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This short paper forms the introduction to an open access Virtual Special Issue of 'German History' devoted to the topic 'Refugees and Migrants'. The context for this Special Issue is the current European refugee crisis: in this paper, we ask how History, a discipline whose object of study is the past, can formulate meaningful interventions in a crisis of the present. The full contents of the Special Issue can be accessed via http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/gh/refugees_migrants.html
Central European History, 2019
Central European History, 2019
This article puts forced migration at the center of the Federal Republic's history. Forced migration to Germany has often been understood as an unprecedented crisis, but, far from being an aberration, such migration has been a necessary component of the classic legitimating narratives of the Federal Republic and a crucial support for its postwar “economic miracle.” The official reception of forced migrants has been structured by a categorical distinction between genuine refugees and ersatz “economic refugees.” The former are lauded for their economic contributions to Germany, whereas those alleged to have migrated mainly for economic reasons are condemned as fraudulent opportunists. These categories have been continually transposed onto new groups of forced migrants, whose arrival is invariably grasped as a crisis. The unfolding of refugee “crises” and their resolutions have continually shown the artificiality of the distinction between genuine and economic refugees—while simult...
Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2007
This article examines a pressing problem for those concerned with research on forced migration-the absence of refugees from most historical work, and the low profi le of history in Refugee Studies. Using examples from Europe and South Asia, it considers why refugees have been "silenced" by history and how we can develop positive, inclusive approaches to the past.
The article historicizes the German 'refugee crisis' of 2015 in the context of post-World War II politics of migration and asylum in the country, focusing particularly on the reactions to the 'crisis' of 1992. That time, government reacted to more than 400,000 refugees from the Balkan wars with severe restrictions of the right to asylum, framed also within the ‘Dublin Regulation’ of the European Union. It is argued that German politics of immigration was mostly a kind of Realpolitik that subordinated humanitarian considerations to closed-border politics geared at keeping migrants out. Summer 2015, however, saw elements of humanitarianism in German refugee politics, understood, following Didier Fassin, as the introduction of moral sentiments into politics. This ‘humanitarianism’ was mostly accredited to Chancellor Angela Merkel. Yet the commitment of thousands of members of the German public ensured the sustainability of a ‘welcome culture’ intended to accommodate refugees, government politics quickly reverted to new restrictions that keep immigrants for many months or even years in a limbo of waiting. While to some extent government’s humanitarian discourse continues it becomes apparent that humanitarian politics is often a cover up for ulterior political motives. It is concluded that marking the events of 2015 as a refugee crisis enables in the first place the legitimization of politics of restriction like the externalization of EU borders into North African countries.
Executive Summary: - Faced with reports of current numbers of migrants coming to Europe, many have searched for historical comparisons. - These comparisons are often stripped of their context, and are as a result counter-productive or misleading. - Both the Kindertransport of 1938 and Hungarian refugee crisis of 1956 have been misleadingly cited as precedents to be emulated by policy-makers today. - Rather than drawing a straight line between two superficially similar events, we should pay more attention to the context of refugee crises, and ask what is distinctive about them. - Reference to history can nonetheless point to some long-term continuities in responses to refugees, such as: - Refugees are by definition an international problem, but states have always resisted any obligations imposed on them by outside actors. International organisations have a poor record of making states admit refugees they don’t want to take in. - Voluntary humanitarian work with refugees was and is often a dire necessity, but has always proved inadequate in material terms. - In spite of states’ persistent resistance to international solutions, the current crisis is unlikely to be successfully managed with anything other than a European-wide, even world-wide, programme of agreed responsibilities and the provision of generous resources.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2020
This paper brings memory and migration studies together. It focuses on the way the past was used in the context of the "refugee crisis" in Germany in 2015/2016. The analysis concentrates on how politicians and journalists used the memory of Germans' own migrations to legitimise rhetorically the political decision to open the borders and let more than a million people into the country, as well as to call for a welcoming attitude (Willkommenskultur) towards the refugees. It shows how, by doing so, they have contributed to the reframing of one of the founding identity narratives of the FRG, namely the one about "flight and expulsion", and thus helped to redraw Germany's identity boundaries in a more inclusive way.
Anthropology Matters
's volume Refugees Welcome? Difference and Diversity in a Changing Germany offers a contextualization and challenge of common narratives concerning the so-called 'refugee crisis' in Germany-a moment in contemporary German history which is not only characterized by a large influx of displaced people, but also by a sudden rise in sociopolitical tensions. In an effort to address these transformations, the volume asks a crucial question: in spite of political declarations of openness, are refugees actually welcome in Germany? To tackle this, it assesses public discourses regarding pro-and anti-refugee sentiments and challenges common modes of thinking which are held as self-evident by a politically divided public. As explained by Macdonald in her conclusion to the volume, the book follows a clear direction of thought-from fact to affect, from large-scale, universal differentiation to patterns of connectedness, and from past reality to contemporary transformations. Refugees Welcome? offers depth of focus on unaddressed perspectives in public discourse by acknowledging that the root of the crisis is its very categorization as such. Relating
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