Migration history in global perspective

Transcription

1 Migration history in global perspective Migration has always been prominent field in global history. As transnational migrants cross national boundaries ever since these existed, it is an obvious example for the problems of the national frame for history writing. This seminar aims to give an overview of theoretical approaches to migration history as well as case studies and conceptualizations of migration on a global scale. As migration history in global perspective is a huge and diverse field of research, theoretical approaches can help to grasp and structure this and case studies show how these theoretical tools are put to work. The first, conceptual part will give an overview of theoretical approaches to migration history from a global perspective. After an introduction to recent discussions in the field, selected terms and issues are taken up. While maintaining a focus on historiography, we will also look at concepts that were developed in other disciplines and taken up by historians. The second, empirical part is dedicated to case studies taking the three oceans as a way of regional structuring long-distance migrations. This is not to argue that other migrations (inner-continental or internal) do not matter, but rather a way to focus on the entanglements, connections and flows of migrations and not to fall back into national categories. There are no permanent settlements in the ocean waters, but they are spaces of exchanges, encounters and entanglements. To this ocean-based regionalization we will add in the last two sessions a turn towards the recent history, focusing on the emergence of the refugee regime after World War Two and looking in the last session at the EU's southern border. All texts will be provided on moodle. Lecturer: Jochen Lingelbach (PhD Candidate) Time: Tuesday 11am 1pm Place: GESI Room 3.15 j.lingelbach@uni-leipzig.de --- Course requirements summary of the core arguments of the assigned text in 3-5 sentences and 3 questions to discuss (to be submitted every week before the session) - presentation of one of the additional texts (once) - writing an essay on a selected topic (suggestions will be provided, but own topics are welcome) - active participation --- Recommended literature --- A short, accessible, up-to-date and highly recommended introductory book on migration history is: Harzig, Hoerder and Gabaccia (2009): What is Migration History? Other general books on migration history: Cohen, Robin The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Cambridge University Press. (encyclopedialike survey of migrations on a world scale; good to get an overview on specific migration systems) Hoerder, Dirk Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham: Duke University Press. (from the 11th century till today) Manning, Patrick 2005: Migration in World History. New York: Routledge. (surveying the whole history of humanity) --- Conceptual part Introduction In the first session we will talk about our own migration and academic backgrounds and discuss your

2 expectations to the seminar. Furthermore I will provide the practicalities of the seminar. We will than start speaking about the first text, that gives an overview of current approaches to migration history in global perspective. Hoerder, Dirk Migration Research in Global Perspective: Recent Developments. Sozial.Geschichte Online, Heft 9 / 2012, November Migration history writing In this session we will address general approaches to migration history. We will discuss the history of the field, categorizations of migrations and periodizations. The guiding question will be: How to conceptualize migration in global perspective? McKeown, A Global Migration, Journal of World History 15 (2): Additional readings: Manning, Patrick 2005: Migration in World History. New York: Routledge, (Chapter 1: Introduction) Transnational migrants While early migration research understood immigrants as people that had to learn the new ways and assimilate into the new societies, the transnational turn of the 1990s has put emphasis on the continuing transnational links of migrants. Changing the place of residence does not imply that one drops all cultural baggage and cuts the ties to the homeland. Is this a new phenomenon or can a transnational (or transcultural) perspective be applied to older migrations? Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Cristina Szanton-Blanc From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration. Anthropological Quarterly, (transmigration as a new phenomenon) Kabir, Nahid, Why I Call Australia Home?: A Transmigrant s Perspective. M/C Journal, 10(4). Available at: [Accessed August 26, 2015]. (migration trajectory of a Bengali-Australian transmigrant) Additional readings: Smith, Robert C., How durable and new is transnational life?: Historical retrieval through local comparison. Diaspora: A journal of transnational studies, 9(2), pp Portes, Alejandro, Luis E. Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): Diasporas Diasporas seem to some as the archetype of a transnational community that helps to overcome the assimilationist dogma of a single national culture. As the literature on diasporas spread during the 1990s (termed the diaspora craze by some), so did the critique of the term. We will try to track the debate, discuss the conflicting opinions and the value of the concept for researchers. Cohen, Robin Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Taylor & Francis. (Chapter 1 from: Global

3 Disaporas, 2 nd edition) Additional readings: Brubaker, Rogers The diaspora diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28 (1): (a sharp constructivist criticism of the diaspora term in migration research) Migration and Gender As the homo migrans is often implicitly perceived as a man, female migration systems and experiences have long been overlooked in historiography. The recent discourse in migration studies around a contemporary feminization of migration makes it worth looking into the history of female migrations. As domestic labour provided and still provides the biggest field of employment for migrating women, we will have a look into the related migration systems. Harzig, Christiane Domestics of the World (Unite?): Labor Migration Systems and Personal Trajectories of Household Workers in Historical and Global Perspective. Journal of American Ethnic History 25 (2/3): Sinke, Suzanne M Gender and Migration: Historical Perspectives. The International Migration Review 40 (1): (overview on Gender and Migration history) The family factor in migration The image of the migrant is usually that of an adult making an independent decision to go and look for greener pastures elsewhere in the world. Instead migration decisions are not individual decisions by unattached persons, but embedded in social structures. Different forms of families and the individual position in it influence the decision-making and forms of migrations. Kok, Jan The Family Factor in Migration Decisions. In Migration History in World History, edited by Leo Lucassen, Jan Lucassen, and Patrick Manning, Leiden: Brill. Foner, Nancy The Immigrant Family: Cultural Legacies and Cultural Changes. International Migration Review, (Immigrant families in the US) Migration and the nation state While migration is as old as humanity, nation-states are a rather recent invention. With the rise of the nationstates came the control of the mobility of its citizens. In this context, passports emerged as a central means of controlling mobility across borders as well as within the state territory. Torpey, John Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate means of Movement. Sociological Theory 16 (3): (passport as means to control movement by the state) Gabaccia, Donna R Is Everywhere Nowhere? Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of

4 United States History. Journal of American History, Empirical/regional part Indian Ocean I Following Braudels 1949 analysis of the Mediterranean as a historical region there has been a rise in recent scholarly production that takes the oceans as regions of study. While the dominance of the United States after World War Two privileged Atlantic studies, the current post-cold War era privileges global approaches that challenge the Eurocentrism implicit in Atlantic studies and highlight the Indian Ocean as an integrated region of exchange already before European intervention. Vink, Markus P. M Indian Ocean Studies and the "new thalassology". Journal of Global History 2 (01): Markovits, Claude Indian Merchant Networks Outside India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Preliminary Survey. In Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims. Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, edited by Donna R. Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, Leiden, Boston: Brill Indian Ocean II Continuing on the Indian Ocean with more in-depth case studies on South Asian indentured workers and memories of descendants of slaves in popular culture around the Indian Ocean. Mann, Michael Migration - Re-Migration, Circulation: South Asian Kulis in the Indian Ocean and Beyond, In Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims. Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, edited by Donna R. Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, Leiden, Boston: Brill. Alpers, Edward A Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean World. African Studies Review 43 (01): Ewald, Janet J Crossers of the Sea: Slaves, Freedmen, and Other Migrants in the Northwestern Indian Ocean, C American Historical Review, White Atlantic Much of migration history scholarship has concentrated on the North Atlantic and herein the migration of Europeans to North America. This has changed considerably in the last decades. In this session we will look into a case study about the role of race for white migrants in the US. Barrett, James R., and David Roediger Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality and the New Immigrant

5 Working Class. Journal of American Ethnic History 16 (3): (European migration to the US) Armitage, David Three Concepts of Atlantic History. In The British Atlantic World, , edited by David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (General conceptualizations of Atlantic history) Morawska, E., Labor migrations of Poles in the Atlantic world economy, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31(02), pp Black Atlantic Borrowing Paul Gilroy's term, we want to look into the experiences of migrants who were forced from Africa to the Americas and their descendants. The perspective of enslaved Africans shows that even in the brutally constrained circumstances they could keep some agency. The Haitian revolution as an entangled history within the Black Atlantic shows that they were not only passive victims but actors in shaping Atlantic history. Thornton, John Cannibals, Witches, and Slave Traders in the Atlantic World. The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 60 (2): Knight, Franklin W The Haitian Revolution. American Historical Review, Trouillot, M.-R., An unthinkable History. The Haitian Revolution as a Non-Event (excerpts). In A. Goldstein Sepinwall, ed. Haitian History: New Perspectives. pp Gilroy, Paul The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Verso, (Chapter 1, The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity) Blyden, Nemata Amelia Back to Africa: The Migration of New World Blacks to Sierra Leone and Liberia. OAH Magazine of History 18 (3): (short text) Pacific Ocean The Pacific ocean as the biggest of the three water basins is also the most difficult to cross. While some scholars discuss, if it constitutes a Mediterranean in the making we will take a closer look on the history and localized composition of Chinese migration to North America. Yu, Henry The Intermittent Rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific. In Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims. Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, edited by Donna R. Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, Leiden, Boston: Brill. Chang, Kornel, Circulating Race and Empire: Transnational Labor Activism and the Politics of Anti-Asian Agitation in the Anglo-American Pacific World, The Journal of American History, 96(3), pp Blank, Paul W The Pacific: A Mediterranean in the Making? Geographical Review 89 (2): Post-WW II Europe - The making of the international refugee regime The Second World War and its aftermath created along with the largest population of refugees and displaced persons (DP) in modern history also the establishment of an international regime dealing with these and later following refugees. As the refugee and its housing in camps and the whole humanitarian organization complex around it are so omnipresent today, it makes sense to ask, when and how this developed.

6 Gatrell, Peter Europe Uprooted. Refugee Crisis at Mid-century and Durable Solutions, in: Gatrell, Peter: The Making of the Modern Refugee. Oxford University Press, p (establishment of international refugee regime in Europe) Malkki, Liisa National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees. Cultural Anthropology 7 (1): Malkki, Liisa Refugees and Exile: From Refugee Studies to the National Order of Things. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: (review article) Gatrell, Peter Putting Refugees in Their Place. New Global Studies 7 (1): Today: The Mediterranean The current tragedy in the Mediterranean is making headlines in the European press. Out of the many migration systems currently existing around the world, we will look at this and some scholarly approaches to grasp and understand what is happening. We will discuss these approaches with our background from the history of migrations. Tsianos, Vassilis, and Serhat Karakayali Transnational Migration and the Emergence of the European Border Regime: An Ethnographic Analysis. European Journal of Social Theory 13 (3): Raeymaekers, Timothy Introduction Europe s Bleeding Border and the Mediterranean as a Relational Space. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 13 (2): (critical geography perspective) Zetter, Roger More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies 20 (2): Conclusion In this last session we will try to sum up what we learned in the course of this seminar. Furthermore every participant should relate his essay-topic to some of the literature (cases and theoretical approaches) and we can discuss open questions in regard to the essays. Last but not least this is the place to give feedback about the seminar. - Topics for Essays - - Inner-continental migration systems (within Africa; China-Manchuria; Russia-Siberia; within the Americas) - History of a certain diaspora (Italian, Jewish, African, Polish, Greek...) - Migration history of a region/country/city - Rural-urban migrations to a selected city - Circular migrations - Methods in migration research: Oral history and life-stories - History of refugee camps - Migration along the Swahili coast - The un-mixing of nations in East Central Europe after WW II

7 - Migration in the Cold War...