Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Refugees and Migrants

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

Journal : GERHIS Article Doi : 10.1093/gerhis/ghv105 Article Title : Refugees and Migrants First Author : Neil Gregor Corr. Author : Neil Gregor INSTRUCTIONS We encourage you to use Adobe’s editing tools (please see the next page for instructions). If this is not possible, please (i) print out the proof, mark your corrections clearly in black ink, and fax it to +44 (0)1865 355921 (or scan it and email it to [email protected]) or (ii) send a list of corrections (in an email or Word attachment) listing each change in the following manner: line number, current text, change to be made. Please do not send corrections as track changed Word documents. Changes should be corrections of typographical errors only. Changes that contradict journal style will not be made. These proofs are for checking purposes only. They should not be considered as inal publication format. The proof must not be used for any other purpose. In particular we request that you: do not post them on your personal/ institutional web site, and do not print and distribute multiple copies (please use the attached ofprint order form). Neither excerpts nor the article in its entirety should be included in other publications written or edited by yourself until the inal version has been published and the full citation details are available. You will be sent these when the article is published. 1. Licence to Publish: If you have not already done so, please complete the Licence to Publish online using the unique link to the Author Services site sent in the Welcome to Oxford Journals email. 2. Permissions: Permission to reproduce any third party material in your paper should have been obtained prior to acceptance. If your paper contains igures or text that require permission to reproduce, please inform me immediately by email. 3. Author groups: Please check that all names have been spelled correctly and appear in the correct order. Please also check that all initials are present. Please check that the author surnames (family name) have been correctly identiied by a pink background. If this is incorrect, please identify the full surname of the relevant authors. Occasionally, the distinction between surnames and forenames can be ambiguous, and this is to ensure that the authors’ full surnames and forenames are tagged correctly, for accurate indexing online. Please also check all author ailiations. 4. Figures: If applicable, igures have been placed as close as possible to their irst citation. Please check that they are complete and that the correct igure legend is present. Figures in the proof are low resolution versions that will be replaced with high resolution versions when the journal is printed. 5. Colour reproduction: Should these igures be reproduced in colour or in black-and-white? These igures are currently intended to appear online in colour and black and white in print. Please reword the legend/text to avoid using reference to colour. Alternatively, please let us know if you wish to pay for print colour reproduction or to have both versions in black and white. Please note that there is a £350/$600 charge for each igure reproduced in colour in print. 6. Missing elements: Please check that the text is complete and that all igures, tables and their legends are included. 7. Funding: If applicable, any funding used while completing this work should be highlighted in a separate Funding section. Please ensure that you use the full oicial name of the funding body. MAKING CORRECTIONS TO YOUR PROOF These instructions show you how to mark changes or add notes to the document using the Adobe Acrobat Professional version 7(or onwards) or Adobe Reader X (or onwards). To check what version you are using go to Help then About. The latest version of Adobe Reader is available for free from get.adobe.com/reader. Displaying the toolbars Adobe Professional X, XI and Reader X, XI Select Comment, Annotations and Drawing Markups. If this option is not available, please let me know so that I can enable it for you. Acrobat Professional 7, 8 and 9 Select Tools, Commenting, Show Commenting Toolbar. Using Text Edits Pop up Notes This is the quickest, simplest and easiest method both to make corrections, and for your corrections to be transferred and checked. With Text Edits and other markup, it is possible to add notes. In some cases (e.g. inserting or replacing text), a pop-up note is displayed automatically. To display the pop-up note for other markup, right click on the annotation on the document and selecting Open Pop-Up Note. To move a note, click and drag on the title area. To resize of the note, click and drag on the 1. Click Text Edits 2. Select the text to be annotated or place your cursor at the insertion point. 3. Click the Text Edits drop down arrow and select the required action. You can also right click on selected text for a range of commenting options. bottom right corner. To close the note, click on the cross in the top right hand corner. To delete an edit, right click on it and select Delete. The edit and associated note will be removed. SAVING COMMENTS In order to save your comments and notes, you need to save the file (File, Save) when you close the document. A full list of the comments and edits you have made can be viewed by clicking on the Comments tab in the bottom-lefthand corner of the PDF. AUTHOR QUERY FORM Journal : GERHIS Article Doi : 10.1093/gerhis/ghv105 Article Title : Refugees and Migrants First Author : Neil Gregor Corr. Author : Neil Gregor AUTHOR QUERIES - TO BE ANSWERED BY THE CORRESPONDING AUTHOR The following queries have arisen during the typesetting of your manuscript. Please click on each query number and respond by indicating the change required within the text of the article. If no change is needed please add a note saying “No change.” Copyedited by: OUP German History INTRODUCTION Refugees and Migrants Neil Gregor and Bridget Heal The enormous refugee crisis bequeathed by the cumulative events of the ‘Arab Spring’, the ongoing Syrian Civil War and the multiple collapses of civil authority across parts of Africa and the Middle East over the last decade challenges us, as professional historians of Germany and as politically sentient citizens, to respond. As scholars we are attuned to the ways in which past refugee crises have developed, variously, from the ravages of military action; from campaigns of political persecution; from bouts of ethnic or religious conlict; from implosions of state power; at moments of environmental catastrophe; or, as is often the case, from combinations of the above. Our historical expertise may – perhaps - help to inform those charged with dealing with the crisis of the present. As critically-informed commentators we can also confront those who would appropriate refugee histories for their own ends, challenging triumphalist narratives of past relief and rescue eforts that gloss over far more ambivalent histories of reluctance and refusal to help – the legacy of the British Kindertransport rescue programme during the Holocaust is but the most obvious such example. Yet discussing the catastrophes of the past can also feel depressingly irrelevant when we are confronted with the appalling sufering unfolding in real time on our television screens. In the face of contemporary crises such as this our discipline is called upon forcefully to articulate its own purpose in the world. This Virtual Special Issue of German History, which focusses on some of the refugee and migration histories of the most recent German past, is animated by the belief that such a sense of powerlessness, while understandable, is misplaced. On the most general level, recent German history provides numerous starting points for relecting on the possibilities for action, and the determinants of inaction, at any given juncture; in showing us the range of responses reached for by actors in past crises it reminds us of the presence of choice in human afairs, of the fact that nothing is inevitable and that things could always therefore be diferent. The papers presented here, which represent recent examples of work on refugee and migrant experiences published in the journal, underline this forcefully. In juxtaposing papers on the refugee and expellee crisis of 1945–1946 with papers on aspects of economic migration in the post-war decades our purpose is not to reproduce the rhetorical distinction commonly drawn between the two categories in contemporary public debate. Rather, in foregrounding a set of papers which focus on the search for new forms of community and for the solidarity of new human ties at the moment of arrival; on attempts to build relationships between arriving and established communities as the former seek longer-term stability; on the struggles faced by the newly arrived in their encounters with local bureaucracies and a sometimes hostile established population; on the afective bonds that remained between refugees and © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghv105 Copyedited by: OUP Page 2 of 2 Neil Gregor and Bridget Heal their disparate lands of origin; and on the mix of excitement, adventure, anticipation, diiculty and hardship that characterized the journey itself we wish, using the examples aforded by German history, to underscore the multiple challenges, hopes and achievements experienced by refugees and other categories of migrant alike. Our inal, relective essay explores the challenges and limits of writing refugee history as conventional national history when, for obvious reasons, so many elements of the story explode those boundaries. The current crisis has witnessed the shameful resurfacing of dehumanising, and often overtly racist, vocabularies in relation to refugees and migrants, the ugly archaeology of which needs no adumbration here. Our choice of papers is also intended, therefore, to counter the alarming prevalence of that language by underlining the human experiences that lie at the heart of all stories of migration. Above all, by foregrounding papers that focus on the humanity of historical refugees and migrants we are asserting that History, as a discipline, has a valuable role to play in reminding us of the obligations that come with our own. Co-editors, German History