Commemorating Migrants and Migrations:
Towards New Interpretations of European History
Fourth Conference on Contemporary
European Migration History
organized by Network
Migration in Europe e.V. in cooperation with Deutsches
Historisches Institut Paris, Heinrich
Böll Foundation and Génériques
(Paris)
Date: November
15-16, 2004
Conference Venue: Deutsches
Historisches Institut Paris (8, rue Parc-Royal)
The event will be financially supported
by the Werner-Reimers-Stiftung, the Deutsches Historisches
Institut Paris and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. |
Migration and memory have become
key issues in contemporary European intellectual and
political debates. In the wake of European societies’
ongoing social and economic incorporation of millions
of migrants, questions pertaining to the representation
of these processes have also emerged. Thus far, debates
about migration and history/memory, as well as on commemorative
practices, have occurred in splendid isolation. For
the most part, the migration discourse has limited itself
to considerations of migrants’ social, economic and
political inclusion or exclusion and neglected questions
of historical representation and memory. Conversely,
debates about memory and collective identities have
tended to privilege national frameworks, focussing in
particular on national or “master” narratives that usually
neglect migrants and their transnational historical
experiences.
Migration and migrants have contributed considerably
to shaping perceptions of immigrants and ‘Europeans’
alike. They have fundamentally transformed particular
European societies and European society more generally,
engendering radically new self-understandings which
confront established patterns. The question of how this
history can be written into a simultaneously emerging
European history, as well as into changing national
historiographies shall be explored at the conference.
It will address questions of immigration in and to Europe
in a comparative perspective. The emphasis will be on
the intersection of history, memory and commemorative
prac-tices and strategies. Topics include:
- Migrant incorporation/exclusion and historical
representation in both sending and receiving countries
- Writing migration history within the national,
European or global context.
- Social and cultural practices and strategies of
museums, exhibitions, media, schools/curricula and
migrant communities to represent migrants and migration
history
- Methodological and theoretical contributions with
regard to writing and representing migration history
The workshop brings together scholars from the Humanities
and the Social Sciences in the widest sense (anthropology,
ethnology, geography, history, law, political sciences,
sociology).
For further information contact Paris_2004_DHI@hotmail.com.
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