Brother or Other? East European Students in Soviet Higher Education Establishments, 1948-1956
After World War II, bilateral agreements within the Eastern bloc brought youth from the newly established satellite states of Eastern Europe to study in higher education establishments in the USSR. Designed to impart Soviet knowledge and practices in the countries of people’s democracy as well as to create a sense of solidarity within the bloc, the training of East Europeans in the center of world communism proved a tension-filled affair. Spurred by the xenophobia and chauvinism of the Soviet home front during the early Cold War, Soviet administrators, faculty members and students related to the foreign students, despite their socialist credentials, as outsiders and sometimes as carriers of unwanted influences. For this reason, the educational agreements deepened the sense that fundamental differences existed between the Soviet Union and its client states in Europe.
Quelle: http://ehq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/44/1/80?rss=1
Negotiating Integration in Berlin’s Waxing Studios: Brazilian Migrants‘ Gendered Appropriation of Urban Consumer Spaces and ‚Ethnic‘ Entrepreneurship
Current discussions on immigration in Germany emphasize the economic benefits of migrant economies and ethnic entrepreneurship, pointing to the positive effects on the ‘integration’ of migrants into the German labour market and into German society. This article focuses on the ethnographic example of Brazilian small-scale businesswomen in Berlin, who run cosmetic salons specialized in body hair removal, and how they embed their businesses in the Berlin landscape of multicultural consumption. On the basis of their migration trajectories I discuss these women's manifold cultural, gendered and class-informed strategies of negotiating integration, encompassing not just their economic activity, the role of independent work and the associated social effects, but also the commodified beauty practice itself. Thereby, the article inquires into conceptions of emancipation connected to migrant women's entrepreneurship in their everyday life that is still highly constrained by migration and gender regimes.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/1/228?rss=1
Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany: Parallel Societies in a Hostile Environment
This article explores the relationship between Displaced Persons (DPs) and Germans in the postwar decade, focusing mostly on Ukrainian DPs. It shows how their almost complete separation from the German population led to well developed parallel societies, which were mutually approved for some time, and analyses the dissimilar motives of DPs and Germans for separation. As a consequence of mass resettlement, it is argued, the national microcosms lost their positive features while the hostile attitude of the outside world persisted. The missing revision in the segregation of foreigners from German society after the downfall of National Socialism is recognized as a burden on their future treatment in the FRG.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/1/92?rss=1
Migration and Urban Transformations: Frankfurt in the 1960s and 1970s
This article investigates the intersections of urban transformations and migration in the 1960s and 1970s, in the case of Frankfurt am Main. The socio-political and spatial transformations of the city, which began in the course of the guest worker regime, will be examined through exploring the housing situation and the settlement pattern in the urban space. In order to do this, the practices and effects of the gradual long-term settlement of working migrants and the subsequent influx of their families will be presented in relation to the formation of urban foreigner and social policies as well as local migration debates. An examination of the chosen time period will enable a discussion of the meaning of urban conflicts about migration for the negotiation of the national immigration question, which took place from the 1960s and 1970s in the context of an effective immigration reality in the cities on the one hand, and the federal guidelines of a non-immigration country, on the other.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/1/183?rss=1
The Oder-Neisse Line as a Place of Remembrance for Germans and Poles
This article takes the Oder region as an example to demonstrate the way in which memories of the Second World War and the postwar years are cultivated by residents of the region, and furthermore, how the place of remembrance of the Oder–Neisse line was encoded by Germans and Poles respectively. The Oder region saw an almost complete population exchange, which was a result of several migration processes. On both sides of the Oder–Neisse line, the memories of these events were manipulated politically and influenced the collective memory of the respective groups. The following text is based on the results of an Oral History project (www.pyrzany-kozaki.eu) carried out under my direction in 2011, as well as on the analysis of memoirs written by Polish new settlers in the 1950s and on reports by German refugees and expellees. These sources were the main focus of my research on the topic of ‘"Poland's Wild West" – forced migration and cultural appropriation of the Oder region 1945–1948’.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/1/75?rss=1
Anti-colonialism in a Post-Imperial Environment – The Case of Berlin, 1914-33
The period between the two world wars was formative for the emergence of anti-colonialism on a conceptual and organizational level. This article takes a closer look at the role Berlin played in that process during the First World War and the Weimar era. During that time emigres from different parts of Africa and Asia found a temporary home and political space in the German capital to promote their demands for national self-determination. Contrary to most studies on metropolitan anti-colonialism focusing on a particular national group this article uses the presence of a multitude of migrants from different imperial contexts to emphasize the coherence of anti-colonialism as a political field shaped by transnational and transimperial links. By asking what kind of interactions Berlin made possible or required of these migrant activists the article aims to contribute to the history of early anti-colonialism and, at the same time, add a transnational perspective to the established assessments of German society and politics between 1914 and 1933.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/1/134?rss=1
Changing the National Narrative: Evolution in Citizenship and Integration in Germany, 2000-10
The past 10 years of German history give evidence of a paradigm shift in Germany’s national narrative. The early years of the decade were marked by widespread denial at the elite level that Germany was a country of immigration and adherence to an assimilationist model of integration but progressed to the creation of a National Integration Plan by Christian Union Chancellor Angela Merkel and the liberalization of public opinion. Germany’s recent history shows dramatic discursive and policy changes. This article documents the changes in elite discursive scripts, showing the gradual acceptance and rejection of discourses about integration and their implications for national identity. It concludes that, though the changes are not universally liberal, the decade as a whole constitutes a remarkable liberalization of both elite discourse and public opinion.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/1/54?rss=1