Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors explore how looking for work becomes a means by which participants (individuals, placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, and schools) articulated specific interests, perspectives, and agendas. Taking an exploratory approach, the chapters illustrate different approaches to the history of employment and job searching, ranging from organizational and regulatory histories to the analysis of practices and autobiographical accounts. In the process, they uncover the interrelations of search practices and attempts to arrange placement services.

Alexander Mejstrik is a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, ERC-project The Production of Work. He is co-Editor of theAustrian Journal of Historical Studies and recently co-edited a special issue entitledDie Erzeugung des Berufs (1/2013) with Thomas Buchner and Sigrid Wadauer.

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Finding Work and Organizing Placement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner, Alexander Mejstrik

Chapter 1. Organizing the Market? Labour Offices and Labour Markets in Germany, 1890-1933
Thomas Buchner

Chapter 2. Between Labour Market Constituencies: The Struggles to Establish Vocational Counselling in Weimar Germany
David Meskill

Chapter 3.Organizing Labour Markets: the British Experience
Noel Whiteside

Chapter 4. Creating a National Labour Market: Public Labour Exchanges in Sweden, 1890-1920
Nils Edling

Chapter 5. Mediation, Allocation, Control: Trade Unions and the Changing Faces of Labour Market Intermediation in Western Europe in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Ad Knotter

Chapter 6. Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the Bourses du Travail in Late Nineteenth Century France
Malcolm Mansfield

Chapter 7. Transforming Soldiers into Workers. The Austrian Employment Agency for Disabled Veterans During the First World War
Verena Pawlowsky, Harald Wendelin

Chapter 8. The Usage of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria
Irina Vana

Chapter 9.A Vocation in the Family Household? Household Integration, Professionalization and Changes of Positions in Domestic Service (Austria, 1918-1938)
Jessica Richter

Chapter 10. Tramping in Search of Work. Practices of Wayfarers and of Authorities (Austria, 18801938)
Sigrid Wadauer

Chapter 11. Labour Mediation Among Seasonal Workers, Particularly the Lippe Brickmakers, 1650-1900
Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen

Chapter 12.Sardars, Kanganies and Maistries: Intermediaries in the Indian Labour Diaspora During the Colonial Period
Amit Kumar Mishra

Chapter 13.Organizing the Labour Market in a Liberal Welfare State: The Origins of the Public Employment Service in Australia
Anthony ODonnell

Concluding Remarks
Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner, Alexander Mejstrik

Notes on Contributors
Index