VIII. POSSIBLE PATHWAYS AND TRAJECTORIES: FEASIBLE PERSPECTIVES FOR EUROPEAN NARRATIVES WITHIN THE REALM OF MIGRATION HISTORY

Having said this, I will step on normative grounds myself and shortly discuss which paths could and should be followed as a scholarly and political process of further establishing migration history within European societies. Which options could be pursued and chosen?
European migration history should predominantly focus on the history of immigration to and within Europe. However, European immigration history should also be situated and contextualized within the history of emigration and internal migration as well as the history of autochthonous minorities and their migration. Within such a focus, a central topic is the transformation of Europe from a continent of emigration to a continent of immigration. Thus, besides the realm of European immigration history, the history of emigration and remigration would also play a crucial role.
Spatially, a European narrative should strongly concentrate on inner European migration between the European nation-states. However, immigration to Europe from extra-European areas as well as emigration from Europe should not be overlooked. The interrelated theme of internal migration within the European nation-states, which often provided a migration alternative directly associated with questions of international migration (for instance in the German or Italian cases where internal migration East-West and South-North, respectively, provided an alternative to transatlantic emigration), is of eminent importance.
The following aspects, foci and group narratives as well as periodizations could be a tentative model for (comparative) approaches towards European(izing) migration history. This proposal should be understood as a starting point rather than as a final list. Its focus and scope should be a matter of controversy. Especially one could argue, that such group approach should not be taken to evade preconceived notions about homogeneity of ethnic and social groups or the cohesion of special or separate forms of migrations. However, by weaving some structure into the chaos of the past, such a typology might help us understand the complexity of Europe’s migratory past:

1. LABOR MIGRATION

The central European (as well as global) theme of labor migration within Europe has proved a lasting topic since early modern times, though it considerably increased and intensified within the 19th century. Closely related to the history of industrialization and urbanization in Europe, this topic contextualizes such different migration streams as (deliberate) labor migration from Eastern to Western Europe and from Southern to Northern and Western Europe. Furthermore, the organized labor migration within the second half of the 20th century is still continuing and shaping Europe’s social, economic and cultural reality. As a result, such diverse migratory movements as journeys of craftsmen in late mediaeval and early modern times, interrelations of regional economies by way of networks, seasonal labor migrants, the history of rural-urban migration and the mass migrations of the 19th and 20th century, whether transatlantic or inner-European, can form the subject of focus.

2. FORCED MIGRATIONS

The 20th century was the century of refugees. In Europe alone, mote than 30 million people were expelled, displaced by force or had to flee between 1913 (the first and second Balkan Wars) and 1999 (Kosovo War). This forced homogenization of (often previously mixed) populations under the banner of nationalism and the European Wars reshaped the ethnic and demographic structure of Europe – to some extent, radically. This topic predominantly focuses on the three main 20th century periods of forced migration (before and after the First World War, during and after the Second World War and since the demise of the communist regimes).
Regionally it is centered on Central and Eastern Europe. However, it is neither geographically limited to this European region nor temporally to the 20th century. For instance, forced migrations were also important in the period of religious strife. Thus, the expulsions of Jews from Spain and Portugal as well as forced migrations of Hugenots and Protestant dissenters from France, Great Britain or Austria are significant topics.

3. COLONIAL MIGRATIONS AND “REPATRIATION”

The decolonization of the world after the end of the Second World War caused new migration movements. On the one hand, the colonial powers such as Belgium, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal withdrew (‘repatriated’) their (mostly white) “colonial population” from the newly independent states (reversed migration). On the other hand, historically established links between the former mother countries and the former colonies led to the immigration of members of previously colonized peoples and nations, thus spurring new forms of labor migration streams.

4. ETHNIC MIGRATION

A special form of migration, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, is the migration of ethnic minorities into their (historical) “homeland.” In the course of forced nationalization and homogenization of nation-state populations in 20th century Europe, countless members of ethnic minorities left their countries of birth and residence to settle as co-ethnic migrants in their “mother country.” This was particularly true for Karelian, or Finnish, German, Greek, and Hungarian minorities after the end of the First and Second World Wars. The remaining European Jewry after 1945 and ethnic Russians in the successor states of the USSR since the implosion of the Soviet Union also take on this migration form. Moreover, numerous smaller groups such as ethnic Poles in Kazhakstan or Meshketian Turks from Central Asia, but also the large group of Crimean Tatars were affected by this kind of migration. In the latter cases the migration was a late consequence of Stalinist deportation in the 1930s and 1940s, in the former it could be argued that the migration was also an effect of decolonization (ethnic Russians, ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians), if one stretches the concept of colonization and decolonization into the longue durйe.

5. POLITICAL REFUGE AND ASYLUM

Political emigration was a constant phenomenon of European modernity, which was closely connected to the political transformation of respective systems. This form of migration stretched from the French revolution, through the 1848 revolutions, the Russian October Revolution and up until the uprising against the communist regimes in Czechoslovakia (1968), East Germany (1953), Poland (1956, 1968 and in the 1980s) and Hungary (1956). An influx of political and revolution refugees from outside the continent, albeit in rather small numbers for a long time, was also present in Europe.
During the 20th century, the rivalry of political systems outside of Europe between autocratic or totalitarian regimes and democracies generated an increasing number of dissidents who sought refuge partly in Europe. In this way, the successful export of the Western model of democracy into other parts of the world became causally linked to political refuge. Thus, an historically reflected position could also argue that there is a moral European obligation to face this fact.

6. ELITE MIGRATION AND BRAIN DRAIN

One special case in European migration (history) is elite migration. This phenomenon mostly, but not only, occurred between Eastern and Western Europe and between former colonies, sometimes otherwise called the developed world and third world countries, respectively. Elite migration usually comprises migration that is job-related and occurs for career or educational purposes. Thus, it stretches from, for instance, the Japanese piano student at German music schools, to highly qualified, but lowly paid former scientists from Academies of Sciences in Eastern European transition states who seek employment in the West, to computer and IT experts from India or Bulgaria who help to close labor market gaps in Western Europe. Even if this form of migration was quantitatively not so significant, it still had an important impact, since social and political change in the areas of origin of these migrants was often directly linked to the transfer of ideas through members of the emigrating elite.
Intellectuals played and continue to play an important role in the history of migration. This is not only true for dissidents and regime critics who had to leave their homeland as a consequence of their political opinions or of persecution in order to live either temporarily or permanently in emigration (e.g. Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein, Carl Schurz, Friedrich Hecker, Victor Hugo, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Alexander Solzhenitsyn to name just a few). It is particularly true for intellectuals and artists who either fled the narrow world of their home provinces or were in search of metropolitan intellectual inspiration to stimulate their creativity. This incomplete list of migrants stretches from Samuel Beckett and Ludwig Bцrne through Julien Green, Ernest Hemingway, Eugиne Ionesco, James Joyce, Milan Kundera and Pablo Picasso to Joseph Roth, Gertrude Stein or Oscar Wilde. The history of this kind of migration is thus also a part of the intellectual history of European metropolises such as Berlin, Budapest, London, Paris and Vienna, etc. It is an essential part of the creation and celebration of (urban) cultural diversity within the realm of social and intellectual history.^[1] It needs to be taken into consideration, however, that elite migration and the brain drain was never completely detached from the social reality of ordinary people whose fate often mirrors that of the elite, or at least structurally reflects it.

7. UNDOCUMENTED (“ILLEGAL”) MIGRATION

An important area increasing in significance today is undocumented (‚illegal’) migration, which occurs outside the realms of legal migration. Undocumented migration is closely connected, though not linearly, with other forms of migration since the very legalization of certain forms of migration and gates of entry defines who and what is illegal. Illegal migration was and continues to be closely integrated with the practice of state control, i.e. registration and supervision within the confined borders of a state territory. The origin of migration regimes, migration policy and means of control, such as passports and visas, stems from the broader area represented by this form of migration. For the purpose of historical scholarship, undocumented migration provides an excellent field that can easily be narrated (and also visualized in exhibitions or museums).

8. GENDERED MIGRATION: LOVE BIRDS, SEX AND HOUSEHOLD SLAVES (OR: MARRIAGE MIGRATION, TRAFFICKING AND DOMESTIC LABORERS)

A specific form of migration that is strongly gendered and pertains mainly to women includes firstly marriage markets and secondly the sex trade. Thirdly one can add the area of domestic labor. All three forms of migration experienced a renaissance in the New Europe ever since the Cold War ended. Within the system of migration between Eastern and Western Europe these forms play a prominent role. Personal advertisements of women from post-communist countries looking for spouses fill the classifieds section in Western newspapers and are omnipresent on the Web. The commodification of the Eastern female body on Western meat markets transcends marriage migration and has become an important element in the sex business. Trafficking eastern European women to the West and ‘employing’ them (or forcing them) in(to) prostitution is a daily practice. Moreover, private Western households draw heavily on mostly undocumented labor of Eastern women providing lowly paid services in middle class and upper middle class families (child care, cleaning, cooking).^[2] However, neither of these forms of migration is new. They have historical predecessors, whether it be war brides who married and emigrated from Europe to the United States and Canada in the aftermath of the Second World War, or (usually) rural-urban (female) migrants who supplied the market for domestic labor and extramarital sex when urbanization and industrialization took off in (continental) Europe from the mid 19th century on.

9. MIGRATIONS IN MULTIPLE AND TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

In typologically classifying the various migrations given above and providing a narration along these lines, the clichйed reproduction of images often found in the arsenal of collective national memories should be avoided. This can be demonstrated with German examples: the central images and motives should not be those of the one millionth Portuguese labor migrant (“guest worker”) being welcome with a motor-bike as a present, the East Prussian grandmother fleeing with an overburdened hand wagon or the asylum seeker crammed into a container village. Instead, representations should include multiple, interrelated, contrasting views, which also iconoclastically embody new interpretations or at least dialectical views transcending established national paradigms. On the one hand, this means that our view always needs to be informed by taking into consideration the conditions of both countries of origin and countries of destination, and in particular by incorporating transnational interdependencies of social spaces and interrelational fields created through migrations. On the other hand, comparable processes should be viewed together (for instance, the often transitory living conditions of different migrant groups; the oftentimes specific lack of modernity of migrants’ cultures; intercultural conflicts between receiving societies and immigrants or the notion of “home” among immigrants). Migration cannot be understood, analyzed and narrated as a unilinear process between two (nation) states. To make this point less abstract through examples: labor migration needs to take into consideration the repercussions it exercises in societies of origin, in particular by way of financial remittances and cultural transfers. Forced migrations of ethnic minorities can only be understood when contextualized within ideologies of ethno-national homogeneity of nation-states and the resulting demographic postulate, i.e. the unmixing and reversion of (social) spaces and orders. Political flight can only be fully grasped when cited within the transfer and diffusion of political ideas and values of freedom, not only within the context of repressive conditions in potential countries of origin from which migrants stem.
Even the Holy Grail of national historiography, the genesis of nations, nation-states and national political philosophy (Staatsdenken) can gain a new dimension by taking on a multiple perspective: national ruling elites, for instance, often emerged from trans-European intellectuals and aristocratic families. Nation-state populations resulted from mass migrations of settlers or workers; commercial networks were also trans-European or even global from the mercantile age to the age of nation-states. This view is a critical challenge for established patterns of national interpretations and narrations. National paradigms are thus limited to the role of just one mode of interpretation among many without abandoning or transcending them completely. Thus, the opportunity to understand these national paradigms as historically transitory is set in motion.^[3]

IX. CONCLUSION: STEPS TOWARDS THE ESTABLISHMENT AND CONSOLIDATION OF EUROPEAN MIGRATION HISTORY

Researching, narrating and imagining Europe as a place of multiple and manifold migrations is a process that has only started fairly recently, mainly within the past two decades. Within historical scholarship the founding mothers and fathers such as Klaus J. Bade in Germany, Jan Lucassen in the Netherlands, Gйrard Noiriel in France or the two US American scholars Nancy Green and Leslie Page Moch have trained a new generation of scholars and researchers who are ante portas and to a certain extent already in research institutions. Thus, writing European migration history is on a fairly good track.
However, the large-scale establishment of European migration history apart from the successful beginnings that have already been achieved, faces huge, but not insurmountable challenges. Two main questions need to be solved: First, scholars need to come to a consensus on the necessity of such an analytical and narrative approach or shift of paradigm. Writing migration history into national and European history as national and European history has yet to be realized. It needs to go beyond the status of an addendum to established master narratives.^[4] Second, the conceptual and organizational implementation needs to be tackled. This problem faces a crucial challenge: migration history can be based only partially on existing collections of sources in archives (and/or museums). Thus, systematic collections of sources should be either initiated or at least extended. Moreover, the consciousness that migration history is a topic worth analyzing and narrating often needs to be incited among protagonists in established institutions, whether they may be archivists, professional historians, history teachers at schools or journalists writing and reporting on historical issues.
Moreover, representing and visualizing migration history and thus translating it to a larger audience is a rather new and budding challenge. Fortunately, one does not need to start from scratch. Numerous existing national initiatives do already exist and can be integrated or have already established forms of communication. To conclude, I would like to point to these ongoing initiatives in the realm of visualizing and displaying migration history in Europe by way of creating temporary exhibitions or lobbying for migration museums. There are numerous actors on this market, partly serving European customers, partly playing a role in the national realm, and partly limiting themselves to regional and local scopes.

EUROPEAN ACTORS

There are several European initiatives which are either in the process of conceptualizing and displaying exhibitions on migration history or building bridges between institutions working in the field.
A European wide organizational structure bringing together “institutions and organizations, whose field of interest concern migration, research and exhibitions portraying emigration, and who seek to promote understanding of common goals” has been created in 1996. The Association of European Migration Institutions/A.E.M.I. (http://hbender.homepage.dk) is open to research institutions, museums etc. that share a historical interest in questions of immigration and emigration. Though rather being an informal forum for exchange of ideas and the establishment of institutional contacts, not so much an agent for the establishment of exhibitions, A.E.M.I. launched the idea of creating a European path of migration history. The idea was proposed to the Council of Europe in 2002 and has been accepted in the meantime.
Euroclio the established cooperation of European history museums (http://www.euroclio.com), is currently also discussing the creation of a European migration exhibition. Moreover, Euroclio’s newly founded journal “Comparare” dedicates space to questions of Self and Other within the emerging European society.
Within the EU program Culture 2000 a collaboration of museums in six countries – mostly labor history museums – exists. This cooperation is part of the WORKLAB project of the International Association of Labor Museums (http://www.worlab.dk or http://www.migration-identity.org). Participating museums include the Workers’ Museum in Copenhagen (Denmark), the Museum of Work in Hamburg/Germany, the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin (Germany), the Neighborhood Museum Neukцlln in Berlin (Germany), the National Museum of Labor History in Manchester (Great Britain), the Working World Museum at Steyr (Austria), the Museum of Science and Technology at Terrassa (Spain) and the Museum of Work in Norrkцping (Sweden). These museums have been cooperating since 2001 and are in the process of establishing local exhibitions as well as a roaming European exhibition on migration history which will be shown in the respective museums.^[5]
The Network Migration in Europe (http://www.network-migration.org), an NGO officially and legally established in 2001, though having a longer informal history, coordinates various socio-political and scientific initiatives that address migration and migration history on a European level. The idea and initiative of establishing a European Centre for Migration: Forum and Museum emerged within this group.^[6] Moreover, the network is involved in a large oral history project on forced migration in 20th century Europe resulting in a TV documentary (“Lost Dreams of Home: Refugees and Expellees in the Century of Flight”). The project compares three cases of forced migration, namely the Greek-Turkish case of the 1920s, the German-Polish case of the 1940s and the case of Bosnia-Hercegovina in the 1990s. The Network Migration is regularly organizing scholarly conferences on migration history and collective memory and publishing the conference proceedings.^[7]

NATIONAL ACTORS

Belgium

The government of the administrative region in Brussels launched an initiative in October 2001 to establish an immigration museum. The project has parliamentary support. The museum, however, might become a part of the European Museum planned in Brussels. Moreover, the canal area around the Belgium district of La Louvriиre, is hosting a regional migration museum (Walloon Migration Museum). Once an important center of steel and mining, the site now belongs to the UNESCO world cultural heritage. A landscape of museums was established along the canals. An immigration museum was built next to an environmental museum and a mining museum. The former displays in particular the history of Italian labor immigrants

France

The Paris based immigrant NGO Gйnйriques (http://www.generiques.org) successfully implemented numerous projects in the area of migration history since 1987 (exhibitions, Guides des Sources des Archives, Journal Migrance) and launched a concept for a French migration museum in November 2001 (http://www.generiques.org/rapport.html). The latter project was initiated by the Jospin administration. French decision makers have agreed upon the concept, however, the national administration and the city of Paris are still discussing how cost and burden-sharing shall be divided. Thus, the project is temporarily stuck within the administration.

Germany

In Germany, the discussion about establishing a migration museum is fairly advanced, though rather limited to NGOs and activists, not so much nurtured by established (state) institutions, namely history museums. DOMiT (Documentation and Museum on Migration from Turkey, see: http://www.domit.de) a cultural immigrant self-organization in Cologne hosted a first conference on the issue Saving the Legacy of Immigrants: The Federal Republic Needs an Immigration Museum (Das Erbe der Einwanderer sichern: Die Bundesrepublik braucht ein Migrationsmuseum) at the beginning of October 2002. The initiative was sponsored and co-organized by the Bundeszentrale fьr politische Bildung (Federal Center for Civic Education). A follow up conference will take place in October 2003.^[8]
In cooperation with the Cologne Art Association (Kцlner Kunstverein) DOMiT will organize a large exhibition on labor migration history in 2005, when the conclusion of the (first) German-Italian labor recruitment contract in 1955 will be commemorated. DOMiT’s planed exhibition is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes). This exhibition and the collection of artifacts and sources it will be based upon, might one day well develop into the core of a German migration museum.

Great Britain

In London there is a local migration museum (9 Princelet Street in Spitalfields) that is conceptualized as a neighborhood museum, thus resembling the concept of the Tenement Museum in News York’s Lower East side (http://www.tenement).

Italy

In Italy, numerous local and regional initiatives mostly circled around established institutions are important actors in the field of displaying migration history. Most of these initiatives met for the first time in June 2002 at the conference I Musei dell’emigrazione Esperienze locali e internazionali in Perugia. Among others involved are the Museo dell’emigrante di San Marino, the Museo dell’emigrazione eoliana di Salina, the Museo dell’emigrazione di Francavilla Angitola, the emigration section of the Museo delle tradizioni ed arti contadine di Picciano in Pescara, the Museo storico dell’emigrazione transoceanica meridionale in Naples and the Museo dell’emigrazione di Gualdo Tadino.

Liechtenstein

The newly opened art museum in Liechtenstein plans to host an art exhibition on migration at the end of 2003. The exhibition will be interconnected with projects focusing on questions of immigration and integration in neighboring Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Moreover, this museum intends to host a conference in Vaduz, the capital of the country, bringing together the various European, national and regional initiatives, which work on exhibiting and displaying migration history or founding migration museums.

Luxemburg

In Luxemburg, the Centre de Documentation sur les Migrations Humaines/CDMH (Centre for Documenting Human Migrations, see:
http://www.migcendo.lu/musee.html) documents and displays immigration to Luxemburg and manages an open air migration museum (musйe hors des murs or museum outside the walls). Moreover, the initiative is behind the idea of establishing a path on European migration history (see above).

The Netherlands

The Dutch foundation Imagine Identity and Culture (http://www.imagineIC.nl) was created and is supported by the Dutch government in Amsterdam in 2000. It digitalizes visual European sources (photos, paintings) dealing with migration (history) and beginning from early modern times to the present. This project might eventually develop into the European archive on visual holdings and documentation concerning migration history.

Switzerland

The Swiss initiative Verein fьr ein Migrationsmuseum (Association for a Migration Museum, Switzerland (http://www.migrationsmuseum.ch) has come up with an impressive study (Machbarkeitsstudie) for the implementation of a Swiss migration museum (Machbarkeitsstudie fьr ein Museum fьr Migration, Winterthur, Januar 2001). It is backed by influential supporters in Switzerland and the United States and is currently recruiting sponsors for the project. Since early 2002, the Verein employs two people who are in charge of lobbying for the project and finding sponsors. One of the protagonists of the Swiss initiative, Heinz Nigg, organized a roaming exhibition on contemporary Swiss migration history (Da und fort. Leben in zwei Welten). The exhibit is based on life course interviews with immigrants and was shown in several Swiss cities until the end of 2002.

REGIONAL AND LOCAL INITIATIVES: THE EXAMPLE OF GERMANY

On top of national initiatives numerous smaller, mostly local or regional initiatives and exhibitions have recently dedicated themselves to the topic of migration history. Some German examples might serve as an illustration for these fruitful and manifold initiatives. In Germany alone the following initiatives are underway: the recent exhibition of the Kreuzberg Museum Berlin “Wir sind die nдchsten... Tьrkiye’den Berlin’e”: Die zweite Generation” (We are the Next: The Second Generation of Turkish Immigrants in Berlin) displayed in 2000/01; the 1999 exhibition “Fremde Heimat” (At Home, a Stranger) organized by DoMit e.V./Documentation and Museum on Migration from Turkey and the Ruhrlandmuseum Essen, which was again displayed in the city hall of Cologne in 2001; the exhibition “Fьr 50 Mark einen Italiener” (An Italian for Fifty Marks) in Munich in 2000; the current roaming exhibition project of the Landeszentrale fьr politische Bildung Niedersachsen (Federal Center for Civic Education in Lower Saxony); the virtual photo exhibition “Facets of Migration – Germany Faces Migration,” a cooperation of the Network Migration in Europe e.V. and Gйnйriques; the photo, exhibition, film and broadcast project “Face Migration” of the Sьdwest-Rundfunk (broadcast station in the federal state of Baden-Wьrttemberg), not to mention smaller local projects and recent or more long-standing plans on establishing sites for emigration history.^[9] Moreover, the Historical Museum of the city of Frankfurt, the German Historical Museum in Berlin are planning exhibitions on immigration history in the next years.
To wrap things up: (Western) Europe is increasingly becoming aware of its migration history and paying more and more attention to it. This is true not only for the area of scholarship, but also for the field of exhibitions and museums. However, the approaches are partly regional (or even local) and partly national. A pan-European project is only now emerging probably as a mosaic of ongoing and established projects, thus fairly well representing what Europe (still) is all about: diversity, complexity and an assembly of partly competing, partly cooperating little duchies and principalities (sometimes also called nation-states).