• Part I. Continuity and Complexity: Migrations from East Elbian Germany and Galician Poland: 1. German emigration research, north, south, and east: findings, methods, and open questions Walter Kamphoefner; 2. Nineteenth-century continental and transoceanic emigrations: a history of East Elbian Prussia Rainer Mühle; 3. Overseas emigration from Mecklenburg-Strelitz: the geographic and social contexts Axel Lubinski; 4. Emigration from Regierungsbezirk Frankfurt/Oder, 1815–93 Uwe Reich; 5. Preserving or transforming role?: Migrants and Polish territories in the era of mass migrations Adam Walaszek; Part II. Internal German Migrations and In-Migrations: 6. Traveling workers and the German labor movement Horst Rössler; 7. Migration in Duisberg, 1821–1914 James H. Jackson Jr; 8. In-migration and emigration in an area of heavy industry: the example of Georgsmarienhütte, 1856–70 Susanne Meyer; 9. Foreign workers in and around Bremen, 1884–1918 Karl Marten Barfuss; Part III. Women's Migration: Labor and Marriage Markets: 10. The international marriage market: theoretical and historical perspectives Suzanne M. Sinke; 11. Making service serve themselves: immigrant women and domestic service in North America, 1850–1920 Joy K. Lintelman; 12. German domestic servants in America, 1850–1914: a new look at German immigrant women's experience Silke Wehner; 13. Acculturation of immigrant women in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century Diedre Mageean; Part IV. Acculturation in and Return from the United States: 14. Communicating the old and the new: German immigrant women and their press in comparative perspective around 1900 Monika Blaschke; 15. Return migration to an urban center: the example of Bremen, 1850–1914 Karen Schniedewind; 16. Migration, ethnicity, and working class formation: Passaic, New Jersey, 1889–1926 Sven Beckert; 17. Changing gender roles and emigration: the example of German Jewish women after 1933 and their emigration to the United States, 1933–45 Sibylle Quack; Conclusion: migration past and present: the German experience Klaus J. Bade; Bibliographic essay; Research on the German migrations, 1820s to 1830s: a report on the state of German scholarship Dirk Hoerder.

'… brilliant, readable and path-breaking … a brilliant piece of social history, with essays that come alive because of the range of sources used and their consequent readability'. English Historical Review