Jelle van Lottum, Professor by special appointment at the Department of History, Art History and Classics, has received a grant of €800,000 from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to set up a project on social mobility of migrant workers in the early modern period. This was recently announced as part of the NWO Open Competition L.
Opportunities for migrants
The funding enables Van Lottum to set up a project that examines the opportunities of migrant workers in the Dutch labour market, with a focus on the eighteenth century. Despite better wages, migrants often experienced challenges such as loss of status, housing problems and poverty. Career advancement was often the only way to escape these circumstances. The aim of the project is to understand what it took to achieve this and what obstacles existed. With the results of this research, the researchers hope to gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by migrants then and now and contribute to a broader understanding of the causes of inequality in society.
The research will be carried out under the banner of the Huygens Institute (KNAW), where Prof. van Lottum is working as a senior researcher, and will also take place from the Faculty of Arts, in close cooperation with the Applied History research group and a PhD student affiliated to the Economical, Social and Demographic History (ESDG) expert group.