Internationalizing Working-Class History since the 1970s: Challenges from Historiography, Archives, and the Web

In this essay the communication practices of labor migrants and their evolution from nineteenth-century print media to late twentieth-century electronic media provide the frame for a discussion of the limitations of national approaches to collection and interpretation. Multiple languages and knowledge of cultures of origin are required, cooperative library and research projects are necessary. On the basis of the Labor Newspaper Preservation Project it is argued that analysis of the bibliographic data by themselves, without going into the contents of the newspapers, revises current assumptions about processes of migration, acculturation, and internationalist class positions. The classic North American immigrant labor press came to an end in the 1970s. New patterns, feminization of migration and mobility to domestic and caregiving work, and new patterns of communication led to an ascendancy of electronic publications. Electronic publications and global rather than hemispheric migration will require different collecting strategies. These, like their printed predecessors, provide a perspective on migrants that differs from ethnicity and state-side approaches. Human rights rather than class struggles and migrant remittances rather the denationalization are the themes, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) rather than labor organizations are the publishers.