Recent controversies in Germany have once again placed the question of human migration and its role in shaping German history at the center of public discourse. As in crises past, the slogan that Germany is “a land of emigration, not immigration” again makes the rounds. That claim contradicted reality long before Chancellor Kohl first pronounced it. But it captures an abiding tension between the realities of human movement in German history and the capacity of Germany’s social, cultural, and political institutions to absorb its effects.

The organizers of this series seek papers from scholars in all fields to address the phenomena of human migration and their impact on local communities in Germany from the fifteenth century to the present—from the arrival of Sinti and Roma to the internal displacements of Ashkenazic Jews and the diasporic immigration of Sephardim; from the wanderings of journeymen to the migrations of Savoyards; from the religious exiles of the age of confessionalization to the migrations prompted by eighteenth-century "Peuplierungspolitik"; from the voluntary labor immigrations of the late nineteenth century to the conscriptions of the two world wars; from the expulsions of the post-war period to the "Gastarbeiter" of the second half of the twentieth century and the immigration wave of the present day.

Themes may include, but are not limited to

Internal migration and the premodern "society of orders"
Migration and the challenges of religion
Immigrant economies
Literary responses to migration and the migrant condition
Migration and the media
Migration and cultural pluralization
Industrialization, migration and modernization
Reactions to immigration—acculturation, assimilation, sequestration
Immigration and the state: administration, nationality, and citizenship law
Immigration and identity politics
Cultural mobility and cultural transfers—people, goods, ideas
Temporary vs. permanent migration
Immigrant cultures, ethnic enclaves, and integration
Migration, collective memory, and collective amnesia
Migration and the “spatial turn”
Migration and gender relations
Migration and generational issues

Please send abstracts of circa 250 words by 15 January 2011 to

Jared Poley (jpoley@gsu.edu) or
Alexander Schunka (alexander.schunka@uni-erfurt.de)

and include your institutional affiliation. Proposals for full panels are welcome.