Demographics of Andaen

Citizenship, Residence, and Demography

Legally speaking, Andaen's inhabitants are divided into three groups: Citizens, residents, and sojourners. In common parlance, sojourners are more often referred to as visitors, immigrants, itinerants, temporary workers, or simply "temporaries" or "temps."
Citizens are land-owners or their families, and they enjoy all the civil rights offered by the government of Andaen though they must also pay taxes on both their business revenues (if they own a business) and on their real estate. Roughly 88 percent of citizens are ethnically Haifatnehti, though among these are individuals of mixed Haifatnehti-Northerner ancestry whether they readily acknowledge this or not. The rest are primarily successful merchants, or their descendants, from across the Continent; it is also rumored that a handful of Shadrusun hold Andaen citizenship as well, but those who are asked to substantiate these rumors are unable to say with certainty what land or city property is owned by these Shadrusun.
Residents are those who hold writs of residence in Andaen but have not yet bought real estate, or have not yet earned permission to do so. The typical routes to earning a writ of residence in Andaen are owning a registered business or being registered as practicing a skilled trade. Additionally, a plurality number of residents hold a writ of residence by heredity, a document denoting that the individual's ancestry hails back to the city's reconstruction after the devastation brought by the Crusade and the Reconquest. Residents have access to basic protection and social services as do citizens, and must also pay revenue taxes, but do not have legal representation to the extent that citizens do. Roughly 65 percent of residents are established merchants and other business owners, while the remainder are craftspeople, physicians, surgeons, bureaucrats, and other specialists. An undocumented number of residents, perhaps several hundred, are thought to be mages and may have earned a writ of residency on this basis; some of these mages are (non-land-owning) graduates or faculty of Andaen University of the Esoteric Arts, while others have taken up trades or own business while also happening to be practitioners of magic. A slim majority of residents are ethnically Haifatnehti, with the rest mostly being from Near Takhet or Saukkan Ghat.
Sojourners are all other people who are permitted to live in the city, usually in short-term lodging such as inns or longer-term yet still temporary lodging such as boarding houses. Sojourners are not expected to pay any taxes, but they must also pay out of pocket for access to the city's services, and they risk lacking proper representation if they should be considered to be on the wrong side of the law, nor do they have legal recourse against perceived slights by residents and citizens. Sojourners hail from virtually all ethnic or cultural backgrounds and non-business-owning walks of life, but more than eighty percent of them are either manual laborers or workers in the city's booming service industry.

Socioeconomic Demographics

While virtually anyone who enjoys access to gainful employment or the city's services can expect to live at least a comfortable and secure life, there are multiple highly visible tiers of social status in the city, these tiers mainly being tied to wealth.
The High Society or Upper Citizenry hail from wealthy families who have owned land in the City-Stae of Andaen for multiple generations. They generally enjoy lives of luxury, sometimes feeding off the wealth built by generations before them, and some of them own multiple properties. All of them own land within the walls of the City of Andaen proper. Many are ethnically Haifatnehti, but a number of others hail from the lines of Saukkanese princes, Takheti merchants, and the occasional entrepreneur from farther afield. Contacts with the Upper Citizenry are envied by those wish to move up the social ladder of Andaen.
The New Citizenry, often dubbed the Lower Citizenry by their social superiors, are those who have earned citizenship within their own lifetimes or whose families only own land outside the city proper. While the Upper Citizenry dismiss them as uncultured and not well established, residents of the city view them with a mixture of admiration and envy. The Lower Citizenry are roughly as ethnically diverse as their social superiors, but they are either in the process of acculturating to life in Andaen's higher eschelons or openly oppose aspects of High Society culture that they find needlessly old-fashioned.
The label business owner is normally reserved for business-owning residents, those who have not yet earned citizenship. The fortunes of business owners vary considerably, and their lives are highly competitive, but barring a personal fiscal disaster, they usually dress well and live comfortably. They are often also seen as the most ambitious, driven, and energetic inhabitants of Andaen; they are infamous coffee-drinkers and either try to make the most efficient possible use of each day or spend much of their free time bumping shoulders at cafes, higher-end taverns, and other social venues. They usually live in the second or third floors of their own shophouses (which in turn are rented from citizens), though a few live in long-term lodging outside their places of business.
The skilled tradespeople are artisans and others whose particular abilities have been deemed important enough by the city government to merit writs of residence. The most common professions among them are shipwrights, smiths of all sorts, artisan carpenters, jewelers (minus most pearlists, those who work pearls into jewelry and other crafts), physicians, and various artists or artisans who've earned patronage from prominent citizens. A few skilled tradespeople are longer-term students at higher educational institutions; others still are thought to be mages who hire themselves out to solve unusual problems for those who can afford their services. Skilled tradespeople mainly live in long-term accomodations such as inns and sub-lets of shophouses, and the majority can afford to hire their own apprentices.
The so-called lower tradespeople include apprentices as well as tradespeople and craftspeople in less lucrative fields. Their lives vary from busy to moderately strenuous, as they must work fairly hard to make rent payments or to earn their keep as apprentices. In the evenings, they can often be seen at cheap dining establishments alleviating their stress through drink and/or social activities, though others are more conservative with their wages and live humbler, quieter lives.
The city's service workers mainly occupy so-called unskilled professions in the food, hospitality, and entertainment industries. Their wages are generally low and not necessarily stable, though a few entertainers enjoy rather high if inconsistent rates. A few among them work in the city's unlicensed--and therefore illict--businesses, including small gambling houses, brothels, and unlicensed vendor stalls in under-policed parts of the city. The city's service workers mainly live in economical boarding houses, having access to basic shelter, humble meals, and cheap drinks, though some get by partly on charity as well.
The city's sailors and other manual laborers are roughly equal in number to the service workers, due largely to the city's voluminous maritime traffic and trade. Imports and exports are so central to the city's economic activity that manual laborers of all stripes are sometimes mistakenly referred to as porters. The city's manual laborers mainly live in cheap short- or long-term accommodations in close proximity to their worksites; sailors tend to explore the city's social venues when coin and time are sufficient, while manual laborers can live long stretches of their lives in one sub-district of the city.
The circumstances of the unemployed vary considerably but are usually quite difficult. Most of the chronically unemployed physical and/or mental disabilities of one type or another, sometimes due to injuries related to manual labor or to armed conflict somewhere well outside jurisdiction of Andaen. A few of them are former businesspeople who have since fallen on hard times, but these people are more likely to sell their business--at a loss, if needed--and leave the city than to live within the city's walls in destitution.

Ethnic and Cultural Composition

[WIP]