Unmögliche Ordnung

After an inspiring tour through the Berlin Wall Memorial, the conference lead to another highlight: a short performance of the play “Eyes under the Sea”, written by the academic artist / artistic academic Yiannis Lymtsioulis and staged by Anton Juan, a director and theater professor at the University of Notre Dame, IN. Before the play started Lymtsioulis introduced the audience to the process behind this short piece and the importance of bringing it to the Berlin Wall Memorial: already three years ago he attended another conference in Berlin.

Friday concluded with a round table on the “Global Effects of the European Migration Regime”. It inspired a vivid discussion amongst the participants and the audience. The session included the chair Joseph Vogl, professor of German Literature, Cultural and Media Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin and Permanent Visiting Professor at Princeton University, Jochen Oltmer from the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at Osnabrück University, Ute Kollies, head of the UN Office for for the Coordiniation Humanitarian Affairs in Mali.

Abstract: Panel VII (Crafting New Narratives), chaired by Kathrin Kollmeier (ZZF Potsdam), examined the interwoven nature of discourse, politics and identity. Christoph Rass (IMIS, Universität Osnabrück) opened the discussion with a presentation of his corpus linguistics research tracing discursive labels for migrants in Cold War Germany in connection with political events and migratory movements occurring at the time.

Abstract: The main presenters of Panel VI (Migration, Education, Creativity) were the students of Bard College Berlin, who in conjunction with the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts created an exhibition of individual and group art projects devoted to migration and integration from academic and imaginative perspectives.

Power of movements was the intriguing and stimulating topic of Panel V. Through a productive series of three presentations and an engaged follow-up discussion, the participants emphasized the reasons and factors behind the rising racist and anti-migratory populist movement, particularly as they came apparent during the French presidential election campaign 2017 and the Brexit vote.

Cultural Anthropologist Sabine Hess opened the panel with an inspiring paper on “The Evolution of the European Border Regime: A Genealogy of its Crisis and Stabilization”. It presented a closer look on the concept “Flüchtlingskrise” vividly used in German media and politics since the summer 2015. In order to emphasize the migrants´ perspective of successfully mastering the so-called “Balkan route”, Hess instead spoke of the “long summer of migration.” In summer 2015, the EU's border regime temporarily collapsed.

Other than briefly presenting types of negotiations and conflict as the panel's title possibly suggests, the panel introduced a deep look inside the difficulties faced during negotiations and various ways of conflicts’ resolution in a migration regime. On the one hand, historian Marcel Berlinghoff and social scientist Claudia Hartmann-Hirsch focused on international and local negotiations respectively. Both studies demonstrated that legal reform and transparent communication on the national and the international level are decisive.

Panel II focused on the “Institutional Change” regarding European migration. Unfortunately, Anne Koch and Maxi Obexer had to cancel their participation on short notice. Hence, the Italian sociologists Martina Cvajner and Guiseppe Sciortino were the only contributors to the shortened panel. They introduced the generally convincing symbolization of the European migration regime as a Gentle Monster.

As an introduction, Prof. Catherine Gousseff, the director of the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin and a historian of the twentieth century forced migrations within and from Eastern Europe highlighted some of the panel's key questions: Most importantly she emphasized that not only institutions but also refugees were important participants in a forming European identity.

This blog entry reflects on the keynote made by Prof. Peter Gatrell which opened the international conference “The Impossible Order” at the Berlin Wall Memorial in May 2017, focusing on migration and history. Peter Gatrell's main points of interest were the perception of the refugee as a category by both political and mass media outlets as well as the responsibility of historians to analyze the interdependent relationship between refugees, society and government. Prof. Gatrell coined this phenomenon “Refugeedom”.