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History of Migration

The GHI’s longstanding engagement with the migration of German-speakers to North America from the seventeenth century to the present is the foundation for the wider reaching program in migration history it launched in 2015. Current GHI-supported projects look beyond the flows of European migrants across the Atlantic and analyze migrant groups and receiving societies around the world. Particular attention is given to forced migration and comparative research on the social and cultural integration of migrants. The roles of migrants as producers and transmitters of distinctive bodies of knowledge is the focus of the “Migrant Knowledge” initiative at the GHI’s Pacific Regional Office. The collaborative project "German Heritage in Letters" draws on the tools of digital history to explore the ways German emigrants and their family and friends at home created transnational spaces of communication and knowledge circulation.

Photo Credit: El Shatt, UNRRA Refugee Camp, 1944. Otto Gilmore/FSA/OWI, Library of Congress.

Team

Albert Manke

Research Fellow, GHI PRO

Albert Manke

Research Fellow, GHI PRO
Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington
Institute of European Studies | University of California, Berkeley | 249 Moses Hall | Berkeley, CA 94720-2316
Phone +1.510.643-4558

manke@ghi-dc.orgRead on

Projects

German Heritage in Letters

German Heritage in Letters is a project to create a digital collection of German-language correspondence currently held in private hands, by archives, by special collection libraries, museums, and other institutions.

Events & Conferences

Jan 29, 2021

Migration and Racism in the Americas: The Case of Migrants in the United States

Lecture (virtual) | 12pm ET | Speaker: Ramón Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley); Comment: Julia Roth (Bielefeld University)

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Apr 19, 2021

Migration and Racism in the United States and Germany in the Twentieth Century

Virtual Workshop | Conveners: Maria Alexopoulou (University of Mannheim), Elisabeth Engel (GHI Washington)

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Apr 26, 2021

Change in Motion: Environment, Migration, and Mobilities

Workshop at the Pacific Regional Office of the GHI in Berkeley | Conveners: Sarah Earnshaw (Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington, Berkeley) and Samantha Fox (Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School, New York)

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Jun 07, 2021

Mobilities, Exclusion, and Migrants' Agency in the Pacific Realm in a Transregional and Diachronic Perspective

Conference at the University of California, Berkeley | Conveners: Albert Manke (GHI's Regional Office at UC Berkeley) and Sören Urbansky (German Historical Institute Washington)

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Sep 23, 2021

Environments of Exile: Refugees, Nature, and Representations

Biennial Conference of the North American Society for Exile Studies at Queen's University, Kingston, ON | Conveners: Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston / GHI PRO) and Helga Schreckenberger (University of Vermont, Burlington)

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Oct 12, 2021

Historicizing the Refugee Experience, 17th - 21st Centuries

First Annual International Seminar in Historical Refugee Studies at the KWI in Essen | Organized by The University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), the German Historical Institute in Washington (GHI) and the National History Center of the American Historical Association (NHC), in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Center for Integration and Migration Research (InZentIM), the Institute for the Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) and the Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21)

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Oct 18, 2021

Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives

Fifth Annual Bucerius Young Scholars Forum at the Pacific Regional Office of the GHI in Berkeley | Conveners: Franziska Exeler (Department of History, Free University Berlin; Centre for History and Economics, University of Cambridge) and Sören Urbansky (Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington, Berkeley)

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Nov 15, 2021

Contested Meanings of Migration Facilitation: Emigration Agents, Coyotes, Rescuers, and Human Traffickers

Annual Academic and Policy Symposium: Innovation through Migration at GHI PRO | Conveners: Ulf Brunnbauer (Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies & Regensburg University) and Andrea Westermann (GHI PRO)

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Nov 03, 2022

German Migrants and Migrating Knowledge in Latin American History

Conference at GHI Washington | Conveners: Simone Lässig (GHI Washington), Mario Peters (GHI Washington), H. Glenn Penny (University of Iowa), Stefan Rinke (Freie Universität Berlin)

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Publications

Jan C. Jansen & Simone Lässig, eds.

Refugee Crises, 1945-2000: Political and Societal Responses in International Comparison

Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

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Das Pazifikbüro des DHI Washington. Aufbauphase 2017-2019

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Andrea Westermann & Onur Erdur, eds.

Histories of Migrant Knowledge: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives

Bulletin Supplement 15 (2020)

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John P.R. Eicher

Exiled Among Nations: German and Mennonite Mythologies in a Transnational Age

Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

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Bulletin 65 (Fall 2019)

Forum: The Weimar Republic Reconsidered

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Anne C. Schenderlein

Germany on their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988

Studies in German History. Vol. 25. New York: Berghahn Books, 2020.

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Jan C. Jansen, Jessica Harland-Jacobs & Elizabeth Mancke, eds.

The Fraternal Atlantic, 1770–1930

Special Issue, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 16.3 (2019)

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all publications

Latest News

Call for Papers

Historicizing the Refugee Experience, 17th-21st centuries

Deadline: February 21, 2021 | First Annual International Seminar in Historical Refugee Studies in Essen (Germany)

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History of the Americas & Transatlantic History

GHI Lecture Series GHI “Mobilities and Migration across the Americas”

The GHI is pleased to announce a new virtual lecture series “Mobilities and Migration across the Americas” planned for the spring term co-sponsored by…

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Event Report

Recreating Separate Spheres Across Not-So-Separate Worlds: Gender and Reeducation in Japan, Germany, and the USA after World War II

Conference report by Claudia Roesch (GHI Washington)

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Event Report

Virtual Panel Series: Racism in History and Context

Panel series report by Frank Kell (Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands)

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Call for Papers

Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives

Deadline: February 15, 2021 | Fifth Annual Bucerius Young Scholars Forum at the Pacific Regional Office of the GHI in Berkeley

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Get in Touch

Sören Urbansky

Research Fellow & Head of Office, GHI PRO
Phone +1.510.643.4558

urbansky@ghi-dc.org