FuturMig Lecture Series
Educational work, whether in early childhood, at school, at university or in museums, is future-oriented: It aims to shape future living environments and prepares for as yet unknown social constellations. Against this background, the question of how migration futures are imagined and what normative orientations underlie these visions of the future is particularly urgent.
In its annual lecture series, the FuturMig Science Space is dedicated to systematically examining the field of tension between migration, the future and education. As part of the FuturMig Lecture Series, current research work is presented that explores the question of how ideas and visions of migration-related futures are constructed, (discursively) negotiated and become effective in different contexts.
The event series offers a forum for interdisciplinary exchange on theoretical access, methodological challenges and empirical findings on futures of migration, with a particular focus on the constitutive role of educational actors in the production and communication of future-related narratives.
Format: Online event. Participation via the following link.
Program in the winter semester 2025/26
20.01.26, 16-18h Zeynep Yanaşmayan The role of the labor market shortage narrative in the negotiation of future society visions | As Germany's structural shortages on the labor market grow, attracting labor migrants has become an important policy goal. In positing migration as a "solution" to the current and future demographic change struggles, this policy offers a discursive shift towards what is commonly called "migration celebration narrative". Despite being seemingly positive in nature, migration celebration narrative speaks about migrants rather than with migrants. Based on ten focus groups with participants of diverse migration and non-migration biographies, including the so-called "guestworker" generation, their (grand)children, international students, and Ukrainian and Syrian refugees, in this talk I will examine how the migration celebration narrative is received by different segments of Germany's postmigrant society. |
Rescheduled for 17.03.26, 16-18h Prof. Dr. Aysun Doğmuş Imagining the future in the context of racism | The lecture approaches the future from three perspectives: What does life look like under racist conditions? How can life be shaped under racist conditions? And is a life without racism even conceivable? In doing so, it highlights the interplay between future and imagination at the heart of the school and critically examines pedagogical practice. (This lecture will be held in German) |
10.02.26, 16-18h Dr. Matthias Wagner Visions of the future and educational decisions in the context of transnational (educational) biographies | Based on the initial results of the ongoing research project TrEdBio (cf. Panagiotopoulou/Wagner/Gashi 2025; Wagner/Panagiotopoulou 2025), the lecture deals with the educational biographical practice of young people who, together with their families, have completed a '(trans-)migration' from Greece to Germany and have decided to attend a Greek school abroad in Germany. It will be discussed how the biographers combine knowledge of inclusion/exclusion mechanisms within the German and Greek education systems with their visions of the future - which are geared towards transnational and social mobility - in this educational decision made in Germany but with a transnational orientation. |