ABSTRACT
The relationship between migration and labour militancy has been the subject of conflicting interpretations since the early years of industrialization. In 1844 the socialist leader Flora Tristan visited the rapidly industrializing Stéphanois region, the ‘cradle of the Industrial Revolution in France’, as part of a nationwide tour designed to unite the working classes around a common political platform. She confided her impressions to her diary where she blamed working-class quiescence on the effect of migration: ‘Beasts! Idiots! Each and every one, the appearance of peasants…Indeed, the entire local population comes from the mountains to the town… The dress of these people is that of the countryside “citified” [envillisée]… Everyone speaks an abominable patois’ (Tristan 1980, vol. 1, p. 213). On her way to Rivede-Gier she ‘examined with care the appearance of the workers that I met with on the road, all appeared to be as stupid and as ignorant as the worst off at Saint-Etienne’ (Tristan 1980, vol. 2, p. 5).
