Migrant Knowledge

Migrant Knowledge

Tag: young migrants

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

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

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

Mervete Bobaj
Anh-Susann Pham Thi

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’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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