from the sending country
always recognized in the country of destination. Something similar
might apply to the skills required to run a farm, which depend on
the type of crop cultivated and on soil and climate conditions.
Furthermore, migrants generally have less material support from
their parents; they certainly cannot inherit a farm or a shop as a
means of income. Migrant children might even have to send
support to family members at home rather than to receive any
themselves.12

Migrant groups might be excluded from occupations that res-
idents with no better level of social and human capital generally ﬁll
as a matter of course. In most societies, residents tend to prefer
their friends, family members, and acquaintances when faced with
a choice. Employers often react to the threat of a migrant taking
work away from residents even when that threat is ill-founded.
Discrimination thus becomes institutionalized in a segmented
labor market, in which residents occupy and control entry into
stable occupations of high status and high income, leaving only

12 For low-status occupations and ethnic niches, see Anthony F. Heath and Sin Yi Cheung
(eds.), Unequal Chances: Ethnic Minorities in Western Labour Markets (New York, 2007); Heath,
Catherine Rothon, and Elina Kilpi, “The Second Generation in Western Europe: Education,
Unemployment, and Occupational Attainment,” Annual Review of Sociology, XXXIV (2008),
211–235; for resources, Richard Alba and Victor Nee, “Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a
New Era of Immigration,” International Migration Review, XXXI (1997), 826–874; Güveli
et al., Intergenerational Consequences of Migration; Barbara S. Heisler, “The Sociology of Immi-
gration: From Assimilation to Segmented Assimilation, from the American Experience to the
Global Arena,” in Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Holliﬁeld (eds.), Migration Theory: Talking
Across Disciplines (London, 2008; orig. pub. 2000), 83–112; Koser, International Migration; for
cultural capital more generally, Paul Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in A. H. Halsey et al.
(eds.), Education: Culture, Economy, Society (New York, 1997), 46–58; James Coleman, “Social
Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology, XCIV (1988),
S95–S120; for school diplomas, for example, Frank van Tubergen, Immigrant Integration: A
Cross-National Study (New York, 2006).

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| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

less-desirable work outside this privileged core to less-favored eth-
nicities. Although the realities of human capital and social capital,
as well as discrimination, lead toward a general proposition that
migrants have lower social status than residents, the outcomes
can vary for different types of migrant, as is especially relevant
for this study.13

Discrimination theory maintains that certain groups of
migrants face more prejudice than others, depending, for example,
on the cultural distance between natives and migrants, the size of
the migrant group, or the threat level of natives in the labor mar-
ket. Consideration is hardly ever given to migrants undergoing
positive discrimination, but such could have been the case for
French migrants to the colony. Because they originated from
the same country as those with power in Algeria, French migrants
(if not migrants from other European countries) could well have
entered Algeria’s labor market with relatively good prospects.

Human- and social-capital theory predict a rosier situation for
second-generation migrants than for ﬁrst-generation migrants.
Although ﬁrst-generation migrants might lose social capital as they
abandon many of their old friends, family, and acquaintances in
their country of origin, assimilation theory views them as eventu-
ally improving their situation. Thus, the second generation of
migrants can expect to reap the rewards of this new social capital
and often to have better language proﬁciency than their parents,
especially if they enjoyed the beneﬁt of schooling in the destina-
tion country. If the gap between migrants and natives does not
narrow in the ﬁrst generation, it certainly stands to do so with each
successive generation—all the more so in colonial Algeria where
patronage and clientelism was rife.14

13 Michael J. Piore, “The Dual Labor Market: Theory and Implications,” in Samuel H.
Beer and Richard E. Barringer (eds.), The State and the Poor (Cambridge, Mass., 1970),
55–59; Edna Bonacich, “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labour Market,” Amer-
ican Sociological Review, XXXVII (1972), 547–559; Alejandro Portes and Robert D. Manning,
“The Immigrant Enclave: Theory and Empirical Examples,” in Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel
(eds.), Competitive Ethnic Relations (Orlando, 1986), 47–68; van Tubergen, Immigrant Integration,
25–32; Heisler, “Sociology of Immigration,” 83–112.
14 The need for some citizens to be part of a patronage network in the colony to sustain
their careers may have increased as settlers improved their autonomy. This growth in patron-
age might seem to have given Algerian born citizens an advantage, since they were born into
these networks. Jérome Bertagna, mayor of Bône from 1888 to 1902, may well have been the
Algerian patron incarnate. His father migrated in the 1830s from Nice to Algiers where he
became a baker and married. Jérome moved with his family to Bône where he made a fortune

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 235

Because our data do not allow us to distinguish the second
generation, we cannot test this notion of improving circumstances
directly. We can, however, make a distinction between those
who migrated as adults, the ﬁrst generation of migrants, and those
who migrated as children, often termed the 1.5 generation.
Human- and social-capital theory predicts the social status of the
1.5 generation to be higher than that of the ﬁrst generation.
Alexander and Ward’s test of this notion on immigrants from
Europe to the United States, with data about arrivals linked to the
1940 U.S. census, ﬁnds that occupational outcomes depended
much on age at arrival—the earlier, the better. The children in
the 1.5 generation fared worse than natives with regard to wage
and education, especially those from low-income countries with
poor educational systems.15

selling victuals to the French army, eventually becoming mayor. Together with his brother he
was the subject of twenty-eight criminal investigations by French authorities. While mayor,
he was entangled in many schemes involving fake invoices; illegitimate tenders to clients for
railways, sewers, harbor construction, and illegal taxes from brothels owners; and illegal pri-
vate proﬁts from selling a phosphate concession to an English company—all resulting in a
stream of municipal funds for his clientele and kickback payments to him. Contractors in
Bône might have had little choice but to engage in this racketeering. As his brother explained
in 1898, “I hold much authority over ﬁshermen, seamen, dockworker; I live among them; I
speak their language; I employ many of them. And it is the same for some farmers. When they
need something, they come to see me; I lend money to some, to others horses, cattle, agri-
cultural tools. They are grateful to me. When an election takes place, they always come to me
to ask advice, and tell me they will vote for my candidate.” See Vermeren, Les italiens à Bône,
321 (authors’ translation).
15 Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life (New York, 1964); Barry R. Chiswick,
“The Effect of Americanization on the Earnings of Foreign-Born Men,” Journal of Political
Economy, LXXXVI (1978), 897–921; Chiswick, “The Economic Progress of Immigrants:
Some Apparently Universal Patterns,” in John W. Fellner (ed.), Contemporary Economic Prob-
lems ( Washington, D.C., 1979), 357–399; Alba and Nee, “Rethinking Assimilation Theory”;
Heisler, “Sociology of Immigration”; Rohan Alexander and Zachary Ward, “Age at Arrival
and Assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration,” Journal of Economic History, LXXVIII
(2018), 904–937. For European immigrants, Argentina was the second-largest country of des-
tination during the Age of Mass Migration. In “The (South) American Dream: Mobility and
Economic Outcomes of First- and Second-Generation Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century
Argentina,” Journal of Economic History, LXXVII (2017), 971–1006, Santiago Pérez linked pas-
sage lists of arrivals to Buenos Aires with Argentinian censuses and followed native-born
Argentinians in and across the 1869 and 1895 censuses, ﬁnding that immigrants on arrival
had a slightly lower status than natives, but those from most of the major sending countries
(Italy, Spain, and France) soon outperformed natives. Their sons outperformed the sons of
natives in terms of occupational status, literacy, and ownership of property. European migrants
to Argentina fared better than those to the United States.

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| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

This argument relies on the assumption of a language gap
between the country of origin and the country of destination that
has to be bridged. Although this gap is evident in many contem-
porary migrations, and many historical ones, the motherland and
the colonial society in migration studies usually share the same
ofﬁcial language. Most of Algeria’s inhabitants had Arabic or
Tamazight (Berber) as their ﬁrst language, but a considerable num-
ber of them spoke some French, since French was the ofﬁcial
administrative language and thus an asset. Again, we might expect
a more propitious situation for migrants from the motherland to
the colony than for migrants from countries speaking another
mother tongue. Hence, in our case, being born in France was
an advantage, whereas being born elsewhere, notably in Italy,
and speaking another language was a disadvantage. This difference
would have narrowed in the second generation.

In addition to the mostly sociological literature surveyed
above, a few important studies in economics and socioeconomic
history trace immigrants at the individual level and compare them
to stayers and to the host population during the Age of Mass Migra-
tion. This literature stresses that the correlation between migration
status and occupational status can be the outcome of either a causal
mechanism (returns on migration) or a selection effect. Regarding
the former, migration may beneﬁt (or harm) migrants by impacting
their occupational status for the reasons discussed above. Migrants,
however, may also be “negatively” or “positively” selected from
the sending population. The brightest and most diligent members
of a population generally receive an above-average return on their
endeavors, whether they migrate or not. Those who are negatively
selected probably fall into occupations of lower social status than do
their old or new compatriots. The assumption behind a positive
selection effect is that because migration is emotionally and ﬁnan-
cially costly, people with the resources and the personality traits
required to cope with a new situation are usually the ones who take
the opportunity to migrate. The assumption behind a negative
selection effect is that the mass of “ﬂoating proletarians” with
limited resources who have to migrate for one reason or another
probably would not ﬂourish if they had stayed.16

Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis,

16
1880–1970 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 40–42, 231–232.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 237

Many studies claim that those who migrate for economic reasons
do so because they expect higher returns on their skills in their new
country than in their old country. Such migrants’ earnings could
accrue from the same occupation or a new occupation in the new
country. If earnings are generally higher in a new country, a broader
segment of the population would be likely to migrate (positive selec-
tion) than if earnings are lower (negative selection). Hence, selection
effects vary between countries, and over time, according to differences
in earning proﬁles between countries or time periods. Abramitzky and
Boustan ﬁnd that past migrants to the United States could be either
positively or negatively selected, depending on their country of origin,
whereas today’s migrants tend to be positively selected.17

Not many historical studies look at selection effects in the
period under study here. Wegge studied men and women who
migrated from the German principality of Hesse-Cassel in the
1850s predominantly to the United States. Half of them were
skilled artisans and half laborers and farmers. She found that most
of these migrants were in the middle of Hesse-Cassel’s wealth
hierarchy (most types of artisan). Those at the bottom there (gen-
eral laborers and servants) might not have been able to afford the
costly fare for a transatlantic voyage, whereas those at the top of
the wealth pyramid had no apparent interest in relocating. In terms
of wealth, the emigrant population was, on the whole, negatively
selected, but in terms of skills, it was positively selected.18

Bosma and Mandemakers compared migrants, many of them
soldiers, who went from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies
with a control group drawn from the Historical Sample of the
Netherlands, 1812–1922. They found that these migrants tended
to come from the highest social class (including ofﬁcers) and that
few of them had a farming background.19

17 George J. Borjas, Immigration Economics (Cambridge Mass., 2014); idem, “Self-Selection
and the Earnings of Immigrants,” American Economic Review, LXXVII (1987), 531–553; Enrico
Moretti, “Social Networks and Migrations: Italy 1876–1913,” International Migration Review,
XXXIII (1999), 640–657; Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, “Immigration in American
Economic History,” Journal of Economic Literature, LV (2017), 1311–1345.
Simone A. Wegge, “Occupational Self-Selection of European Emigrants: Evidence from
18
Nineteenth-Century Hesse-Cassel,” European Review of Economic History, VI (2002), 365–394.
19 Ulbe Bosma and Kees Mandemakers, “Indiëgangers: sociale herkomst en migratiemotie-
ven (1830–1950): Een onderzoek op basis van de Historische Steekproef Nederlandse bevolk-
ing (HSN),” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, CXXIII (2008),
162–184.

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238

| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson compared the imputed
earnings of Norwegians migrating to the United States in the second
half of the nineteenth century with that of their brothers who stayed
in Norway. Although this strategy did not eliminate the selection
effect completely, it revealed that, on average, siblings from poor
households with lower human capital did not do as well in the labor
market as did siblings from richer households with more human
capital. Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson found consistent
evidence of negative selection for Norwegian migrants born in rural
areas and mixed evidence for urban migrants during the Age of
Mass Migration from Europe to the New World, 1850–1913.20

Given the state of knowledge, we cannot make easy predic-
tions for selective migration to Algeria, but we can distill a few
pointers from the literature. Before the start of our research period,
French authorities used propaganda and subsidies to persuade its
poorer citizens to migrate to Algeria. Although this strategy seems
to have worked in the economically difﬁcult years around 1848,
the literature does not suggest that it was a strong push factor
thereafter. In any event, migration costs from France to Algeria
were not high compared with those for transatlantic migration;
we have no reason to suspect that traveling to Algeria would nec-
essarily be cost-prohibitive. The period under study, which con-
stitutes the maturation of a settler society, offered a wide range of
lower- as well as higher-class occupations.

Unlike for earlier years, the literature does not suggest that the
higher social classes in France were completely uninterested in
migrating to Algeria, which, after all, was only a short distance
across the Mediterranean and had strong ties to France. Because
Algeria was a French region and an integrated part of the national
labor market, many of the same business and educational selection
systems operated there as well, at least by the time when the colo-
nial economy had come of age. Major companies were likely to
have recruited in France for employees in their Algerian branches.
The highest positions, then as well as now, were accessible primarily
to those who had earned top grades from France’s most prestigious
schools, where their favored potential incumbents were educated.

20 Ran Abramitzky, L. Platt Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson, “Europe’s Tired, Poor, Hud-
dled Masses: Self-Selection and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration,” American
Economic Review, CII (2012), 1832–1856.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 239

Those in Algeria had by no means lost human/social capital in either
education or employment; they were subject to the same scrutiny
and standards as were their counterparts in France. In fact, they
brought from Paris, as the metropole of the French colonial empire,
novel human and cultural capital, in the form of language proﬁ-
ciency, which carried a mastery of new cultural codes and tastes,
as well as fashionable clothes, the belles-lettres, and various leisure
activities. The literature, though far from conclusive, suggests that
work was available in the colonies for Frenchmen of all social ranks.
We have no a priori reason to assume that only the “best” or the
“worst” segments of society migrated. We will, however, test this
assumption whenever possible.

Based on the literature, the assumptions herein are threefold:
(1) that French citizens born in Algeria had the highest occupa-
tional status because of their parental networks; (2) that the status
of French immigrants was higher than that of other European
immigrants; and (3) that immigrants who relocated to Algeria as
children achieved a higher status than did those who relocated
as adults. The literature also suggests that the status of immigrants
surpassed that of stayers. The novelty of this article lies not in its
comparison between immigrants and stayers or the host popula-
tion, using individual-level data, but in its application of theoret-
ical notions from the social sciences to Algeria’s historical context.
To test the theories, we present a typology of colonial
migrants (Table 1) that distinguishes between non-migrants and
migrants, further subdivided by birth in France or elsewhere and
by migration as children with parents or later as adults. Those who

Table 1 Typology of Migrants in This Study

BIRTH-
COUNTRY
RESPONDENT

COUNTRY OF
RESIDENCE PARENTS:
ALGERIA

COUNTRY OF

RESIDENCE
PARENTS: FRANCE

COUNTRY OF
RESIDENCE PARENTS:
ELSEWHERE

Algeria
France

Other

Non-migrant
Migrated as a child:
1.5 generation

Migrated as a child:
1.5 generation,
from other culture

Migrated as
an adult: ﬁrst
generation

*
*

Migrated as an adult:
ﬁrst generation, from
other culture

*Unlikely combination, very few in practice.

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| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

240
migrated as adults are termed ﬁrst-generation and their colonial-
born children second-generation. We cannot distinguish the sec-
ond from the third and subsequent generations; our data, which
consist of unlinked marriage records, do not include parents’ place
of birth. We can, however, see which bridegrooms probably
migrated as children, because the marriage record states that their
parents resided in Algeria. These migrants are called the 1.5
generation.21

Although theoretically this classiﬁcation leads to nine types of
bridegroom, some of the combinations are rare; six migration
types are observed in our data. According to the assumptions dis-
cussed above, non-migrants (those born in Algeria who were not
Arab or Berber) likely attained the highest social status at marriage,
and those born outside France who migrated to Algeria as adults
the lowest social status (see Table 2, Panel A). This table also shows
that those who migrated with their parents as children achieved a
higher social status than those who migrated as adults—once again,
French migrants earning a higher status than those for whom
French was not the mother tongue. Table 2, Panel B shows our
expectations when comparing migrants from France to Algeria
with the French who stayed behind. We expect the migrants to
have been the most successful, and internal migrants among the
stayers to have achieved higher status than non-migrants.

DATA We work with two data sets, one for Algeria and one relat-
ing to mainland France. The French civil-registration system cov-
ered both countries. Even before Algeria became incorporated

21 As far as we know, no previous empirical historical studies have shed light on these ques-
tions. The literature about the migration of those born in Algeria to France, especially after the
war of independence, is abundant. See, for example, Noiriel, Le creuset français; Alba, “Decol-
onization Immigrations and the Social Origins of the Second Generation: The Case of North
Africans in France,” International Migration Review, XXXVI (2002), 1169–1193; Sylvain
Brouard and Vincent Tiberj, Français comme les autres? Enquête sur les citoyens d’origine maghré-
bine, africaine et turque (Paris, 2005); Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard, “Old and New Migrants in
France: Italians and Algerians,” in Leo Lucassen, David Feldman, and Jochen Oltmer (eds.),
Paths of Integration: Migrants in Western Europe (1880–2004) (Amsterdam, 2006), 46–62; Alec G.
Hargreaves, Immigration and Identity in Beur Fiction: Voices from the North African Immigrant Com-
munity in France (Providence, R.I., 1997); idem, Multi-Ethnic France: Immigration, Politics, Cul-
ture and Society (New York, 2007). Migration to Algeria from France has seen less scholarship,
as has colonial vital registration in general, with the notable exceptions of Prochaska, Making
Algeria French; Kateb, Européens, “Indigènes” et Juifs en Algérie (1830–1962); Sessions, By Sword
and Plow.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 241

Table 2

Summary of Hypotheses: Predicted Occupational Status

A. COMPARISONS BETWEEN MIGRANTS TO ALGERIA AND RESIDENTS IN ALGERIA

MIGRANT TYPE

Non-migrants in Algeria

Migrants from France

Migrants from elsewhere

PREDICTED
STATUS

Highest status

Lowest status

migrated as a child
(1.5 generation)
migrated as an adult
(ﬁrst generation)
migrated as a child
(1.5 generation)
migrated as an adult
(ﬁrst generation)

B. COMPARISONS BETWEEN MIGRANTS FROM FRANCE AND RESIDENTS IN FRANCE
PREDICTED STATUS
MIGRANT TYPE
Highest status
Migrants from France

Migrants from France

Internal migrants in France
Non-migrants in France

migrated as a child
(1.5 generation)
migrated as an adult
(ﬁrst generation)

Lowest status

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into the French départemental structure, colonial Algeria had cop-
ied the vital registration system from the French mainland, as
introduced by Napoleon. Hence, the information in the Algerian
colonial marriage registers is directly comparable to that in main-
land France, though the extent of the population covered in each
differs. The marriage registers contain place and date of marriage;
names of bridegroom and bride; their places of birth, ages, and
places of residence; whether a ﬁrst marriage; occupations, if any;
signatures, if able to sign; and parents’ occupations and countries
of residence.

The Algerian data derive from the vital registration system,
which covers French citizens. Before 1870, Muslims and Jews in
Algeria were considered sujet (subalterns), not citoyens (citizens).
The Crémieux Decree (1870) accorded citizenship to Algerian
Jews, but not to Algeria’s Muslim majority. Muslims could obtain
citizenship only by relinquishing their “status personnel” and
renouncing their faith, which not many did. The French marriages

| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

242
analyzed herein thus relate only to the colony’s Christian and
Jewish minorities, not to Muslims.22

The ﬁrst year of our observation period, 1870, is convention-
ally regarded as the beginning of Algerian colonial society in its
prime and the point at which native Algerian Jews were obliged
to become French citizens. Starting earlier would have impeded
comparability with data for the later period, and it would have
reduced the number of cities for which marriage records are avail-
able. Privacy restrictions prevent us from studying the years after
1912. We took a sample of marriage records for four Algerian
towns—the capital Algiers and the three provincial centers of
Bône, Constantine, and Oran across the coastline—from two
periods, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912. The cities selected capture a
range of urban experiences across the colony in the period that led
to a distinct Algerian colonial culture. Algiers had the most diver-
siﬁed economy. It harbored a large service sector catering to the
administration of the entire colony, as well as a sizable production
sector, not just for the amenities of life but also for selling luxury
products to Algeria’s wealthy colonials.23

Oran—a harbor city along a riverbed, surrounded by fruit
plantations and known for its grain, cattle, leather, and wool
trade—was also a minor administrative center with its own ruler
until the French rebranded it as a province. In the heyday of
Algerian colonialism, it witnessed huge population growth and a
construction boom, mainly of Spanish-style buildings, testifying to
the Spanish descent of its European inhabitants.

Before the French conquest, Constantine also had its own
ruler, who paid taxes to the dey of Algiers, but it, too, became

22
In 1865, Algerian Jews were given the option to become French citizens. The 1870
decree obliged all Jews in the part of Algeria under French control at that time, excluding
the southern territories where several thousand Jews lived. These areas did not become depar-
tementalized until 1957. See Sarah Abrevaya Stein, “Dividing South from North: French
Colonialism, Jews, and the Algerian Sahara,” Journal of North African Studies, XVII (2012),
773–792.
23 For our sample of marriage records, see Archives Nationales d’outre-mer, https://anom
.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/ark:/61561/wz818idcda; for more on Algiers and the other
cities, see Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine: 1830–1970; Samir Amin, L’économie du
Maghreb (Paris, 1966); R. Lespès, “Le port de Bône et les mines de l’Est Constantinois,”
Annales de Géographie, XXXII (1923), 526–541; idem, Alger. Etude de géographie et d’histoire
urbaines (Paris, 1930); idem, Oran: Etude de géographie et d’histoire urbaines (Paris, 1938); Maravall,
“Factor Endowments on the ‘Frontier’”; Prochaska, Making Algeria French.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 243

a French province, alongside the towns of Philippeville and Bône.
It lay on a plateau near a river, which ﬂowed through fertile land.
Its geography and mild weather allowed for abundant harvests of
millet, opium, saffron, and grapes, as well as stock raising in
surrounding meadows. Constantine had long since served as a pro-
visioning and trade hub for caravans from sub-Saharan Africa to
the coastal cities of Bône and Tunis. During French rule, it also
gradually became an industrial city.

Bône (now Annaba)—part of the same province, a little more
to the east than Constantine, bordering Tunisia—was a point of
entry and exit and a trading post. Surrounded by fertile, marshy
ground that, with proper irrigation, became suitable for vineyards
and other forms of horticulture. It had connections not only to
Constantine and other Algerian cities but also to Jewish merchants
in Livorno (Leghorn, Italy) and to French traders in Marseilles,
who bought Algerian grain, hides, and other raw materials and
sold sugar, silk, and other luxury goods. It had railroad construc-
tion and mining activities in the nearby desert.

For Algeria, we aimed to have data for 700 marriages in the
ﬁrst period and 1,000 marriages in the second, and for the provin-
cial towns 300 marriages in the ﬁrst period and 500 in the second.
We divided the total number of marriages in the sources by these
numbers (resulting in a speciﬁc value x per city) and digitized
every xth marriage (N = 4,156). We deleted 13 men younger than
18 at marriage, 695 men with unknown migration status, and 77
men with highly uncommon migration status (see description of
typology). Finally, we excluded 199 men for whom we have no
information about the dependent variable occupational status at
marriage (remaining N = 3,172).24

For mainland France, we used the large TRA data set. The
starting point for the data collection encompasses all marriages
involving men with family names in mainland France that start
with the letters TRA between 1803 and 1832, plus the marriages
of their descendants. From the TRA survey we selected those mar-
ried in the same years for which we have Algerian data, 1870–1872
and 1910–1912 (N = 2,399). We deleted 6 men who married before

24 Because several persons were involved in the data collection, the ﬁnal number of subjects
in the sample deviates slightly from the original goal.

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244

| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

age 18 and 185 men for whom information on occupational status
at marriage is lacking (remaining N = 2,208).25

Both data sets contain missing values for some variables, nota-
bly father’s occupational status (50.5 percent missing in the Alge-
rian data and 54.9 percent missing in TRA). We used multiple
imputation in SPSS, separately for the two data sets (twenty
imputed data sets) to include these cases in the analyses. To
improve the imputation, we included all cases from the TRA data
between 1870 and 1912, deleted the cases with missing values for
the dependent variable and migration status only after imputing,
and added status of the father-in-law, bride’s age, whether the
bride signed the marriage certiﬁcate, and the bridegroom’s country
of birth in the imputation procedure. Descriptive statistics of the
variables after imputation are similar to those after listwise or pair-
wise deletion.26

VARIABLES To place the migrant typology for the Algerian data in
operation, we ﬁrst categorized the birthplaces of the bridegrooms
and the places of residence of the fathers (at the time of their son’s
marriage) into “Algeria,” “France,” and “other.” Bridegrooms’
birthplaces are almost always known, but fathers’ places of resi-
dence are not (the 688 missing ones are excluded, as indicated
in the data description). Non-migrants are bridegrooms born in
Algeria with fathers who also lived there. Migrants from France
(1.5 generation) were born in France but married in Algeria
with fathers also living in Algeria. Migrants from France (ﬁrst-
generation) differ from the 1.5 generation in that their father did
not live in Algeria when they married there. The two categories
for migrants from elsewhere are constructed in a similar way. In
the TRA data, we distinguish non-migrants—that is, bridegrooms
who marry in the place where they are born—and internal

Jacques Dupâquier and Jean-Pierre Pélissier, “Mutations d’une société: La mobilité pro-
25
fessionnelle,” in Dupâquier and Denis Kessler (eds.), La société française au XIXe siècle (Paris,
1992), 121–236; Didier Blanchet and Kessler, “La mobilité géographique de la naissance au
mariage,” in idem, La société française au XIXe siècle, 343–378; Paul-André Rosental, Les sentiers
invisibles: Espace, familles et migrations dans la France du 19e siècle (Paris, 1999); Noël Bonneuil and
Paul-André Rosental, “Changing Social Mobility in Nineteenth-Century France,” Historical
Methods, XXXII (1999), 53–74.
26 Results available on request.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 245

Table 3 Descriptive Information: Main Variables, France, Algiers, Bône,
Constantine, and Oran, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (Multiple
Imputation, N = 5,380)

ALGERIA

FRANCE

M/%

Migrant type

Non-migrants in Algeria
Migrants from France (1.5 generation)
Migrants from France (ﬁrst generation)
Migrants from elsewhere (1.5 generation)
Migrants from elsewhere (ﬁrst generation)
Non-migrants in France
Internal migrants in France

Groom’s status
Father’s status
Age
Signature

47.7
7.8
22.5
13.0
9.0

58.7
56.7
29.0
84.4

14.5
10.5
6.9

42.1
57.9
55.2
55.6
29.6
85.7

10.9
7.7
7.8

NOTE Standard deviation (SD) is the average for twenty imputed data sets.

3172

2208

migrants who marry in a different place. The data cover all migra-
tion types in the typology presented earlier (Table 3).

For more detail about the migration streams to Algeria, we
distinguish the most important countries of origin in the “other”
category and describe the origins of the Algerian bridegrooms in
Table 4. About half of all marrying men came from Algeria. If not
pieds-noirs by birth, they came primarily from mainland France,
but about one in six bridegrooms came from Spain and Italy. Oran
and Algiers had more Spanish migrants, and Bône had more Italian
migrant bridegrooms. Over time, the proportion of bridegrooms
born in Algeria increased greatly. These migration streams, well
covered by the literature, suggest a labor market for Algerian cit-
izens that was segmented by country of origin. Italians from
Livorno, Pisa, and Genoa had settled on the shores of Algeria
for centuries prior to the French invasion of 1830 (the excuse
for which being the undiplomatic treatment of a French envoy);
they continued to come thereafter. Many poor men from Sardinia
and Elba came to work as truck gardeners, especially in the region
around Bône. The Maltese (the largest group in the “other” cat-
egory) came to Algeria because it was nearby and because Malta

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| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

Table 4 Country of Birth for Bridegrooms in Algiers, Bône, Constantine, and
Oran, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (in Percentage, Multiple
Imputation; N = 3,172)

COUNTRY
OF BIRTH

Algeria
France
Spain
Italy
Other
Total
N

TOTAL

ALGIERS BÔNE CONSTANTINE ORAN

47.7
30.4
12.2
5.0
4.8
100.0

44.2
32.7
15.9
4.7
2.5

49.1
25.0
1.3
11.0
13.5
100.0 100.0

3,172

1,230

527

56.8
34.6
0.8
4.0
3.7
100.0
722

43.1
26.0
25.8
1.9
3.2
100.0
693

1870–
1872

1910–
1912

25.9
44.3
16.2
6.1
7.5
100.0

62.8
20.8
9.4
4.2
2.8
100.0

1,299

1,873

was congested. Miners, masons, and shoemakers came from main-
land Italy to ﬂee starvation wages. Whereas the Italian-born were
over-represented in the construction and building industry and the
Maltese in farming, the native French virtually monopolized colo-
nial administration and the liberal professions. Jews worked mostly
in textiles and in the precious metals industry. At the lower end of
the labor market were native Algerians, toiling in agriculture, in
inexpensive restaurants catering to Algerians, in unskilled day
labor, and (together with Jews) in processing tobacco into
cigarettes.27

We use occupations to capture social positions in the marriage
registers of both Algeria and the French mainland, ﬁrst coding
them according to the oft-used historical international standard
classiﬁcation of occupations (HISCO). This coding grid is the

27 For the settlement of Italians in Algeria, see Gaston Loth, Le peuplement italien en Tunisie et
en Algérie (Paris, 1905); Prochaska, Making Algeria French; Vermeren, Les italiens à Bône (1865–
1940): Migrations méditerranéennes et colonisation de peuplement en Algérie (Rome, 2007); Francesca
Fauri and Donatella Strangio, “The Economic Bases of Migration from Italy: The Distinct
Cases of Tunisia and Libya (1880s–1960s),” Journal of North African Studies, XXV (2020),
447–471; for the ethnic groups represented in niche sectors, Prochaska, Making Algeria French,
168–176. In 1880, a report stated, “For the last twenty years in Bône every time a mail ship
arrived one could see a crowd of Italian immigrants rushing to the ofﬁces of the [Italian] con-
sulate to obtain information and advice on work to undertake, on the areas where labor was
scarce, and what to do to ﬁnd a job more easily. ‘Very rare,’ said the Italian representative in a
report to the Consulta, ‘were those who arrived with the promise of a job. Still, these favored
immigrants were only the friends or relatives of other immigrants already established in the
region, and these other immigrants had taken work a cottimo, preferring then to stupidly invite
the new arrivals to join them so they could work together rather than utilize the large number
of Italians already established and who lacked work, whom they could have hired under much
better conditions.’” See Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 151.

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 247

historical extension of ISCO68, developed by occupational coders
worldwide under the guidance of the International Labor Organi-
zation (ILO) to ensure comparability between coded censuses and
other vital registers across the globe. HISCO has about 1,600 groups
in its labor classiﬁcation, as well as auxiliary variables indicating, for
example, artisanal or supervisory status. HISCO and its derivatives
are in use worldwide, not only for past and present European
countries but also for historical societies in Brazil, Egypt, South
Africa, Taiwan, Uganda, and Uruguay. Once coded in HISCO,
the occupations can easily be regrouped into the HISCLASS
scheme—in its fullest form, twelve social classes, based on elemen-
tary distinctions between economic sector, manual or non-manual
work, skill level, and supervisory status.28

Table 5 provides an impression of the social structure in colo-
nial Algeria and France by showing the social classes of bride-
grooms and their fathers and, for Algeria, of bridegrooms in the
four cities and for both periods. All social layers and economic sec-
tors were represented among the Algeria’s colonial male labor

28 For HISCO, see van Leeuwen, Maas, and Andrew Miles, HISCO: Historical International
Standard Classiﬁcation of Occupations (Leuven, 2002); for ISCO68, ILO, International Standard Clas-
siﬁcation of Occupations: Revised Edition 1968 (Geneva, 1969); for the use of HISCO in European
countries, for example, Maas and van Leeuwen, “Toward Open Societies? Trends in Male
Intergenerational Class Mobility in European Countries during Industrialization,” American
Journal of Sociology, CXXII (2016), 838–885; van Leeuwen et al., “Social Mobility in France
1720–1986: Effects of Wars, Revolution and Economic Change,” Journal of Social History,
XLIX (2016), 585–616; for the use of HISCO with regard to historical societies, M. Saleh,
“The Reluctant Transformation: State Industrialization, Religion, and Human Capital in
Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” Journal of Economic History, LXXV (2015), 65–94; Felix Meier
zu Selhausen, van Leeuwen, and Jacob Weisdorf, “Social Mobility among Christian Africans:
Evidence from Ugandan Marriage Registers, 1895–2011,” Economic History Review, LXXI
(2018), 1291–1321; Jeanne Cilliers and Johan Fourie, “Social Mobility during South Africa’s
Industrial Take-Off,” ERSA Working Paper No. 617 (2016); L. Xing-Chen, Y. Wen-Shan,
and C. Ying-Chang, “Another Marriage Choice: A Study of Uxorilocal Marriage in Taiwan,
Comparative Research of Taipei (Urban) and Xinchu (Rural), 1906–1944,” Journal of Family
History, XXXIX (2014), 388–403; see Katherine Holt, “Marriage Choice in a Plantation Soci-
ety: Bahia, Brazil,” International Review of Social History, L (2005), 25–41; Bernardo Alves Fur-
tado and Tarcisio Rodriguez Botelho, “Dimensões espaciais da desigualdade social: Minas
Gerais (Brasil) no século XIX,” in Botelho and van Leeuwen (eds.), Desigualdade social: na
América do Sul: perspectivas históricas (Belo Horizonte, 2010), 225–242; María Inés Moraes
and Raquel Pollero, “Categorías ocupacionales y status en una economía de orientación pas-
toril Uruguay en la primera mitad del siglo XIX,” in idem, Desigualdade social: na América do
Sul, 113–148; Carolina Vicário, “Estructura y movilidad ocupacional en Montevideo, 1812–
1836,” in idem, Desigualdade social: na América do Sul, 191–224; for HISCLASS, van Leeuwen and
Maas, HISCLASS: A Historical International Social Class Scheme (Leuven, 2011).

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Table 5

Social-Class Distribution (HISCLASS) in France, Algiers, Bône, Constantine, and Oran, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (in
Percentage, Multiple Imputation; N = 5,380)

A. BRIDEGROOMS AND THEIR FATHERS IN ALGERIA AND FRANCE

ALGERIA

FRANCE

BRIDEGROOM

FATHER OF THE
BRIDEGROOM

BRIDEGROOM

FATHER OF THE
BRIDEGROOM

1. Higher managers
2. Higher professionals
3. Lower managers
4. Lower professional and clerical, sales
5. Lower clerical and sales
6. Foremen
7. Skilled workers
8. Farmers
9. Lower skilled workers
10. Lower skilled farmworkers
11. Unskilled workers
12. Unskilled farmworkers
Total
N

2.1
4.3
5.5
15.7
10.6
0.9
26.4
2.9
15.1
1.3
12.4
2.6
100.0

8.6
3.7
6.4
11.5
4.4
2.6
19.1
10.5
8.8
3.8
15.2
5.4
100.0

0.8
1.7
2.9
6.0
5.0
0.3
20.5
32.0
19.4
0.7
5.8
4.9
100.0

6.9
2.1
3.9
4.1
2.3
0.9
12.9
42.8
9.7
2.0
6.3
6.0
100.0

3,172

2,208

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B. ALGERIAN BRIDEGROOMS BY PLACE OF MARRIAGE AND PERIOD

1. Higher managers
2. Higher professionals
3. Lower managers
4. Lower-professional and clerical, sales
5. Lower-clerical and sales
6. Foremen
7. Skilled workers
8. Farmers
9. Lower-skilled workers
10. Lower-skilled farmworkers
11. Unskilled workers
12. Unskilled farmworkers
Total
N

ALGIERS
2.4
3.9
4.7
15.8
12.7
0.7
26.8
2.2
16.1
1.2
11.7
1.8
100.0

1,230

BÔNE
2.7
3.2
4.8
15.5
7.7
0.6
21.0
5.2
16.0
3.0
14.6
5.8
100.0
527

CONSTANTINE
1.8
6.0
6.4
17.3
10.9
1.1
36.6
1.7
12.3
0.1
4.3
1.5
100.0
722

ORAN
1.6
4.4
6.4
14.1
9.0
1.4
19.3
3.7
15.5
1.4
20.5
2.8
100.0
693

1870–1872

1910–1912

2.5
3.1
5.8
19.2
10.3
1.0
21.6
3.7
13.8
0.6
14.2
4.0
100.0

1.8
5.2
5.3
13.3
10.9
0.9
29.7
2.3
16.0
1.8
11.2
1.6
100.0

1,299

1,873

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| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

250
force as reﬂected in the inﬂow at marriage of the bridegrooms.
Unsurprisingly, few Algerian urban citizens were farmers, but a
sizable proportion were farmer’s sons. Algeria had a relatively large
number of small and large merchants and retailers. Our ﬁnding
that Algeria had relatively larger high-status occupational classes
than did France is not surprising since France’s native population
comprised all individuals and classes, whereas we could include
only Algerian citizens, not native Arabs. The differences in the
class distribution among the Algerian towns were small, but Algiers
had the largest proportion of men working in the lower clerical
and sales class, whereas Constantine had relatively few unskilled
but many skilled workers. Over time, the top and the bottom
of the social pyramid remained stable for the most part, but the
middle saw a slight shift from non-manual to manual occupations;
that is, the proportion of skilled workers increased and that of
lower professionals, clerks, and salespersons decreased.

The dependent variable in our analyses is the occupational
status of bridegrooms, as measured via HISCAM—a historical version
of the contemporary CAMSIS scales based on social-interaction dis-
tance, often used in historical stratiﬁcation research. HISCAM pre-
supposes that the frequency of interaction between people from
different occupational strata is representative of the overall occu-
pational structure: The more frequent the interaction between
individuals from two different occupations, the smaller the distance
between these occupations in the overall stratiﬁcation. The HISCAM
scale ranges from 1 (low) to 99 (high).29

Of the presumably many factors besides migration status that
might have contributed to success on the social ladder in a colony,
we take only the most important ones into account. Given that
the occupational attainment of a son is greatly inﬂuenced by that
of his father, we control for father’s status, which we also measured

29 For HISCAM, see Paul S. Lambert et al., “The Construction of HISCAM: A Stratiﬁcation
Scale Based on Social Interactions for Historical Comparative Research,” Historical Methods,
XLVI (2013), 77–89; Cristóbal Montt and Maas, “The Openness of Britain during Industria-
lisation: Determinants of Career Success of British Men Born between 1780 and 1880,”
Research in Social Stratiﬁcation and Mobility, XLII (2015), 123–135; Wiebke Schulz, Maas, and
van Leeuwen, “Occupational Career Attainment during Modernization: A Study of Dutch
Men in 841 Municipalities between 1865 and 1928,” Acta Sociologica, LVIII (2015), 5–24; for
CAMSIS, A. Stewart, K. Prandy, and R. M. Blackburn, “Measuring the Class Structure,” Nature,
CCXLV (1973), 415–417; Stewart, Prandy, and Blackburn, Social Stratiﬁcation and Occupations
(London, 1980).

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S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 251
via HISCAM. We also control for age and the ability to sign one’s
name, since illiteracy (not being able to sign) is a drawback.
Although signing is only a rough indicator of human capital, it
is a valuable tool for historical research because of the high corre-
lation between the ability to sign and literacy. We also include
period and town in the analyses.30

The other obvious characteristic to treat as a control variable
under normal circumstances would be religion, since the social sta-
tus of Jews was generally lower than that of Christians in Algeria.
In the case of colonial Algeria, however, the ability to infer reli-
gion at all is an anomaly. French marriage records do not normally
include religion. In one town from 1870 to 1872, however, we
can identify some Jews, though not all. Some records mention that
a bride or bridegroom is an “Israelite” (as opposed to a European).
Furthermore, in some cases, names were written in Hebrew. But,
since only the vital registers of one town in one period contain
such information ofﬁcially, we refrained from adding religion as
a control variable.

METHOD: COMPARING THE OCCUPATIONAL STATUS OF MIGRANTS AND
NON-MIGRANTS As Güveli et al. pointed out, most migrants
move to improve the prospects that their country of origin could
offer them. Whether they succeed is impossible for us to deter-
mine at the individual level. But we can compare migrants not
only with the population (at least the citizens) in the country of
destination but also with similar others in the country of origin.
Such data are rare both in contemporary migration research and
in historical research.31

We can gauge a more complex relationship by estimating the
effect of various determinants of status attainment and thus probe

30 Roger S. Schoﬁeld, “Dimensions of Illiteracy, 1750–1850,” Explorations in Economic His-
tory, X (1973), 437–454; Harvey J. Graff, The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions
in Western Culture and Society (Bloomington, 1987); David Mitch, “Literacy and Occupational
Mobility in Rural versus Urban Victorian England: Evidence from the Linked Marriage Reg-
ister and Census Records for Birmingham and Norfolk, 1851 and 1881,” Historical Methods,
XXXVIII (2005), 26–38; Jan-Pierre Pélissier and Danièle Rébaudo, “Une approche de l’illet-
trisme en France,” Histoire et Mesure, XIX (2004), 161–202; François Furet et Jacques Ozouf,
Lire et écrire: L’alphabétisation des Français de Calvin à Jules Ferry (Paris, 1977); O. W. A. Boonstra,
De waardij van eene vroege opleiding: Een onderzoek naar de implicaties van het alfabetisme op het leven
van inwoners van Eindhoven en omliggende gemeenten, 1800–1920 (Hilversum, 1993).
31 Güveli et al., Intergenerational Consequences of Migration.

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252

| M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S

further than a bivariate analysis would permit into the relationship
between migration and status attainment. For example, we can
explore whether differences in age, period, human capital, and
social origin underlie the directly observable differences in social
status between residents and migrants. We turn ﬁrst, however,
to a comparison of migrant types within Algeria and then compare
migrants to Algeria with the population that stayed in France.
Finally, as a robustness check, we repeat the main analyses, select-
ing only Frenchmen marrying in cities, since we can study only
the urban population in Algeria.

Attaining Social Status in Algeria Table 2 listed our predictions
about the effects of migration on status attainment. Our theories
led us to believe that, of all the citizens in a colonial society, those
born there would have the highest status, followed by migrants
from the mother country (France), and that those migrating as
children (1.5 generation) would have an advantage over those
migrating as adults (ﬁrst generation). Assuming that our theories
are correct, those migrants who did not share the same language
and culture as that of the motherland, such as migrants from Italy,
would be the most disadvantaged—again, the ﬁrst generation
being worse-off than the 1.5 generation.

Table 6 shows the average status of Algerian bridegrooms per
migration type, without controls. The status scores range from 51
(1.5 generation not from France) to 64/5 (ﬁrst and 1.5 generations
from France). Hence, language proﬁciency appears to be an
important factor in determining social status: Among the ﬁrst-
generation migrants, those born in France have an average status
more than ten points higher than that of those born elsewhere

Table 6 Average Status of Algerian Bridegrooms by Migration Type in
Algiers, Bône, Constantine, and Oran, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912
(Multiple Imputation; N = 3,172)

Non-migrants
From France (1.5 generation)
From France (ﬁrst generation)
From elsewhere (1.5 generation)
From elsewhere (ﬁrst generation)
Total

NOTE F-test signiﬁcant p < 0.01 in all twenty groups. MEAN STATUS 58.4 64.7 64.1 51.1 52.4 58.7 N 1,512 249 715 412 284 3,172 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 253 (64.1 versus 52.4); for migrants from the 1.5 generation, the gap is slightly wider (64.7 versus 51.1). The difference in average status between the ﬁrst and the 1.5 generations is small, both for those coming from France and those coming from elsewhere, suggesting that migration as a child with parents or as an adult did not much matter. Another clear case in which the data refute the theory is that of native-born Algerian citizens. Far from having the highest social status (as the theories predict), they attained an average of only 58 status points, about the same as the average for all the bridegrooms, lower than the average for those coming from France, and higher than that for those who came from elsewhere. Table 7 elaborates the occupational differences between the various migrant types. Migrants from countries other than France occupied the lower reaches of the urban labor market, as unskilled workers, much more often than did other types of migrants and non-migrants. At the top of the colonial class system (among man- agers, professionals, and clerical and sales personnel), those coming from France were over-represented. Non-migrants took a position midway between the two categories. They were less often found among the managerial and professional classes than were migrants from France, and they were far less often found among the unskilled working classes than were migrants from other countries. But they were clearly over-represented among the skilled workers. Table 7 does not offer all the reasons. Compositional differences—for example, social background (father’s status) or the ability to sign—may bear some responsibility. Table 8 shows these compositional differences, supporting the notion that migrants from France performed well because of superior parental resources and human capital. In the two groups of migrants from France, most bridegrooms had fathers who were higher managers or higher professionals. Moreover, migrants from France were more likely to be able to sign their marriage certiﬁcates. In both respects, they are most unlike the migrants from other countries; the non-migrants occupy a position midway between the two cat- egories. Just under half of the migrants (44 percent to 47 percent) who came to Algeria from countries other than France did not sign their marriage certiﬁcates; they were probably illiterate. The corresponding ﬁgure for the migrants from France was just between 3 and 4 percent. Furthermore, not only did migrants from other countries often take unskilled work in Algeria, they l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Table 7 Grooms’ Social-Class Distribution (HISCLASS) by Migrant Type in Algiers, Bône, Constantine, and Oran, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (Multiple Imputation, N = 3,172) MIGRANT TYPE (BRIDEGROOM) NON-MIGRANT FROM FRANCE (1.5 GENERATION) FROM FRANCE (FIRST GENERATION) FROM ELSEWHERE (1.5 GENERATION) FROM ELSEWHERE (FIRST GENERATION) 1. Higher managers 2. Higher professionals 3. Lower managers 4. Lower-professional and clerical, sales 5. Lower-clerical and sales 6. Foremen 7. Skilled workers 8. Farmers 9. Lower-skilled workers 10. Lower-skilled farmworkers 11. Unskilled workers 12. Unskilled farmworkers Total N 0.7 3.9 3.5 16.0 11.0 0.4 33.9 2.1 16.6 1.3 9.2 1.4 100.0 1,512 3.2 4.6 10.1 16.9 21.8 1.6 18.1 5.3 12.9 0.1 3.2 2.2 100.0 249 6.0 7.2 11.3 20.9 13.8 2.4 18.2 2.4 12.4 0.6 3.4 1.3 100.0 715 0.7 1.5 1.7 8.5 2.9 0.2 22.3 5.1 17.7 2.4 30.1 6.8 100.0 412 1.1 3.3 3.2 10.6 2.5 0.4 20.4 2.9 12.0 2.8 34.5 6.4 100.0 284 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Table 8 Compositional Differences between Migrant Types: Fathers’ Social-Class Distribution (HISCLASS) and Ability to Sign in Algiers, Bône, Constantine, and Oran, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (Multiple Imputation; N = 3,172) MIGRANT TYPE (BRIDEGROOM) NON-MIGRANT FROM FRANCE (1.5 GENERATION) FROM FRANCE (FIRST GENERATION) FROM ELSEWHERE (1.5 GENERATION) FROM ELSEWHERE (FIRST GENERATION) Father’s social class: 1. Higher managers 2. Higher professionals 3. Lower managers 4. Lower-professional and clerical, sales 5. Lower-clerical and sales 6. Foremen 7. Skilled workers 8. Farmers 9. Lower-skilled workers 10. Lower-skilled farmworkers 11. Unskilled workers 12. Unskilled farmworkers Total 4.9 3.0 7.0 15.7 6.0 2.7 22.9 4.0 11.1 4.0 13.2 5.4 100.0 13.3 6.0 8.8 9.1 6.8 4.1 23.2 11.4 9.2 1.6 3.9 2.8 100.0 19.6 5.7 7.0 6.9 2.5 2.0 13.7 25.2 6.5 2.7 5.4 2.8 100.0 3.4 1.2 3.4 7.5 1.0 2.5 15.2 8.3 7.9 4.9 35.8 9.0 100.0 4.0 4.8 3.9 8.4 3.0 2.6 14.0 10.0 3.6 6.5 29.9 9.1 100.0 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Table 8 (Continued ) Signature: No Yes Total N MIGRANT TYPE (BRIDEGROOM) NON-MIGRANT FROM FRANCE (1.5 GENERATION) FROM FRANCE (FIRST GENERATION) FROM ELSEWHERE (1.5 GENERATION) FROM ELSEWHERE (FIRST GENERATION) 9.6 90.4 100.0 1,512 3.6 96.4 100.0 249 3.5 96.5 100.0 715 43.9 56.1 100.0 412 47.4 52.6 100.0 284 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 257 were also likely to originate from unskilled working classes, as implied by their fathers’ occupations. Finally, we test whether the differences in occupational status between the migrant groups are indeed the result of these compo- sitional differences by regressing the status of bridegrooms in Alge- ria on migrant type and the control variables. Although the general pattern remains the same, the differences decline by c. 50 percent (Table 9). For example, the difference in status between non- migrants and the 1.5 generation coming from France was 6.3 status points in the bivariate analysis and is now 3.6. The difference between non-migrants and the 1.5 generation from other coun- tries declined from 7.3 to 2.8. A father’s status was a great driver of a son’s status in colonial Algeria. One standard deviation in fathers’ status (10.5 points) led to a 5.3-point increase in sons’. This Table 9 Regression Analysis Of Algerian Bridegrooms’ Status on Type of Migrant and Controls, Algiers, Bône, Constantine, and Oran, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (Unstandardized Coefﬁcients, Multiple Imputation, N = 3,172) Intercept Type of migrant: Non-migrants (ref.) From France (1.5 generation) From France (ﬁrst generation) From elsewhere (1.5 generation) From elsewhere (ﬁrst generation) Controls: Father’s status Age Signature Place of marriage: Algiers (ref.) Constantine Oran Bône Period: 1870–1872 (ref.) 1910–1912 Adjusted R2 B 19.62 3.55 3.64 −2.82 −2.40 0.50 0.17 6.55 −0.45 0.12 −0.51 0.11 0.25–0.26* P 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.46 0.84 0.44 0.83 *Slightly different between the twenty imputed data sets. NOTE For interpretation of the effects: one standard deviation of father’s status is 10.5 (see Table 3). l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 258 | M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S strong effect is similar to that of being literate (6.5 points). Time and place show no signiﬁcant differences. Hence, the multivariate analysis reveals that the previously observed bivariate effects of migration type do not disappear if we control for social back- ground (father’s status), human capital (being literate), age, and place and period of marriage. Were French Colonial Migrants More Successful than Frenchmen Who Stayed in France? To see whether an average Frenchman would have done better by staying in France or by migrating to Algeria, we compare the position attained by the French in France, as indicated by our second data set, with that of our colo- nial Algerians in the ﬁrst data set. Table 10, which describes the occupational status of bridegrooms in France in the two periods, shows that those who moved within France had, on average, a slightly higher status (55.3) than those who stayed (55.0). This dif- ference is miniscule, however, compared with the average status of those who migrated to Algeria as children (64.7) or as adults (64.1). Hence, Frenchmen who migrated to the colonies, at least to Algeria, attained a higher status than those who stayed in France. The reason could involve the characteristics of the migrants—a positive selection of the population—or the characteristics of the colony, notably more favorable labor and land markets. Those migrants who came to the colony from outside France were even Table 10 Average Status of Algerian and French Bridegrooms by Migration Type, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (Multiple Imputation; N = 5,380) Non-migrants in Algeria From France to Algeria (1.5 generation) From France to Algeria (ﬁrst generation) Internal migrants in France Non-migrants in France From elsewhere to Algeria (1.5 generation) From elsewhere to Algeria (ﬁrst generation) Total MEAN STATUS 58.4 64.7 64.1 55.3 55.0 51.1 52.4 57.3 N 1,512 249 715 1,279 929 412 284 5,380 NOTE F-test signiﬁcant p < 0.01 in all twenty groups. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 259 less successful than the French non-migrants (but possibly more successful than their unobserved compatriots who did not migrate): As shown above, their average status was 51.1 (for the 1.5 generation) and 52.4 (for the ﬁrst generation). Finally, on aver- age, non-migrants in France attained a slightly lower status than non-migrant citizens in Algeria (58.4). As before, we move from a bivariate to a multivariate analysis. When we control for father’s status and the age and literacy of the bridegroom, as well as for the period, the pattern of differences in attained social status between migrant types that we saw in the bivariate analyses remains the same, although again the differences become smaller (Table 11). Staying in France led to a six- to seven-point lower status, both for resident Frenchmen and for internal migrants, compared with migrating to Algeria. On aver- age, a man gained more status by moving to the colony than by remaining in mainland France. This beneﬁt of colonial migration was not the result of fathers’ economic or social resources, such as money, information, or other intercession, since we controlled for fathers’ status. Although not the main focus of our study, the Table 11 Regression Analysis of Algerian and French Bridegrooms’ Status on Type of Migrant and Controls, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (Unstandardized Coefﬁcients, Multiple Imputation; N = 5,380) Intercept Type of migrant: Non-migrants in Algeria From France to Algeria (1.5 generation) From France to Algeria (ﬁrst generation) Internal migrants in France Non-migrants in France (ref.) From elsewhere to Algeria (1.5 generation) From elsewhere to Algeria (ﬁrst generation) Controls: Father’s status Age Signature Period: 1870–1872 (ref.) 1910–1912 Adjusted R2 *Slightly different between the twenty imputed data sets. B 18.57 2.51 6.36 6.60 0.09 −0.55 −0.17 0.51 0.14 4.90 0.43 0.23–0.24* P 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.85 0.44 0.83 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.22 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 260 | M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S difference between men who stayed in France and men who migrated to Algeria from other countries disappears after taking the control variables into account. The very low status of the migrants from elsewhere in Europe is the result of a lack of resources, whereas the very high status of migrants from France to Algeria is the result not of selection but the colonial relationship between France and Algeria at the time. Finally, we repeat the main analyses, this time including only French bridegrooms who marry in a city because they provide a better comparison with those in our data who married in Algerian cities. The non-migrants and internal migrants in the cities have a higher status than those in the whole of France. The status score for non-migrants is 57.3 versus 55.3 and for internal migrants 56.8 versus 55.0—only slightly lower than the status of non-migrants in Algeria (58.4). If we control for the resources of the bridegrooms, both categories of bridegroom marrying in France become indistin- guishable from the non-migrant bridegrooms in Algeria (Table 12). Table 12 Regression Analysis of Algerian and French Bridegrooms’ Status on Type of Migrant and Controls, 1870–1872 and 1910–1912 (Unstandardized Coefﬁcients, Multiple Imputation; N = 4,524) Intercept Type of migrant: Non-migrants in Algeria From France to Algeria (1.5 generation) From France to Algeria (ﬁrst generation) Internal migrants in France Non-migrants in France (ref.) From elsewhere to Algeria (1.5 generation) From elsewhere to Algeria (ﬁrst generation) Controls: Father’s status Age Signature Period: 1870–1872 (ref.) 1910–1912 Adjusted R2 *Slightly different between the twenty imputed data sets. NOTE French bridegrooms from cities only. B 19.14 0.70 4.38 4.52 −0.57 −1.90 −1.50 0.49 0.16 6.68 0.29 0.22–0.23* P 0.00 0.31 0.00 0.00 0.43 0.03 0.13 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.48 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 261 Our main result, however, does not change. The ﬁrst- and 1.5- generation migrants from France to Algeria still achieve a consid- erably higher status than those who stay in France. Although not the main focus of this study, the worse outcomes for those who migrated from other countries to Algerian cities relative to those for French non-migrants is certainly intriguing. It suggests that migration to a country without a colonial tie to the country of origin and with a different spoken language harmed a migrant’s initial position in the labor market. This article advances the discussion of historical and contemporary studies of intergenerational social mobility, migration, and the nature of colonial societies, while introducing an interesting Fran- cophone case into a literature dominated by attention to English- speaking settlers. The status attainment of migrants to colonies has not seen much quantitative study. We asked how the process of migration inﬂuences status by comparing migrants to Algeria with stayers in both France and Algeria. Do migrants pay a penalty compared to natives? If so, which migrants suffered the most? To answer, we compared natives with migrants in Algeria, distin- guishing between French migrants who shared the dominant language in the destination country and other migrants who did not. We also looked at differences between the ﬁrst and 1.5 gen- erations of migrants in the years 1870–1872 and 1910–1912. In the future, our study could extend into more of the twen- tieth century by including the non-public civil marriage records or the ecclesiastical marriage records of the Roman Catholic Church, the originals of which for the dioceses of Algiers, Oran, and Constantine are now in France. A study of the status attained at a later age would also be worthwhile. Linking marriage records would allow us to follow the career patterns of these men between their own marriage and that of their children. Future studies could also investigate the extent to which data are available outside the main cities in this study. Some migrants settled on land outside the cities. Including those who remained farmers could affect our results, as could including migrants from mainland France to Algeria who soon returned to France. Future research could also look at aspects unstudied herein—such as return migration to France, migrants who did not marry in Algeria, Algerian citizens who temporarily went to France to marry—as well as status attainment l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 262 | M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S outside our four cities. A detailed case study of migration from a location in mainland France to Algeria through an internal labor market, a branch of government, or a company would also be illuminating. Though identifying the right sources might prove difﬁcult, an examination of the subaltern, non-citizen popula- tions might help to unravel the internal mechanisms of colonial domination. Dealing with the questions at hand in this article, our theo- retical framework, drawn from the sociological and economic- history literature, is abstract enough to have a wide reach but concrete enough to be tested. At this point, we cannot surmise the extent to which our ﬁndings can be generalized, but we offer them as null hypotheses for further research. In line with our theoretical expectations, migrants to Algeria from outside France were observably less successful than those from France. Not only did they originate from lower social classes, and likely a negative selection from Italy and other mostly Mediterranean countries, they also lacked the language proﬁciency of French migrants and the understanding of how French busi- nesses and colonial administration worked—not to mention the valuable asset of having friends and connections in high places. Contrary to expectations, migrants to Algeria from France were more successful than native-born (non-Muslim) Algerian cit- izens. One reason might be their better resources. On average, French migrants were more literate than Algerian non-migrants and their fathers more professionally elevated than were those of Algerian non-migrants. Another possible explanation might be that migrants from France had closer ties to the colonial adminis- tration and business than did people already residing in Algeria. After all, Algeria, which comprised three départements of France, was just a short distance away by boat. Some of the French migrants may well have been brought to Algeria with the express purpose of ﬁlling high-status positions, or they may have had pre- existing connections that enabled them to obtain such employ- ment. Many of these newcomers may have arrived with the latest skills in, say, winemaking or construction, giving them a leg up on those born in Algeria. Arguably, because Algeria functioned as a French region and an integrated part of the national labor market, the same business- and educational-selection systems operated there. In the absence of information, one might assume that major l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 263 companies would recruit men in France to ﬁll important positions in their Algerian branches.32 The most prestigious positions, then as well as now, were accessible predominantly to those who attended the top schools in France and earned the highest grades. French migrants to Algeria at this level were not likely to lose human capital when they moved. Those who migrated from Paris, or even from the provincial universities and technical schools, brought new knowl- edge and new human and cultural capital to Algeria that were redolent of success, even though they were not born into local networks of friends and patrons.33 This potential explanation is also in accord with our second unexpected ﬁnding. The 1.5-generation migrants were no more successful than were those of the ﬁrst generation. We expected that children who came to Algeria would be at an advantage, because they had the beneﬁt of parents to support them in their careers. But this process might have been offset by their parents’ direct ties to the colonial administration and their pre-ordained, nontransferable positions high in the colonial hierarchy. The French educational- and business-selection procedures might have made such ties especially favorable for new migrants. If this interpretation is correct, sociological theories of migration need a little tweaking when applied to French colonies, especially to nearby Algeria, which had important votes in French parliament that could not be ignored.34 See the discussion of social (and human) capital theories above, as well as n. 14, which 32 As a case in point, Alain Durafour, born in France and trained as an engineer in Aix, was the founding father of the Durafour factory. He worked for various companies in France before moving to Algeria in 1902 with expertise in building with metal. His ﬁrst co-founded factory in Algiers expanded rapidly to become a major player before World War I. He then established his own factory in 1924, expanding even more rapidly with new headquarters in Bônne and Tunis. His factories built department stores, prefectures, post ofﬁces, movie theatres, etc. (even a Bon Marché store for Algiers in 1923). See Aïche, “Metal construction in Algiers.” 33 deals with patronage networks. 34 The interests of the settlers and the colonizing state were more complex in Algeria than in the archetypical settler colony, as construed by Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A The- oretical Overview (Houndmills, 2012). Far outnumbered by the indigenous population, settlers rejected interference by the French state but also needed its protection. Hence, they could not break away completely, but they had room to maneuver since they elected three deputies to the French parliament whose votes were in high demand. The clientelism of the Bertagna brothers, Dominque and Jerome, for example, was covered to some extent by Gaston Thompson, their patron in parliament. See the various articles cited above in the 2018 special issue of Settler Colonial Studies. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 264 | M A RC O H . D . VA N L E E U W E N AN D I NE K E MA A S Future research could focus on case studies of the metropole exporting human and cultural capital to the colonies, favoring French immigrants whose strengths could offset any losses in local social capital, even in a colonial setting rife with clientelism. French- men who stayed in mainland France, both internal movers and stayers, achieved a lower status than those who migrated to Algeria from France. Did the most talented migrate, or were the opportu- nities in Algeria clearly better than in the homeland? We cannot rule out the possibility that colonial migrants had unobserved traits that set them above non-migrants, such as industriousness or the ability to adapt quickly to new circumstances. The evidence herein, however, does not point in that direction: Neither differences in social background nor in basic human capital can fully explain the status differences between migrants and residents. Frenchmen born in mainland France had more to gain than mere status by migrating to the colonies. The perks that befell them in colonial society were greater than those that they were likely to enjoy in France. As Abu-Lughod observed for migrants to the Maghreb, “[They] aspired to a life not at the level to which they had been accustomed, but at the level to which they wished to become accustomed. For, as was the case with Englishmen who went to India, most of the immigrants who ﬂocked to Morocco were working-class or petit-bourgeois at best. They migrated chieﬂy to improve their positions, and the standards they wished to establish for themselves in Morocco were deﬁnitely at a level far above their lifestyles at home; they were commensurate with their new positions as part of the ruling caste.”35 The dual reward associated with colonial migration—gaining social status and enjoying the advantages of being colonizers—was apparently widespread and consequential. It helped to create the kind of deep bond between colonizers and colony that ultimately made leaving more problematical when native Algerians launched an armed campaign for independence. In Sessions’ words, “French Algeria was a textbook case of this pattern. Despite their often- humble origins, the Français d’Algérie came to enjoy tremendous economic privilege that was defended by their elected represen- tatives and a powerful lobby in Paris, and their sense of familial 35 Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco, 173. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 S O C IA L M O B I LI T Y T H R O U G H M IG R A T I O N | 265 afﬁnity with the metropole was strengthened by the assimilationist ﬁction that Algeria was part of France itself. Hence, it took eight years of ﬁghting for Algerian nationalists to uproot the settlers in the twentieth century, and the horriﬁc violence of that struggle left scars that long endure after … Algerian independence.”36 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 3 2 2 2 5 2 0 5 9 0 7 2 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 8 3 3 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 36 Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London, 1999); Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 154; Hassett, “Proud Colins”; Martin Evans, “Towards an Emotional History of Settler Decolonisation: De Gaulle, Political Masculinity and the End of French Algeria 1958–1962,” Settler Colonial Stud- ies, VIII (2018), 213–243; Sessions, By Sword and Plow, 323–324. The movement for indepen- dence has left its wounds in Algeria as well as in France. The often hostile reception of the 800,000 pied-noirs in France in 1962 was devastating. It put them in the strange position of belonging to the past, forced to live in a society that either despised them or wanted to forget them. Many pied-noirs exhibited feelings of shame, guilt, despair, and bewilderment; others expressed hatred for Algeria, Charles De Gaulle, the French state, or new migrants. See Fiona Barclay, “Remembering Algeria: Melancholy, Depression and the Colonising of the Pieds- Noirs,” Settler Colonial Studies, VIII (2018) 8, 244–261; Emmanuelle Comtat, “From Indigènes to Immigrant Workers: Pied-Noir Perceptions of Algerians and People of Algerian Origin in Postcolonial France,” idem, 262–282; Smith, Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, LIII:2 (Autumn, 2022), 225–265. image

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