Professor Marlou Schrover bids farewell
Marlou Schrover played an important role in the study of migration history for many years. Now she is bidding farewell.
Schrover began her career with a degree in journalism. ‘I was seventeen and I thought I was going to change the world,’ she recalls. Once she graduated, however, that activist streak proved difficult to realise. 'I was in my early twenties and a woman, which really made a difference at the time. If I wanted to achieve something, I had to be better prepared in terms of content. That's why I started studying history: to gain a stronger foothold in the field of journalism.’
Since making that decision, Schrover has never worked in an editorial office again. 'History turned out to be much more fun than journalism. You can work with the material yourself and come up with new arguments as to why things change or remain the same. That's the most exciting thing about being a historian.'
Class, gender and religion
Schrover is now inextricably linked to migration history, but she began her career with a different focus. ‘For what was then called your bachelor’s thesis, I wrote a paper about people living in caravans, whom I also interviewed. That was great fun. After that, I wrote a thesis about the poor. My doctoral thesis was about labour relations in the food industry, which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. A huge number of women, such as the “Verkade girls”, worked in this new industry. In addition, many of the entrepreneurs in the industry were Jewish, which led me to look at religion as well. Class, gender, religion, the intersection of inclusion and exclusion: all these aspects that are so important in migration history were therefore present in my work from an early stage.'
History from below
Schrover's research also tied in with a larger development in historiography. ‘The history-from-below movement has been very influential,’ she says. 'We have started to look less and less at kings and politicians and more and more at, for example, the trade union movement and the women's movement. As part of that, we started to conduct more interviews, but also to work with other sources.'
Schrover herself spent a long time studying cookbooks, mainly in the context of her teaching. ‘People often laughed when I said I was analysing cookbooks, but cookbooks are actually a very good starting point for discussing identity and diversity and the changes that take place.’
Increasingly interdisciplinary
Throughout her career, Schrover has seen her field become increasingly interdisciplinary. ‘Of course, we have the LDE Master's programme in Governance of Migration and Diversity (a collaboration between Leiden University, TU Delft and Erasmus University, ed.), in which history students study alongside students of law, political science, sociology and development studies. That mix is really enjoyable, although you shouldn't overestimate the interdisciplinary aspect. Many journals are still intended for a single discipline, for example sociology or history. That's fine too: ultimately, we train people for a single field, with the associated skills.’
Fact versus opinion
The declining respect for that scientific basis has been one of the less positive developments in society, she says. ‘In the media circus, people enjoy pitting opinions against each other. There's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes facts are suddenly presented as opinions. Then you get an “is it raining or isn't it raining” discussion. One glance outside and you know the answer, but as an expert you are still portrayed as someone with “just an opinion”, even though you have spent years doing research and the other person made up their opinion yesterday. That's a difficult position: if you sit down opposite such a pseudo-expert, you appear to be on equal footing, but if you don't sit down, that person has a much bigger platform.'
Back to the archives
Schrover wants to spend more time in the archives herself in the near future. ‘I often took students to the National Archives. There are always a few who stay there all day. They are captivated by that Sinterklaas feeling of opening a box without knowing exactly what's inside. It's fantastic to convey that feeling.’
In the coming period, Schrover will be spending more time in the archives. ‘Because I had quite a heavy teaching and administrative workload, I rarely visited the archives myself, even though I really enjoy it. Now I can spend a whole day there again, working with all the material I have collected. In the 1950s, for example, it was common for women who married non-Dutch nationals to lose their Dutch identity. At the same time, the government continued to interfere in their lives. That tension is very interesting. I also have a lot of documents about adoptions before 1956, when there was no adoption law yet, but children were still being adopted. I definitely want to do something with that too.'