Migrant Knowledge Blog

Writing knowledge into the history of migration and migration into the history of knowledge
Reflects on the author's own experience as a researcher and theories such as “situated knowledge,” and “relational accountability,” emotional labor feminist standpoint theory to elucidate how researchers can produce knowledge that reflects the meaningful connections and stories they encountered in the course of their research journey.

Navigating the Personal in Migration Research

Nov 8, 2024
Ecem Nazlı Üçok
 
Interview with Swen Steinberg outlining key achievements of the blog and network Migrant Knowledge since its inception in 2019.

A Journey Worth Knowing About? Interview with Swen Steinberg about the Past Five Years of the Blog Migrant Knowledge

Oct 7, 2024
Viola Alianov-Rautenberg
Swen Steinberg
 
Presents testimonies of Nazi atrocities by witnesses who were interviewed by refugees in Sweden to show the epistemic value of emotions in analyses of knowledge circulation.

Suffering, Displacement, and the Circulation of Knowledge about Nazi Atrocities

Aug 27, 2024
Victoria Van Orden Martínez
 
Presents the arguments from Stielike's longer German work on the politics of knowledge production in Migration Studies, examining 3 distinct types of migration research.

The Politics of Knowledge Production in Migration Studies

Jun 18, 2024
Laura Stielike
 
Looks at the ethnic, cultural, and economic factors that drove the development of Wurstfest, one of the biggest German ethnic festivals in the United States.

Wurstfest: A Culinary, Cultural, and Economic Masterpiece

May 30, 2024
Aiden Maliskas and Mark McShane
 
Roundup of calls for papers, submissions, conference reports, new publications relevant to Migrant Knowledge.

#MigKnow Notes 19

May 29, 2024
 
Examines the ways that German immigrants to Texas adjusted and adapted their foodways to the foods available and affordable in their new home.

Exploring Texas German Foodways

May 16, 2024
Rodolfo Alvarez and Aubrey Hernandez
 
Examines the knowledge and images of Native Americans conveyed through the art of Texas German Richard Petri.

Knowledge between Romanticism and Reverence: German-American Perceptions of Native Americans through the Art of Friedrich Richard Petri

May 2, 2024
Jacob Johnson and Taylor Mullins
 
Examines the sources of knowledge about the Comanches available to John Meusebach when he sought to make a treaty with them.

Gaining Knowledge about the Comanches: Meusebach’s Path Towards a Notable Treaty

Apr 18, 2024
Abigail Escobedo and Simon Herbert
 
Weiss introduces a miniseries on German migration to Texas and knowledge transfers that occurred between German settlers and Texans.

‘On to Texas’: An Introduction to the Miniseries on Texas Germans

Apr 4, 2024
Jana Weiss
 
Describes the Assumptionist and Oblate missions as part of the Mission d'Orient in the Ottoman Empire, focusing on them as a cultural bridge that fostered the exchange of knowledge between East and West.

Cultural Crossroads: The Assumptionists and Their Transnational Exchange in the Ottoman Orient

Feb 6, 2024
Ediz Hazır
 
Call for proposals from the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies for an online source portal called "History of the German-Jewish Diaspora"

Call for Proposals: Online Source Portal ‘History of the German-Jewish Diaspora’

Jan 24, 2024
 
CfP for Mapping German Film Exile: A Transnational Perspective

CfP: Mapping German Film Exile: A Transnational Perspective

Jan 16, 2024
 
In 1924, a private gymnasium opened its gates, welcoming children of Russian exiles to the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The founder of the school, Varvara Pavlova Kuzmina, a teacher from St. Petersburg, had settled in […]

Shared Spaces of Knowledge: Russian Exiles and the V. P. Kuzmina Gymnasium in Interwar Bulgaria

Nov 13, 2023
Charis Marantzidou
 
Examines The Indian Vocabulary (1788) produced in Britain for colonial civil servants in order to discern the ambiguous relationship toward India and British efforts to define itself in relation to its colony therein.

From Nabob to Saheb: Reflections of British Rule in The Indian Vocabulary

Sep 20, 2023
Mayukhi Ghosh
 
Introduces the digital storytelling project Humanizing Deportation, which documents the human consequences of contemporary regimes of migration and border control in the United States and Mexico.

Migrant Autonomy in the Face of Regimes of Deterrence: Complications and Resiliency

Sep 6, 2023
Robert McKee Irwin
 
Presents the knowledge produced and shared in refugee letters in periodicals in Switzerland in the post-World War II period.

Epistolary Knowledge in Transit: Migrant Letters in Swiss Refugee Periodicals after the Second World War

Aug 21, 2023
Ramon Wiederkehr
 
A roundup of current events, CfPs, conference reports, and new publications, exhibits, projects, and book reviews relevant to Migrant Knowledge.

#MigKnow Notes 18

Jul 28, 2023
 
Bohemian immigrant Anton Schwarz impacted brewing knowledge and practice in the US by introducing knowledge from Germany, especially. He founded the US Brewers' Academy and introduced brewing with adjuncts.

Migration and the Transatlantic Circulation of Brewing Knowledge: The Case of Anton Schwarz

Jul 11, 2023
Jana Weiss
 
Call for papers for workshop at USC Los Angeles from 28-29 June 2024 on Archives in/of Transit

Archives in/of Transit: Historical Perspectives from the 1930s to the Present

Jun 23, 2023
 
Recounts the flooding of Vanport, Oregon, in 1948, the displacement of the city's residents, and the memory culture around this event.

Migration, Displacement, and Memory in Vanport, Oregon (1942–2023)

May 24, 2023
Uwe Lübken
 
Describes Rudolf Holzmann's ethnomusicological work, cataloguing and orchestrating Indigenous music, in Peru after he fled there from Nazi Germany.

Migrant Musical Knowledge in Latin America, 1935–1960

May 9, 2023
Andrea Orzoff
 
News from Migrant Knowledge Network members and about other associated events Members are invited to share theirs as well.

News from the Network

May 3, 2023
 
A roundup of new relevant projects, current events, CfPs and CfAs with upcoming deadlines, conference reports, and a book review.

#MigKnow Notes 17

Apr 19, 2023
 
Presents the knowledge the German news agency Agencia Duems disseminated in Mexico and Germany about the other country, respectively.

Between Germany and Mexico: Agencia Duems and the Production of Knowledge

Apr 14, 2023
Itzel Toledo García
 
Examines knowledge that radio programs made for Greek guest workers in West Germany conveyed and their role in creating an emotional community.

For Their Ears Only: Migrant Knowledge in the Greek Radio Programs for Gastarbeiter in West Germany

Mar 20, 2023
Maria Adamopoulou
 
Here we share a call for applications for the Bucerius Young Scholars Forum at UC Berkeley, GHI Pacific Office, September 2023, as it relates closely to our blog's topic.

Seventh Bucerius Young Scholars Forum—Indigenous Migration

Mar 16, 2023
Nino Vallen
 
Presents the motivation for GHI's spring lecture series on climate mobilities with abstracts of the lectures.

GHI Lecture Series—Moving Out of Harm’s Way: Historical Perspectives on Climate-related Mobilities

Feb 24, 2023
Nino Vallen
Casey Sutcliffe
 
A roundup of recent network news, upcoming events, calls for papers and applications with upcoming deadlines, conference reports, and relevant publications.

#MigKnow Notes 16

Feb 17, 2023
 
Examines ways migrants in this caravan utilized legacy and social media to coordinate and organize the journey, as well as how these media are changing migrant paradigms.

The 2018 Central American Migrant Caravan: Migrant Knowledge Circulation in Digital Media Platforms

Jan 31, 2023
Antonio Romero
 
Introduces "Auf die Tour!," a book investigating networks of (Jewish) migrant performers and sites of popular entertainment.

Migrant Artists on the Move between Central Europe and the United States around 1900

Jan 17, 2023
Susanne Korbel
 
Presents the image of America conveyed in literature available in the public libraries in southern Baden, esp. Lahr in late 19th c.

Between Fiction and Non-Fiction: ‘America’-related Literature in the Public Libraries of Southern Baden

Jan 9, 2023
Martin Bemmann
 
Describes Migration- and Mobility-related events at #AHA23

Migrant Knowledge at the #AHA23

Jan 5, 2023
 
Looks at travelogues and guidebooks available in two Baden libraries in the 1890s to determine the knowledge of the USA, and particularly of American women, presented therein.

‘Plant-like Women and Luxury Wives’—American Women in Nineteenth-century German Travelogues and Guides

Dec 23, 2022
Marie Nella Hoffmann
 
A roundup of recent work, relevant publications, resources, and calls for papers related to migrant knowledge.

#MigKnow Notes 15

Dec 19, 2022
 
Examines letters written to RELICO during the war by individuals seeking to share knowledge with loved ones or to receive information about them. Contextualizing the letters allows us to better appreciate the personalized knowledge transfer that occurred on a mass scale.

‘I beg you again from my heart to help me find my sister’: RELICO and the Need for Knowledge

Dec 8, 2022
Charlie Knight
 
Analyzes the content of a collection of letters from a Baden emigrant to America to determine the knowledge he shared back home.

Rübelmann’s Letters: Knowledge Transfer through Emigrant Correspondence

Nov 29, 2022
Hannah Laubrock
 
Analyzes the news items pertaining to America from all issues of the Freiburger Zeitung of 1876 in the context of the press of that era.

The Latest News from the Other Side: ‘America’ in the Freiburger Zeitung of 1876

Nov 18, 2022
Martin Bemmann
 
Analyzes the knowledge of America presented in the popular late 19th-c. German magazines Die Gartenlaube and Deutscher Hausschatz.

Through the Information Jungle Towards the ‘Land of Freedom’: Images of ‘America’ in German Magazines in the 1870s and 1880s

Nov 11, 2022
Luca Leitz-Schwoerer
 
Compares two textbooks for schoolchildren in Baden in the late nineteenth century and presents the ideas they conveyed about the US.

A Cautionary Tale: Baden’s Late Nineteenth-Century Textbooks and Their Portrayal of America

Nov 7, 2022
Marie Nella Hoffmann
 
Introduces a 6-part miniseries analyzing 6 sources of knowledge of the US for prospective migrants in Baden in the late 19th century.

What Did They Know?: An Introduction to the Miniseries

Oct 28, 2022
Martin Bemmann
 
Joseph Malherek has recently published the book Free-Market Socialists with Central European University Press. He also contributed an article to Dynamics of Emigration, edited by Stefan Berger and Philipp Müller and published by Berghahn Books.

New Book from the Network: Central European Jewish Socialist Refugees in the US

Oct 24, 2022
 
Anne-Christin Klotz has published a new book with De Gruyter, Gemeinsam gegen Deutschland, analyzing the Yiddish press in Poland, 1930-1941.

New Book from the Network: Yiddish Press in Poland in the Nazi Era

Oct 11, 2022
Anne-Christin Klotz
 
Klotz shows how Yiddish travelogues functioned as purveyors of knowledge about destination countries for potential Polish-Jewish refugees.

More than Tourism: Re-reading Yiddish Travelogues as Sources of Migrant Knowledge

Oct 5, 2022
Anne-Christin Klotz
 
News from Migrant Knowledge Network members and news about other events associated with the network. Members are invited to share theirs as well.

News from the Network

Sep 20, 2022
 
Demonstrates how Chinese immigrants to Peru utilized their knowledge of its culture and aspirations in constructing the fountain to improve their standing.

The Chinese Fountain: Migrant Knowledge and World-Making in Early Twentieth-Century Peru

Sep 19, 2022
Nino Vallen
 
Frei discusses the knowledge prospective Jesuit missionaries sought to gain before applying, and knowledge missionaries provided back home.

Missionary FAQs: The Migration of Knowledge about and from Early Modern Jesuit Missions

Sep 2, 2022
Elisa Frei
 
News about various contributions and awards from the Migrant Knowledge Network. Members are invited to share theirs as well.

News from the Network

Aug 12, 2022
 
Schütz shows how GDR officials' knowledge of violence against guest workers failed to change their perception of them or the nature of the country. Instead, they blamed the workers.

Violence against Migrants in the GDR and the Lack of Epistemic Impact

Aug 5, 2022
Johannes Schütz
 
A roundup of recent work and resources in migration and migrant knowledge.

#MigKnow Notes 14

Jul 26, 2022
 
Highlighting an interview with a Turkish migrant woman, Kübra Göksel explores the "knowledge" West Germans had about these guest workers, the impact this knowledge had on their lives, and the ways they occasionally utilized that knowledge for their own benefit.

Knowledge and Ignorance about ‘the Turkish Woman’ in West Germany and Migrant Women’s Responses

Jul 8, 2022
Kübra Göksel
 
The latest issue of the Bulletin of the German Historical Institute includes an interview with Director Simone Lässig on the research focus "In Global Transit"

Simone Lässig Interviewed on “In Global Transit” Research Focus

Jul 1, 2022
 
Kijan Espahangizi has a new book available: Der Migrations-Integrationskomplex (Wallstein, 2022), in the Konstanz University Press series.

New Book from the Network: Migration Policy and Scholarship in Switzerland

Jun 28, 2022
 
Lecture series for 'In Global Transit' Project begins June 8 with a lecture by Joachim Schlör. Registration required.

2022 Lecture Series for the Project ‘In Global Transit’

May 31, 2022
 
Mark Stoneman is leaving the Migrant Knowledge editorial team. We would like to thank him for his years of engagement, and especially for all his hard work in helping us to conceive and launch the blog. Patricia "Casey" Sutcliffe of the GHI Washington will manage the blog going forward.

Editorial News

May 23, 2022
 
West German experts emphasized cultural otherness as an impediment to the employment—and "emancipation"—of Turkish migrant women instead of attending to the women's testimony about the practical impediments they faced in a system built on the unpaid labor of housewives.

Knowledge about the ‘Migrant Woman’ as an Alibi for State Inaction in the Federal Republic of Germany

Mar 29, 2022
Lauren Stokes
 
Documents from the Qing dynasty's borderlands are crucial for understanding migrations in these regions, but accessing and contextualizing them is complicated by a unique set of political and archival challenges from the past and present.

The ‘Manchurian Archive’ and the Discourse on ‘Lost’ and ‘Returned’ Documents in China

Mar 12, 2022
Christina Philips
 
Categorization schemes are never neutral and rarely comprehensive, but the question of how to handle them is thornier than one might think. How can we question categories and their confining walls given that those same walls also provide shelter?

On the Discomfort of Shedding Ill-Fitting Categories

Mar 7, 2022
Ulrike Bialas
 
News about various contributions and awards from the Migrant Knowledge Network. Members are invited to share theirs as well.

News from the Network

Feb 28, 2022
 
Paul Lerner, Uwe Spiekermann, and Anne Schenderlein have a new book, Jewish Consumer Cultures in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe and North America (Palgrave, 2022).

New Book from the Network: Jewish Consumer Cultures

Feb 15, 2022
 
Frank Wolff's Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund is now available in an affordable paperback.

New Book from the Network: Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration

Feb 15, 2022
 
Susanne Korbel and Philipp Strobl have co-edited a new volume titled Cultural Translation and Knowledge Transfer on Alternative Routes of Escape from Nazi Terror: Mediations Through Migrations (Routledge, 2022).

New Book from the Network: Cultural Translation and Knowledge Transfer

Feb 15, 2022
 
Open-access publication on digital history edited by Simone Lässig with other contributions from the Migrant Knowledge network and blog.

News from the Network: Digital History

Jan 30, 2022
 
The author interrogates a mid-nineteenth-century map for German emigrants, using it as a way to talk about the central concept behind this blog, "migrant knowledge".

An 1853 Map for German-Speaking Emigrants

Jan 30, 2022
Mark R. Stoneman
 
Reflections on children's agency in historiography in the run-up to a workshop on the theme. The authors engage with Sarah Mazah's 2020 article in the American Historical Review.

Reflections on Children’s Agency (in Migration)

Jan 5, 2022
Bettina Hitzer
Friederike Kind-Kovács
 
The intimate and personal network of an imperial official's well-educated wife who migrated with her husband temporarily to the colonies served as a conduit for the sharing and formation of knowledge about Britain’s empire in the late eighteenth century.

Colonial Correspondence and Knowledge Production: Elizabeth Simcoe and her Personal Networks

Dec 27, 2021
Elyse Bell
 
What migrants relay about a host country to their country of origin is shaped by competing pressures that transform knowledge. The reports of two London-based correspondents to prerevolutionary Russia illustrate this point.

Between Fact and Fiction: The Fabrication of Migrant Knowledge in Professional and Personal Correspondence

Dec 16, 2021
Anna Vaninskaya
 
An occasional roundup of resources for the study of migration and knowledge: calls, events, readings, etc.

#MigKnow Notes 13

Nov 29, 2021
 
Visual and auditory metaphors shape the historiography of encounter, including research on translators in nineteenth-century Alaska.

Metaphors and the Historiography of Encounter

Nov 19, 2021
Luise Fast
 
Irawati Karve earned her doctorate in interwar Berlin before returning to India, where she pursued a career in anthropology. Discussing her work is difficult because she both rejected and adopted claims from the now infamous Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.

The Contradictions of Irawati Karve: A Conversation

Nov 9, 2021
Thiago Pinto Barbosa
Urmilla Deshpande
 
Call: Historicizing the Refugee Experience, 17th-21st centuries – Second Annual International Seminar in Historical Refugee Studies – Washington, DC, July 13–16, 2022 – Deadline: November 21, 2021

Call: Historicizing the Refugee Experience

Nov 2, 2021
 
During the interwar period and much of World War II, the Parisian café Le Bosphore served as a focal point of sociability and knowledge exchange for Sephardi Jews from the former Ottoman Empire.

Cafés as Sites of Migrant Knowledge Exchange: The Case of Ottoman Jews in Interwar Paris

Oct 21, 2021
Robin Buller
 
Approaching migrant knowledge after migration: Call for papers for a collaboration entailing three online workshops and a special issue in a peer-reviewed journal

Call: Lost Knowledge

Oct 18, 2021
Swen Steinberg
Philipp Strobl
 
Trying to understand German migration to the United States in the nineteenth century raises the problem of how the U.S. migration regime shaped the data that researchers rely on in the first place.

Why the History of Knowledge Matters in a Digital History of Migration

Sep 19, 2021
Sebastian F. Bondzio
 
New book by Christiane Reinecke, Die Ungleichheit der Städte: Urbane Problemzonen im postkolonialen Frankreich und der Bundesrepublik [The Inequality of Cities: Urban Problem Zones in Postcolonial France and the Federal Republic of Germany] (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021).

New Book from the Network: Urban Inequality

Aug 30, 2021
 
New Book: Migrations and Border Processes: Practices and Politics of Belonging and Exclusion in Europe from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Margit Fauser, Anne Friedrichs, and Levke Harders (Routledge, 2021).

New Book from the Network: Migrations and Border Processes

Aug 30, 2021
 
The authors discuss disparagement practices using the "invectivity" approach developed at the TU Dresden. Shaming helps demarcate in-groups from out-groups, feeding communication loops and producing emotions beyond the immediate parties involved.

Invective Loops: How Shaming Migrants Shapes Knowledge Orders

Aug 24, 2021
Dagmar Ellerbrock
Swen Steinberg
 
Using the example of Max Vasmer's biography, the authors argue that "Slavic Studies in general and in German-speaking countries in particular can and should be studied from the perspective of migrant knowledge."

Slavic Studies as Migrant Knowledge: The Case of Max Vasmer

Jul 22, 2021
Vladislava Maria Warditz
Wim Coudenys
 
Call for a workshop titled "Knowledge on the Move: Information Networks during and after the Holocaust." Held by the Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington and the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Call: “Knowledge on the Move: Information Networks during and after the Holocaust”

Jul 20, 2021
 
A new open access book by Jochen Oltmer (Osnabrück) is available in Springer's Essentials series: Die Grenzen der EU: Europäische Integration, 'Schengen' und die Kontrolle der Migration (2021).

New Book from the Network: Europe’s Borders

Jul 19, 2021
 
New essay collection: 'Navigating Socialist Encounters: Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and East Germany during the Cold War' edited by Eric Burton, Anne Dietrich, Immanuel R. Harisch, and Maria Schenck – open access at De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

New Book from the Network: Africa and East Germany during the Cold War

Jul 15, 2021
 
A new monograph by Albert Manke is now available, 'Coping with Discrimination and Exclusion: Experiences of Free Chinese Migrants in the Americas in a Transregional and Diachronic Perspective.' It appears in the Inter-American Studies series.

New Book from the Network: Experiences of Free Chinese Migrants in the Americas

Jul 15, 2021
 
Elliot Young reminds us to consider migrants not only as victims, as the objects of others' actions, but also as subjects with their own agency. This shift in perspective has implications for how we understand migration facilitation, among other things.

Beyond Chinese “Coolies” as Victims

Jul 14, 2021
Elliot Young
 
A new monograph by Machteld Venken is now available: 'Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe.' Published by Berghahn Books, the work is open access.

New Book from the Network: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe

Jul 12, 2021
 
Call for applications for a tandem fellowship in migration at the Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington. Deadline: November 1, 2021

Binational Visiting Tandem Program in the History of Migration at the GHI’s Pacific Office in Berkeley

Jul 8, 2021
 
A list of 29 recently published articles, book chapters, and so on published by members of the Migrant Knowledge News Network.

News from the Network: Recent Articles

Jun 30, 2021
 
Child migrants often turned to their peers to obtain certain kinds of information. Finding their peers in other towns meant turning to the migration agencies, which generated and archived revealing sources.

Knowledge Sharing among British Child Migrants in Canada, 1869–1950

Jun 22, 2021
Susanne Quitmann
 
The author examines records from trade union seminars given by IG Metall to Yugoslav workers in West Germany. Initially, the classes reflected the union's needs, but xenophobia in the 1980s led immigrant workers to express their own concerns in these meetings.

Trade Union Knowledge and Educational Programs for Yugoslavian Workers in West Germany, 1970s–1980s

May 27, 2021
Matthias Thaden
 
In this two-part piece about Jewish refugee photographers, the authors "travel to another historical context to inquire about what migrants and refugees 'knew' and how they choose to communicate their knowledge in their photographic work."

Displacement in Stills: German-Jewish Photographers on the Move

May 14, 2021
Sheer Ganor
Rebekka Grossmann
 
Finding suitable teaching materials to prepare Jewish children and youth for their new lives in Palestine after having survived the Holocaust presented a unique set of challenges.

Some Challenges for Knowledge Transfer in Jewish Displaced Persons Camps after World War II

Apr 15, 2021
Matthias Springborn
 
Using oral history, the author explores how a Polish Jewish family "used knowledge as a strategy not merely to survive but to build a new life" in what turned out to be a highly contingent transit process.

Knowledge as a Strategy on the Migratory Routes of Polish Jewish Survivors after World War II

Mar 29, 2021
Anna Cichopek-Gajraj
 
Two calls and five reading tips related to this blog's central themes: migrants' knowledge, knowledge about migrants, and migrating knowledge.

#MigKnow Notes 12

Mar 23, 2021
 
Migration strategies and state regulative measures exist in a dialectical relationship. The author looks at state efforts to control emigration from the Habsburg monarchy and the efforts of migration facilitators to satisfy demand for passage to South America.

Where Is the Migration Innovation? The Habsburg State vs. Facilitators of Migration

Mar 8, 2021
Ulf Brunnbauer
 
Victoria Harms talks with the Turkish-German activist and author Ali Can about race, diversity, and identity in contemporary Germany.

‘I am German plus something else’ — An Interview with Ali Can

Feb 18, 2021
 
News about the H-Migration editorial team as well as about changes in Migrant Knowledge's own editorial team.

News from the Network

Feb 3, 2021
 
Emil Trinkler didn't migrate as such, but Marjan Wardak's article speaks to central themes on this blog. People and knowledge itself are on the move, interacting with go-betweens and yielding something new.

The Scientist Emil Trinkler’s Exploration across South Asia, 1915–1933

Jan 29, 2021
Marjan Wardaki
 
News and tips: one postdoc and two doctoral research positions, three calls, a book launch, and a new book series.

#MigKnow Notes 11

Jan 17, 2021
 
Call for proposals for "Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives," October 18–21, 2021, GHI Pacific Regional Office at Berkeley. DEADLINE: February 15, 2021.

Call for Proposals: Fifth Annual Bucerius Young Scholars Forum

Jan 17, 2021
 
The author looks at the relationship between two famous early sociological community studies, "Middletown" and "Marienthal." The latter became Paul Lazarsfeld's "ticket out of Europe just as the continent was descending into fascism."

Drifting Along: Unemployment and Interwar Social Research, from Marienthal to Muncie

Dec 28, 2020
Joseph Malherek
 
The author discusses the source value of U.S. immigrant newspapers. If there are many reasons to approach them with caution, they can still help scholars learn "what migrants knew and wanted their fellow migrants to know..."

Transatlantic Migrants and Knowledge in the U.S. Immigrant Press

Dec 22, 2020
Kristina E. Poznan
 
Call for proposals for a conference to be held in Washington, DC, November 3–5, 2022. The deadline for proposals is March 31, 2021.

Call: German Migrants and Migrating Knowledge in Latin American History

Dec 10, 2020
 
W. F. Whyte's 'Street Corner Society' became a popular text for sociology students, but specialists in Italian American studies never warmed to it. Donna Gabaccio explains why with "a hidden history of gender and ethnic dynamics" in the academy.

‘The Book That Would Not Die’

Nov 13, 2020
Donna R. Gabaccia
 
New book: Jan Jansen and Simone Lässig, eds., Refugee Crises, 1945-2000: Political and Societal Responses in International Comparison, Cambridge University Press 2020.

New Book from the Network: Refugee Crises, 1945–2000

Nov 9, 2020
 
Annette Lützel explains the FRG's very different responses to the large numbers of refugees who came in the early 1990s and in 2015. Citing recent employment and job-training numbers, she sees an ongoing positive trend.

From Hoyerswerda to Welcome Culture: Asylum and Integration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany

Nov 5, 2020
Annette Lützel
 
Lorella Viola and Machteld Venken at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History seek applications for a large panel on "Doing Historical Research on Migration in the Digital Age." Deadline: November 20, 2020.

Call: Doing Historical Research on Migration in the Digital Age

Oct 30, 2020
 
"Migration" is not a stable, preexisting category but rather a product of societal processes that shape what the term comprises. We must take these entanglements with the past into account in our present-day research.

Not a Given Object: What Historians Can Learn from the Reflexive Turn in Migration Studies

Oct 27, 2020
Isabella Löhr
Christiane Reinecke
 
News and tips: an article about knowledge of America in rural Hungary, ca. 1900; a multimedia project on scientists in exile; a blog series on COVID-19 and refugees; and a winter school on Nazi forced labor.

#MigKnow Notes 10

Oct 26, 2020
 
A Berlin-based group works with refugee girls, who make films as a way to narrate their life experiences. The idea is to help the girls form and mobilize knowledge repertoires for their self-empowerment, although the process is by no means linear.

Girls’ Self-Empowerment through Narrative in Film

Sep 23, 2020
Mervete Bobaj
Anh-Susann Pham Thi
 
Event to launch "Refugees from Nazi-Occupied Europe in British Overseas Territories," the first book to cover forced emigration from Nazi-controlled Europe to the territories of the British Empire as a whole. (Oct. 7, 2020, via Zoom. Registration required.)

Virtual Book Launch: The British Empire as Refuge?

Sep 5, 2020
 
A researcher from Scotland, by way of Germany, examines a key text offered to international scholars at UC Berkeley during their initial orientation session there.

Exclusion and Erasure in ‘The Values Majority Culture Americans Live By’

Sep 3, 2020
Sarah Earnshaw
 
A book for children about young refugees in New York was rooted in real experiences. Its author's eye for children's agency can help us to understand refugee children as go-betweens in wartime New York.

Young Refugees and Knowledge in New York during World War II: The Example of Babette Deutsch’s ‘The Welcome’

Aug 17, 2020
Swen Steinberg
 
The "Qur'an school problem" in West Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s was in many ways a product of the migrant experts who bemoaned it, the teachers on loan from Turkey.

Turkish Teachers, Migrant Knowledge, and ‘the Qurʾan School Problem’ in West Germany

Aug 14, 2020
Brian Van Wyck
 
Protestant missionary schools affected the construction of "indigenous knowledge" in complex ways, including through their role in the emergence of local go-betweens, who carried this knowledge into colonial contexts.

The Formation of Indigenous Knowledge in Protestant Mission Schools, 1900–1930

Aug 10, 2020
Elisabeth Engel
 
Glenn Penny highlights aspects of children's go-between role in Chile not visible in histories of European migration to the United States. German schools in Chile and teachers posted there from Germany are central to this multigenerational story.

Routes of Knowledge: Growing up German in Chile, 1900–50

Aug 7, 2020
H. Glenn Penny
 
The role of children in history matters, including in knowledge formation and in migration. Simone Lässig introduces a miniseries about children and youth as go-betweens in migration contexts, whether people migrated or knowledge itself.

Knowledge and the Agency of Children in Migration Contexts

Aug 5, 2020
Simone Lässig
 
Ben Nobbs-Thiessen' monograph, 'Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present,' is now available at UNC Press. Check out his recent interviews with Elena McGrath and Steven Hyland too.

New Book from the Network: Landscape of Migration

Jul 9, 2020
 
How to name people who move their lives across borders willingly or under duress? Eliyana Adler discusses the diverse terms contemporaries used to identify the various groups of Polish Jews who survived World War II as refugees in the Soviet Union.

What’s in a Name? How Titles Construct and Convey Knowledge about Migrants

Jun 18, 2020
Eliyana R. Adler
 
The latest installment of related news and tips: An updated call, a podcast, and three conference reports, including one that discusses knowledge as a resource.

#MigKnow Notes 9

May 19, 2020
 
This note offers a brief update on how we post news. It also invites readers to contribute their related announcements and tips.

Editors’ Note

May 18, 2020
 
Recent publications and other news from members of the Migrant Knowledge Network.

News from the Network

May 11, 2020
 
Many European émigrés escaping the Nazis helped shape consumer capitalism in the United States. After the war, they did business in Europe as well, circulating their transformed knowledge to shape marketing there.

European Émigrés and the Transatlantic Circulation of Knowledge: Examples from Mid-20th-Century Consumer Capitalism

Apr 29, 2020
Jan Logemann
 
Germans translated Buddhist texts in Germany, and they migrated to British Ceylon in order to get closer to Buddhism. Their Buddhist practices ended up changing Buddhism's relationship to texts in their South Asian home.

German Migrants and the Circulation of Buddhist Knowledge between Germany and British Ceylon

Apr 18, 2020
Sebastian Musch
 
"Histories of Migrant Knowledge: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives," edited by Andrea Westermann and Onur Erdur, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute Supplement 15 (2020).

News from the Network: Histories of Migrant Knowledge

Mar 26, 2020
 
Through playtime, Jewish refugee children in Shanghai acquired specific knowledge about their new home through sources unavailable to adults refugees.

The Power of Play: Jewish Refugee Children in World War II Shanghai

Mar 18, 2020
Kimberly Cheng
 
Call for Papers: Contested Meanings of Migration Facilitation: Emigration Agents, Coyotes, Rescuers, and Human Traffickers

Call for Papers: Contested Meanings of Migration Facilitation

Mar 16, 2020
 
Wolf Gruner's 2016 monograph is now available in English as 'The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia: Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses.'

New Book from the Network: The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia

Mar 15, 2020
 
Four calls, a conference reminder, a new book on the history of knowledge (open access), a special issue on migration and knowledge (open access), and a new book series on refugees and migrants in the Middle East.

# MigKnow Notes 8

Mar 6, 2020
 
As Chinese children and youth immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they had to overcome increasing restrictions on their entry. Wendy Rouse describes the knowledge they formed and passed on to succeed.

Crossing Borders: Chinese Immigrant Children and the Production of Knowledge

Mar 2, 2020
Wendy L. Rouse
 
Julie Weise asks how migrants responded to state-driven mandates to control and shape labor migration in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

In Sickness and in Health: Migrant Citizenships in the Postwar Years

Feb 7, 2020
Julie M. Weise
 
Workshop report for the Third Annual Bucerius Young Scholar Forum, held at the GHI Pacific Regional Office at Berkeley in October 2019.

Report: Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives

Feb 6, 2020
Levke Harders
Andrea Westermann
 
Learn more about a fellowship deadline extension (Feb 9), calls for papers, a summer course on early modern visual data, two publications, and a new history of knowledge center.

# MigKnow Notes 7

Feb 3, 2020
 
Short film about "Migrant Knowledge, Early Modern and Beyond," an event "at the crossroads" of art, scholarship, and activism in September 2019.

Migrant Knowledge “at the Crossroads”

Feb 1, 2020
 
Andrea Wiegeshoff explorers the interactions of different ways of knowing at the moment of immigration using the 1914 example of Wong Kum Wo in Honolulu.

Clashing Ways of Knowing at the Moment of Immigration

Dec 16, 2019
Andrea Wiegeshoff
 
Call for Papers: Workshop, May 18–19, 2020, Berkeley, California. Deadline: January 15, 2019.

CFP: Change in Motion: Environment, Migration, and Mobilities

Dec 9, 2019
 
The latest installment of links to research, events, and other news at the intersection of migration and knowledge.

# MigKnow Notes 6

Nov 7, 2019
 
The work of both Hans Rosenberg and Raul Hilberg was initially marginalized, but later entered the mainstream of German historiography. Why? What role did migration play in their work and its reception?

Marginalized Migrant Knowledge: The Reception of German-Speaking Refugee Historians in West Germany after 1945

Nov 6, 2019
Anna Corsten
 
Hirschfeld's encounters with Islam and Muslims in Indonesia, India, and the Near East "taught him how closely connected the issues of sexual and cultural diversity were."

Knowledge in Transit: Global Encounters and Transformation in Magnus Hirschfeld’s Travelogue

Nov 6, 2019
Razak Khan
 
Makes a case for not prejudging people smugglers in history or the testimony they left behind in state police records, using the example of Eastern and Central Europe in the interwar period.

Background Knowledge: Interrogating Perceptions of Smugglers with Joseph Roth

Oct 30, 2019
Allison Schmidt
 
Revisits Werner Schiffauer's 1991 classic, Die Migranten aus Subay, which reminds us that "migrants have lives of their own before they arrive in host societies, and they never cease to maintain ties … to the homelands they leave behind."

Rebels against the Homeland: Turkish Guest Workers in 1980s West German Anthropology

Oct 23, 2019
Michelle Lynn Kahn
 
"Knowledge and Young Migrants," special issue of KNOW edited by Simone Lässig and Swen Steinberg, with contributions by Paula S. Fass, Simone Laqua-O’Donnell, Wendy L. Rouse, Emily Marker, Kijan Espahangizi, and Stephanie Zloch.

News from the Network: Knowledge and Young Migrants

Oct 19, 2019
 
Surveys the research on current efforts to leverage professional knowledge and skills among migrant populations for development in their countries of origin. Pays particular attention to a program called Connecting Diaspora for Development.

Research on Diaspora Knowledge Transfer within a Temporary Return Program

Oct 16, 2019
Charlotte Mueller
 
Thinks about how migrant biographies and autobiographies can be used to understand associated knowledge transfer and translation processes, including their "success" or "failure." Examples are from Australia after World War Two.

Migrant Biographies as a Prism for Explaining Transnational Knowledge Transfers

Oct 7, 2019
Philipp Strobl
 
Explores two points in U.S. past when Jewish history and migration studies intersected: 19th-century studies of Jewish migration by local community organizations; and role played by Jewish social scientists in shaping modern migration studies.

Acquiring Knowledge About Migration: The Jewish Origins of Migration Studies

Sep 25, 2019
Tobias Brinkmann
 
The latest installment of links to research, events, and other news at the intersection of migration and knowledge.

# MigKnow Notes 5

Sep 20, 2019
 
"Migrant knowledge figures as a category of absence" in Europe. In Germany, one core issue is knowledge about recycling requirements and expectations. Efforts to teach it "betray an unreflective understanding of cultural identity."

Refuge and Refuse: Migrant Knowledge and Environmental Education in Germany

Sep 13, 2019
Joela Jacobs
 
The latest installment of links to research, events, and other news at the intersection of migration and knowledge.

# MigKnow Notes 4

Aug 5, 2019
 
The author reflects on the migrant knowledge revealed in Alex Pitstra's film about his complicated transnational family relationships, "Bezness as Usual."

The Trade-Off Called Love? Knowledge about Love, Migration, and Borders

Jul 15, 2019
Miriam Gutekunst
 
"Reconstituting the networks of the complex and mobile individuals through which indenture globally spread as a legal form of labor can sharpen our understanding of how migration practices and policies became universalized over the course of the nineteenth century..."

Of Dodos, Cane, and Migrants: Networking Migrant Knowledge between Mauritius and Hawai’i in the 1860s

Jun 17, 2019
Nicholas B. Miller
 
A young German in 19th-century North America bragged that his travels had enabled him to "learn and see how it goes in the world." What did he mean? What can we learn from him about migration, knowledge, and knowledge formation?

Migration, Creativity, and the Construction of Knowledge

Jun 3, 2019
Benjamin Hein
 
Workshop call (Washington), conference program (Berkeley), and a crowdsourced project (German Letters)

# MigKnow Notes 3

May 2, 2019
 
The author expected to find files in Paris for his study of Franco-Yiddishness in the interwar period, but they had wandered elsewhere. His surprise led him to consider "the migratory history of knowledge and knowledge-making."

Following the Archives: Migrating Documents and their Changing Meanings

Apr 18, 2019
Nick Underwood
 
A call for summer school applications (Bern), a grant in aid awards notice (IHRCA), and a call for papers (Millenium)

# MigKnow Notes 2

Mar 27, 2019
 
Discusses a 1909 Syrian American advice book for Ottoman subjects planning to emigrate to the U.S., which contained knowledge about would-be immigrants' specific rights in the U.S. and self-fashioning tips for dealing with authorities there.

A Little Advice: Syrian American Advice Booklets as Knowledge Production

Mar 27, 2019
Stacy D. Fahrenthold
 
Ben Nobbs-Thiessen examines the personal geographies of some Mennonites in Latin America who "have exercised a paradoxical degree of mobility" despite their well-known horse-and-buggy appearance.

Marginal Knowledge: The Transnational Practices of Latin American Mennonites

Mar 22, 2019
Ben Nobbs-Thiessen
 
Two CFPs: "Material Cultures in Migration" (deadline: March 31, 2019) and "Imagining Migration, Knowing Migration" (deadline April 20, 2019)

# MigKnow Notes 1

Mar 16, 2019
 
The author argues that history must be reconceptualized to include migrants not as extras in a society's history but as constitutive of that society. Her example comes from contemporary Swiss history.

Telling History from a Migration Perspective is Not an Add-On

Mar 15, 2019
Francesca Falk
 
Points to manifold manifestations of migrant knowledge and reflects on how studying it can open fruitful avenues of historical research.

Migrant Knowledge: An Entangled Object of Research

Mar 14, 2019
Andrea Westermann
 
Blog post by Charlotte Mueller, who argues, "Migrants can be knowledge senders and knowledge receivers simultaneously, in their country of destination as well as in their country of origin."

News from the Network: Migration and Knowledge Transfer

Mar 14, 2019
 
Abstracts seven posts about migration and knowledge that were published at the History of Knowledge blog in the past two years.

Linking Migration and Knowledge: Seven Viewpoints at ‘History of Knowledge’

Mar 14, 2019
Mark R. Stoneman
 
Simone Lässig, “The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the Historical Research Agenda,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 59 (Fall 2016): 29–59.

The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the Historical Research Agenda

Mar 14, 2019