Paris: Commemorating Migrants and Migrations

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.<br><br> 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 of interest include:<br><br> 1. Migrant incorporation/exclusion and historical representation in both sending and receiving countries<br> 2. Writing migration history within the national, European or global context.<br> 3. Social and cultural practices and strategies of museums, exhibitions, media, schools/curricula and migrant communities to represent migrants and migration history<br> 4. Methodological and theoretical contributions with regard to writing and representing migration history