Negotiating Migration
[Negotiating Migration]
Arbeitsgruppe Neueste Geschichte und Historische Migrationsforschung
Prof. Dr. Christoph A. Rass
[NGHM] [IMIS] [SFB1604]
In the middle of the twentieth century, political and scientific discussions about the "European refugee problem" initially developed in the USA and Europe in view of flight and expulsion because of the National Socialist reign of terror and the Second World War. At conferences such as those in Évian or Bermuda, international political and social actors discussed possible solutions, and international organizations were founded to deal with the "refugee problem" – the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), later the International Refugee Organization (IRO).
On the one hand, millions of refugees and so-called “displaced persons” repeatedly became the object of political action, on the other hand, they themselves acted very actively and influential in a variety of ways within this emerging and changing refugee regime.
The Negotiating Migration Working Group at the University of Osnabrück's professorship of Modern History and Historical Migration Research is researching this development of the modern migration regime in several research projects based on the negotiation processes between a large number of actors; both on the big political stage and in the eligibility interviews in the field offices of the gatekeeper organizations.
