SRP-Onderzoekszwaartepunt: Inequality, Migration and Social Relations in Urban Brabant and Flanders, c. 1350-1914

This programme builds upon the expertise of the centre for Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes (HOST) to carry out an integrated research agenda on the ways in which growing economic inequality interacted with migration patterns and social relations in the late medieval, early modern and 19th-century city. Situated in one of the most urbanised, commercialised and industrialized regions of medieval, early modern and 19th-century Europe, the cities of Flanders and Brabant serve as a particularly useful empirical case, in which variegated and divergent urban trajectories can be contrasted and compared. By developing a comparative and long-term perspective to historical processes that have many similarities to contemporary challenges associated with increasing urbanization, inequality and spatial mobility, the research programme aims to challenge the main presuppositions that currently frame the binary thinking on the interactions between inequality, migration and community, and carries the potential to fundamentally alter the scope of current debates on the topic.