The Encyclopedia: Idea, Concept, Realization

Theorizing Cross-Cultural Migrations: The Case of Eurasia since 1500

“…If we take Europe in the period 1500–1900, there is a broadly shared consensus that a mobility transition took place in the nineteenth century as part of the broader “modernization” process, which uprooted the assumed stationary nature and stability of European societies (Osterhammel 2014; Zelinsky 1971: 234). Since the 1980s, however, historians have questioned the supposedly sedentary and immobile character of Europe, showing that the joint processes of commercialization, state formation (war), and globalization since the late fifteenth century encouraged people to leave their places of birth, permanently or temporarily (Bade et al 2011; Moch 2003), moving to work as domestics, tramping artisans, and casual workers in cities, as mercenary soldiers in other parts of Europe, as sailors all over the world, but also moving as colonists to remote areas of expanding empires, such as Russia and the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. The CCMR method enables us to capture these migrations and the trends over time, as visualized in figure 3.…”

“…In both cases, we can speak of an intensive mixing of people from different cultural backgrounds in spaces with a high population density. Moreover, due to the generally open-access nature of cities and armies (especially in Western Europe) (Davids and Lucassen 1995; de Vries 1984; Lucassen 2013) and the on average relatively high level of human capital of the migrants (Bade et al 2011; van Lottum 2011; van Lottum et al 2011), these CCMs were characterized by multiple interactions with a high impact. It seems reasonable to assume that this caused considerable social change/development and stimulated social development: knowledge, ideas, and labor floated freely and the intense (military and otherwise) competition between cities and between states promoted economic growth and the accumulation of technological expertise (Davids 2008; Mokyr 2002).…”

“…We lack good statistics on international migration before the nineteenth century, but it seems reasonable to assume that moves across national borders increased substantially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries due to the various transport revolutions (from sailing to steamships in the mid-nineteenth century, trains not much later, and—cheap—air traffic in the twentieth century, especially from the 1960s onward). Furthermore, the global rise of human rights regimes, anticolonialism, and antiracism movements, embodied in the ideals of the United Nations and UNESCO (Hazard 2012; Jensen 2016; Mazower 2009), opened the Atlantic to increasing numbers of Asian and African migrants, starting with flows from the colonies to the various metropoles after World War II (Bade et al 2011; Hoerder 2002; Hoerder and Kaur 2013; Lucassen 2016a; Ness 2013). Until that moment, Africans and Asians were largely excluded, except for the millions of African slaves in the Americas.…”

“…There are, however, important exceptions to this general picture. First, early modernists, untouched by nation-state ideology and the focus on low-skilled labor migrants, have produced many studies on internal, temporary, and organizational migrants (Bade et al 2011; Hoerder 2002). Moreover, geographers, sociologists, and family historians who are interested in micromobility and who take the household as their point of departure have done groundbreaking work on other forms of migration and mobility 1 .…”

Theory of Digital Natives in the Light of Current and Future E-Learning Concepts

“…[11]; [12]). In our context, immigrants have to adapt the language of the information society but always retain in the pre-digital age -this is what Prensky ([6]) called "digital immigrant accent" (ibid.).…”