Media coverage about refugee boats on the Mediterranean, transit camps on Aegean islands, migrant children in US border custody, or so-called refugees in orbit remind us on a daily basis of the experiences, precariousness, and politics of being in transit. History has seen innumerable stories of refugees and other migrants with long and twisted itineraries; traveling could take weeks, months, or, when longer stopovers occurred, sometimes years, with the final destination often unknown. Only recently have historians started to follow colleagues from other disciplines in developing analytical tools for exploring “migration along the way.” What can be learned from a focus on transit? Which stories do we find at concrete spaces such as camps, visa offices, ships, airports, and along the routes that connect them? Starting from these questions, the lecture series explores the relevance of transit as an innovative research agenda and the different methods available for grasping the spatial, temporal, sociopolitical, material, and cultural dimensions of in-betweenness. It provides a space for reflecting on the methodological problems and blind spots that necessarily arise when investigating a phenomenon as fluid as transit.

The series is part of the GHI’s research focus “In Global Transit.” Bringing together experts on migration and refugee studies from different disciplines and thematic areas in the Summer and Fall of 2022, it opens an interdisciplinary conversation across contexts about the methods, potentials, and challenges of studying transit. Building on past conferences and workshops at the GHI since 2018, which have focused on the global trajectories of Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution, it also encourages dialogue between the rich research on Jewish refugees in transit and general research on flight and (forced) migration in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Please register via the event website (see link below).