Page 221 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Urban Opportunities

ernization process. Unlike the early modern period, this stagnation can be
defined as a modernizing stagnation effect.
Among the factors influencing such demographic dynamics was the
vicinity of Trieste, with its expanding labour market, demand for food
resources and other economic opportunities. The ‘Trieste factor,’ however,
had different effects in different parts of the Karst countryside. In the vil-
lages near the city, it favoured demographic growth because agricultural
products such as milk, vegetables, and wine had privileged access to the
urban market. Moreover, the population could easily participate in the
city’s labour market and combine agricultural and other sources of income
without leaving their villages. Noteworthy economic sectors include fish-
ing, which in the coastal villages became an alternative economic resource
foranincreasingpartofthepopulation(Volpi Lisjak1995).Insomevillages
commercial activities and services benefitted from the traffic between the
city and the hinterland as well as by meeting the local population needs
and consumption. In the not-so-close areas, such as that of Tomaj, where
such immediate modalities of access to urban economic resources were not
possible, people became encouraged to leave the villages. Well-established
relations and social networks facilitated that. So, Karst rural communi-
ties proactively exploited the opportunities offered by the nearby city, in-
cluding through temporary labour mobility and permanent emigration, to
maintain their socio-economic autonomy and adapt to the challenges of
modernization. In the 1880s, as we have seen, Trieste was joined by inter-
nationally attractive areas incentivizing mid- and long-distance migration
and relocations.
As noted, Trieste represented an opportunity even before the general
rural-to-urban move took off in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Setting off for Trieste was not a rare social and economic choice in
the Tomaj area, at least from the beginning of the eighteenth century. The
question is, in which cases and under what circumstances this option was
exercised and how it changed over time and in various historical periods.
Classical studies on family history, including those in the immediate Tri-
este countryside, highlight land property as a fundamental platform for in-
terpreting migration as a strategic socio-economic pattern. In the village of
Dolina, Verginella notes, emigration was always a choice taken at the fam-
ily level, depending on the size and gender composition of the household,
its landholdings, and economic perspectives. Families with smaller or no
landholdings were more inclined to release their members. By moving to
the city, these members sought to avoid social marginalization, secure a

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