Migration Network on the Borderland: Movement of the Jews from the Russian Empire through Habsburg Galicia

In my doctoral thesis, I aim to study the different patterns of Russian Jews’ migration through late imperial Habsburg Galicia. One of most important research questions of the project are: How the Jews from the Russian Empire got to Galicia and what were the mechanisms, and the scale of their transmigration? One of the methodologies I use is mapping the migration process to analyze the structure of the migration network and patterns of the migrants’ movement.

Mapping analysis of the transmigration of Russian Jews in Habsburg Galicia include the study of:

• the transport infrastructure (first of all railway connection)
• location of the offices and agents of the international migration and charities organizations
• involvement of the border towns in transmigration process
• the socio-cultural (religion, language) features of the cross-border migration network

The paper will focus on methodological framework of mapping Jewish migration through the borderland, and opportunities that this instruments brings to the historical analysis of migration process in the move. Primarily, mapping analysis provides the materials to explain the place of the imperial borderlands (as the points of passage) in the Jewish migrants’ movement from departure to the destination point. The main aim this paper is to visualize the spatial relations system between the actors, places, and migrants’ movement through geographical localization of the elements of migration network.