Kinship and co-residence: family and household experiences of rural-urban migrants in Denmark 1870-1945
PhD project by Lise Bødtker Sunde, junior investigator.
When people moved from Denmark’s countryside to its growing cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they left more than fields and farms behind - they left entire social worlds. For Lise Bødtker Sunde, understanding the migration experience means looking closely at the people who mattered most in daily life: family and household members.
I’m very interested in how people’s choices, opportunities, and experiences were shaped by their everyday environments and their relationships with those around them,” Lise explains. “In my project, I focus especially on family and household relationships. These were the people you lived with, ate with, and often worked alongside every day. Beyond that, kinship’s social, legal, and emotional ties also connected you to people in other places and households. They were at the heart of most people’s lives and experiences.
Lise’s PhD project examines the life courses of rural-urban migrants in Denmark from 1870 to 1945. In her research, she asks the following questions:
- Which household positions did migrants experience during their lives?
- How did their urban lives compare to what they knew from their rural origins?
- How did migration impact family formation - and, conversely, how did kinship ties and social networks influence individual migration experiences?
To explore these questions, Lise works with a fascinating mix of sources: massive historical datasets from the Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet) - including millions of transcribed census records linked by the Link-Lives project - and a rich collection of personal memoirs and autobiographies held by the National Museum of Denmark. By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, she approaches the lives of rural-urban migrants from multiple angles.
Her work contributes to TRANSITION’s broader ambition to uncover how major societal changes shape - and are shaped by - people’s lived experiences.