Suchergebnisse

Δεν παρατίθεται περἰληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Lina Venturas – Dimitria Groutsis, The Cold War and international migration regulation: The establishment of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration The immediate post WWII period saw the establishment of the Inter-governmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) (now International Organisation for Migration, IOM), as a key organisation in the management of post WWII migration. This paper examines the debates and policies surrounding the creation of the ICEM as an agent responsible for the facilitation and administration of labour migration from parts of Europe to a variety of overseas countries. At the conclusion of the Second World War, the problems surrounding 'surplus population' and unemployment in Europe were discussed in many international forums. It was from these discussions that a consensus emerged which saw emigration as a viable solution. To this end, in 1951, the International Labour Organisation convened a Migration Conference in Naples, bringing together key stakeholders. The Naples Conference failed, an outcome driven mainly by the US. The US was particularly concerned with economic stagnation and mounting social unrest related to the 'surplus population' in European countries in this Cold War period. At the same time however, it strived at limiting international influence over migration and refugee policies and on receiving countries retaining their sovereign immigration policies. In spite of the disagreements and through a process of negotiation, the US subsequently led the creation of an intergovernmental body, which was established at a conference convened in Brussels in 1951. This newly formed organisation, initially named the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME), was open only to states with a 'liberal' political regime and had specifically designed functions based on inter-governmental negotiations. The US ensured its predominance in the organization through budgetary control and other means. In 1953, the PICMME became a permanent 'fixture' of migration regulation and was renamed the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM). Hereafter, ICEM offered operational and financial assistance for migrants' transportation, language training, reception facilities, settlement services and labour market placement.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Kostas Raptis, Merchants in Imperial Austria during the 'Long' Nine­teenth Century This article, which draws mainly on the Archives of the Austrian Ministry of Commerce, as well as on contemporary works and modern li­ terature, focuses on the examination of the historical course of merchants (above all the whole sale traders and the well suited shopkeepers and retail merchants) in Old Austria as a distinctive group within the Central European bourgeoisie. The contribution of the merchant­magnates (Großhändler) to the industrialization of the Austrian Half of the Habsburg Empire and the formation of a powerful business class, the importance of the involvement of businessmen from abroad in Austrian wholesale and foreign trade, the grip of the state and imperial allegiance in the commercial sector, the social position and the political activity of merchants– primarily at local and regional levels –as well as the attitudes of the multi­ethnic merchant class towards all kinds of nationalist movements in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, are the central issues of this essay. Merchant­magnates, among whom many of foreign provenance or/ and not of Catholic faith (Protestants, Jews and Greek­orthodox) established themselves as the most active entrepreneurial group within the Austrian bourgeoisie during most of the nineteenth century (at least until the 1870s), since they exploited promptly every new opportunity to accumulate and augment their capital and income: in industry, banking, insurance and other share­holding companies, transport, shipping and real estate. The bourgeois status of the Austrian merchants is confirmed for the same period by their participation in all sorts of (bourgeois) associations, their subscription to public benefit causes, their charitable and philanthropic activities. The imperial state's favorable disposition towards entrepreneurs in general and merchants in particular, its recognition and reward of their contribution to the Austrian economy and export trade, of their mercantile knowledge and professional experience, as well as of their charity and philanthropic work, are documented in the appointment of honorary consuls of Austria abroad or of consuls of foreign states in the capital and cities of the Monarchy, the conferring of the highest social distinctions on merchants by Emperor Franz Joseph through award of medals, honorary titles and titles of nobility or the merchants' collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce as elected members and officials of chambers of commerce, as experts, special advisers and commission agents. In addition to the merchants' indirect relations with politics there were direct ones too, in other words their active participation as elected representatives, primarily to municipal councils and secondarily to the local and imperial parliaments of Austria after the constitutional reforms of 1860­1861. During the so­called era of liberalism, from the 1860s up to the mid­1880's, it was mainly german­speaking merchants, who, together with industrialists and other middle class groups, dominated in most towns, whereas in the three decades which preceded the First World War –an era of increasing anti­semitism and nationalism– they had to share power with new emerging petit­bourgeois strata (among them many shopkeepers). The article concludes with a remark on the upheavals caused to the merchant world by the two World Wars and national­socialism, which destroyed the unified economic space of Austria­Hungary, nationalized its cosmopolitan bourgeoisie and finally led to the expulsion, material depravation or/and extermination of such a dynamic and prominent group, like the Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs, followed by the abolition of the capitalist economy by the new socialist regimes in Central and East­Central Europe after 1945.