Cities, Migration and the Historiography of Post-war Europe (Nov. 2021) (original) (raw)
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A 'Melting Pot' City: Migration and Municipality in the Reconstruction of Dortmund (Nov. 2021)
Journal of Migration History, 2021
This article explores how Dortmund’s municipal government propagated a concept of city-citizenship and belonging for new arrivals by mediating between expellee, refugee and migrant communities and ‘native’ civil society in the 1940s-1950s. The devastation of Dortmund during the Second World War, and the housing and energy shortages that followed, meant that the arrival of over a hundred thousand expellees and refugees in 1945–1960 placed severe strains on municipal resources while exacerbating conflicts between ‘native’ Dortmunders and new arrivals. The success of the Social Democratic Party (spd) in building a hegemonic position in postwar politics and administration by the late 1940s facilitated the coordination of municipal efforts to foster intercommunity relations and introduce new populations to city life. Within the city council and government, in expellee meetings, and in municipal events we observe sustained municipal efforts to 1) exert social control over expellee/refugee arrivals to deflect anger at the poor conditions of the reconstruction period away from municipal officials and 2) inculcate taboos based on peace and democratic norms to delegitimise the politics of inter-community resentment. It concludes by tracing how official narratives and municipal practices constructed in the 1940s-50s were redeployed during the arrival of guest workers in the 1960s.
Urban History, 2022
The vital role that cities play in the governance of migration is increasingly recognized, yet migration scholars still perceive this ‘local turn’ as a recent phenomenon. This article presents a cross-country and cross-city comparative analysis of three mid-size European cities during the post-war period: Bristol, Dortmund and Malmö. It analyses administrative cultures and local policy arenas, exposing the complexity of local migration policy-making and the crucial importance of historical perspectives. It reveals the inherent local variation in policies and practices, and argues that traditional national-level studies do not fully capture how urban actors responded to migration.
Urban History
The vital role that cities play in the governance of migration is increasingly recognized, yet migration scholars still perceive this ‘local turn’ as a recent phenomenon. This article presents a cross-country and cross-city comparative analysis of three mid-size European cities during the post-war period: Bristol, Dortmund and Malmö. It analyses administrative cultures and local policy arenas, exposing the complexity of local migration policy-making and the crucial importance of historical perspectives. It reveals the inherent local variation in policies and practices, and argues that traditional national-level studies do not fully capture how urban actors responded to migration.
Cities and Refugees— The German Experience
The arrival of large numbers of refugees into Europe poses a significant humanitarian challenge. The scale of the migration, the extent of the human suffering that has driven it, and the political complexities of resolving the situation all add to existing strains within the European Union. The crisis has destabilized the politics of the entire European continent, roiling the political systems of individual countries and threatening the solidarity of the EU as a whole. Leaders in Europe know that they must get a handle on the situation, and fast. Yet to date, the dominant focus of European decision-and opinion-makers has largely been on the immigration policies and perspectives of host countries. As priorities shift to longer-term economic and social integration, there is an equal, pressing need to focus on the role and actions of host cities. The reality is that refugees disproportionately settle in large cities, where they have better job prospects and existing social connections. Ultimately, it is those communities, rather than national governments, that will grapple with accommodating and integrating new arrivals. The responsibilities facing these cities and municipalities are enormous: how to house, educate, train, and integrate individuals from different cultures, with different education levels, who are often in need of emergency health care and special services. Municipalities across Europe are faced with these responsibilities during a period of great social unease given the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, and Nice; rising tension in everyday life around cultural and religious differences; and growing volatility in local, state, and national politics. In many respects, this complex and contentious environment requires greater, not less, focus on how cities design and deliver successful integration
Neighbourhoods are led to construct themselves in a homogeneous way, in a sort of community in the sense of aggregated groups, not necessary only in terms of ethnicity but in terms of socio-economic characteristics. This reflects migration, socio-economic difference and the dynamic of the city development. These neighbourhoods have a potential of self-regulation and stabilisation of the city that is often underestimated. Thus, I think that the mixture of a city is the result of mobility, but cannot be the starting point, in particular in modern, flexibilised societies in which weak identities search for stabilizing communities.
One cannot understand contemporary Europe without taking its history of migration into account. Considered by many to have become the epicentre of global migration flows, this process has been - and is still today - fraught with tensions. The immediate postwar political and economic landscape greatly impacted the way migration to Europe developed, from labour recruitment programs and postcolonial migration to increased numbers of refugees and the harmonization of EU asylum policies. As such, this seminar aims to highlight the ideas, institutions, and actors that have influenced the evolution of migration in postwar Europe. The objective is to provide the student with the necessary theoretical and analytical tools to be able to grasp how migration has affected both Europe itself and those entering its borders. Due to the nature of the Seminar, students are expected to come to class prepared to engage in important discussions and debates concerning the main themes, ideas and arguments highlighted in the weekly readings.
Different kinds of migration influenced and transformed specific municipal policies in the city quarters of fin-de-siècle Vienna and Budapest in distinctly divergent ways. These policies and practices accommodated the increased presence of diverse migrant flows and, at the same time, attempted to identify, rationalise and control them. They segregated migrants according to class, gender, ethnicity, occupation, location, appearance, and the length of their stay. Because poor relief and social welfare were primarily administered at the municipal level, the principal tools to identify and differentiate those select few deemed as ‘deserving’ from the rest of the migrants were local citizenship (Heimatrecht/községi illetőség) and the sinister coercive municipal policy of relocation. While central districts were policed largely to maintain public order and peace of the ‘respectable society’, old Jewish quarters remained places of concentrated residence of pooper, less integrated and insecure populations. At the same time, young male migrant factory labour in the worker suburbs – and not casual and seasonal workers, or women employed in much less visible urban industries – became the main subject of early municipal reforms. Overseas migrants around Vienna’s and Budapest’s main railway stations were largely segregated from the rest of the urban society and controlled by both the police and the shipping agencies. Additional, even harsher modes of identification were applied down the social and gender lines. This chapter maps these groups and the changing municipal policies towards them during the rise of the central state when traditional forms of identification and control were in flux.
Introduction to MIgrants and City-Making pre-prof copy.pdf
The world is very different from the year 2000, when we began our long-term research into relationships between migrants and three seemingly disparate cities. 1 Mardin, Turkey, lies on the Turkish-Syrian Border; Manchester, New Hampshire, is in the northeastern United States;