Migrant Men in Misery

Result from a Qualitative Life History Analysis on Individuals and Families Concerning Internal Migration, Health and Life Circumstances in Early 19th Century, Linköping, Sweden

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore and understand under what health and life circumstances internal migrants lived, in a small early 19th century Swedish town during a time of considerable social change, and also how these migrants coped with their everyday lives. By following a small number of men throughout their lives in a family context, using mainly church registers, a group of ’migrant men in misery’ has been qualitatively discerned. These men´s problems were found to peak in a phase of their lives when they lived in town with wives and children to support. The wives shared the tough life in town with their husbands but the overall impression still support a conclusion which put the spouses´ different gender roles´ in a stressful situation in focus, where a lack of social integration in town could be an additional factor.