Transatlantic working-class institutions

This paper investigates the migration of English and Irish textile workers from Lancashire, England to Fall River, Massachusetts. Historians have traditionally focused on migration and immigrants in terms of the image of the deracinated peasants. This paper looks at the influence of the industrial experience in Europe before migration on the culture and institutions of industrial migrants and the impact of that experience and those institutions on the American industrial city. These migrants brought with them institutions and a consciousness which were forged in Europe and which directly affected the American setting. By looking at the interactions between Fall River and Lancashire and the functioning of the formal and informal institutions of the working class of Fall River the paper will analyse the transatlantic nature of the working-class experience.