Refugee Integration? Critical reflections on history and the present - Einzelansicht

This intensive course delves into the global history of processes of refuge-seeking: it explores the many challenges that refugees and migrants face and the opportunities they create in receiving countries. It engages the manifold ways in which citizens have responded to migrants and refugees over time – from the Huguenots’ arrival in Brandenburg-Prussia in 1685 to the present – and in various places, including France, Australia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Germany. The course also examines the responses and visions of migrants and refugees themselves.

The course brings together 30 students from six European universities through the European Digital UniverCity alliance (EDUC), for ten weeks of online learning (starting at the beginning of the semester) followed by a week together in Potsdam June 20-25, 2022. In Potsdam students will meet with local decision-makers, civil society and church representatives, and migrants and refugees to learn first-hand about practices and issues relating to migration and integration.

To prepare for this, students will be introduced to theories around integration and will then engage with historic and contemporary case studies that highlight particular issues such as culture, religion, racism, education, and labour in relation to assimilationism and multiculturalism.  

Overall, the aim of this course is to provide students with the theoretical and conceptual language to make sense of historical processes of refuge-seeking and integration as well as enabling a lively exchange between student perspectives and practitioners’ insights on processes of integration in the city of Potsdam. 

Five students will be able to join from each university. If you are interested to join the group of Potsdam learners, please apply via the following link uploading a one-page letter of motivation (in English), your CV and your PULS performance overview”: https://bit.ly/3nmmsoE

If you have any questions about the application please contact isco@uni-potsdam.de.

Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Hage, Ghassan. "Multiculturalism and white paranoia in Australia." Journal of International Migration and Integration/Revue de l'integration et de la migration internationale 3.3-4 (2002): 417-437.

Hahamovitch, Cindy (2003) Creating Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective, Labor History, 44:1, 69-94, DOI: 10.1080/0023656032000057010

Jansen, Yolande. Secularism, Assimilation and the Crisis of Multiculturalism. Amsterdam University Press, 2013.

Lachenicht, Susanne. "Huguenot immigrants and the formation of national identities, 1548–1787." The Historical Journal 50, no. 2 (2007): 309-331.

Torpey, J. C. (2018). The invention of the passport: Surveillance, citizenship and the state. Cambridge University Press.

All students must read the course readings, actively participate in class discussion, work on group presentations on particular case studies, participate in the Potsdam week, and write a brief final reflection essay in accordance with their Studienordnungen.