Sample collection on women migrants at Archives d’Indre et Loire below
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Collection: Comité d’aide et de protection aux femmes immigrantes employées dans l’agriculture | Committee for the Assistance and Protection of Immigrant Women Employed in Agriculture (France, Poland: 1800–1940)
Description: The collection of the Committee for the Assistance and Protection of Immigrant Women Employed in Agriculture contains two bundles (10 M 119–120) concerning the operations of the committee, activity reports and various statistics. Next comes a set of nominal files of immigrant women (10 M 119–128) placed in the agricultural sector, then four bundles (10 M 129–132) of nominal files of immigrant women who have left the department. Finally, one bundle (10 M 133) concerns the nominal files of deceased immigrant women or those placed in asylums.
The name of the departmental office for agricultural manpower has changed over the years. At the beginning of the 1930s, it became the Office for Agricultural Labour and Immigration. The Committee for the Protection of Immigrant Women Employed in Agriculture was attached to this office. The collection of this committee corresponds to the archives of Jeanne Duval, labour inspector in charge of this committee from 1930 to 1934. Initially created at the request of the Polish authorities, who made its establishment a condition for the immigration of young Poles to work in the fields, the committee’s prerogatives were gradually extended to agricultural workers of all nationalities. Its primary function was to protect very young women who did not speak French and worked on farms where they were often victims of various forms of abuse (non-payment of wages, poor working and living conditions, rape, etc.).
Archive address: 18 Pl. de la Préfecture, 37000 Tours (France)
Reference number: 10 M 119–133
Links: Access the archive’s website HERE and the collection’s search HERE.
Publications: Françoise Battagliola. Histoire du travail des femmes. Paris: La Découverte, 2004.
Christophe Ferry. Le travail des femmes dans le département d’Indre-et-Loire. 2 vols. Tours: CNRS, Université François-Rabelais, 1974–1975.
Contributor: Marie Ruiz