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

This blended intensive program 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.

This course is not your typical course. It brings together 30 students from six European universities through the European Digital UniverCity alliance (EDUC) for an intensive immersion week in Potsdam with some online learning components. There will be an introductory meeting via Zoom on April 17, 8:30-10:00 a.m and we will meet online also on June 19, and July 3, 8:30-10:00am. Plan to spend the week of June 24-29, 2024 (departure on June 30) together in Potsdam, Brandenburg, and Berlin. 

During this week students will meet with local decision-makers, civil society, and migrants as well as refugees to learn first-hand about practices and issues relating to migration and integration. During the morning sessions the students will engage with historic and contemporary case studies that encourage critical reflection of themes such as culture, religion, racism, education, and labour in relation to various integration paradigms. During the afternoon, we will visit different initiatives in the area to foster a lively exchange between student perspectives and practitioners’ insights.

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, to think about being out of place and belonging as well as to critically approach integration paradigms.   

Five students will be able to join from each university. If you are interested to join the group of Potsdam learners, please contact mascha.neumann@uni-potsdam.de as soon as possible and explain in a few sentences what you are studying and why you would like to take this course.

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 are expected to engage the course readings, work on group presentations, participate in the Potsdam week, and write a final reflection essay in accordance with their Studienordnungen.