Publikationen

Since Germany’s brief “summer of migration” in 2015, the question of whether, under what conditions, and with what consequences migrants are considered part of society or merely intermittently tolerated workers, refugees, or asylum seekers has again become a hotly contested issue in politics and the public sphere. Behind this lies the deeper question of the criteria currently and historically used to assess what constitutes belonging to a “society.” Following on recent relational approaches to the analysis of human mobility, this article discusses the organised relocation of German-Polish workers and their families from the Ruhr area to France at the beginning of and during the occupation of the Ruhr. On the level of historical interpretation, it builds upon historical studies of border regions such as Alsace, Upper Silesia, and Bohemia and demonstrates that an investigation of the Ruhr area as a zone of intensified mobility can help scholars better grasp various iterations of how and with what consequences constructions of belonging changed under conditions of contested state sovereignty such as those during the First World War or decolonialisation. Secondly, on the methodological level, the article argues that a multi-perspective analysis can facilitate more precise descriptions of processes of categorising people and relocating the “self” as well as better understandings of their interactions, including the long-term effects on those being categorised. In the context of efforts in the social and cultural sciences to describe types of belonging primarily in relation to biographical and situated contexts, historians can use these methods to contribute to discussions on the intersection between self-location processes, on the one hand, and organised, often legally binding processes of categorisation on the other, while simultaneously historicising various constructions of belonging.

Friedrichs, Anne 2021: Multiperspektivität als Schlüssel zur Kontingenz von Zugehörigkeit. Der organisierte Umzug von deutsch-polnischen Arbeitern und ihren Familien aus dem Ruhrgebiet nach Frankreich von 1922 bis 1925, Historische Zeitschrift 313 , H. 3, S. 645–685.

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Adopting Rogers Brubaker's and Frederick Cooper’s considerations on appropriate language in the human sciences, this article distinguishes two ontological perspectives on human mobilities: the first apprehends migratory phenomena as if they were natural, capable of being grasped by essentialized concepts such as identity; the second argues for their interpretation as cultural phenomena and requires a terminology that is mobile, context-sensitive and reflexive. The latter, constructivist approach can firstly inform research that deconstructs dominant narratives and generic concepts of “refugee” or “migrant” by revealing what these supposedly universal and intangible concepts of belonging mean in a given situation and context. It can also help to bring to light alternative – and often forgotten – social figures (Sozialfiguren) as well as figures of thought (Denkfiguren), highlighting shifting and ambiguous ways of belonging and sociability. The cases of the “Forty-Eighters”, the “Ruhr Poles”, the “emigrati" or the " sans-papiers”, who all opposed the dominant categorisations, deserve to be integrated into the into ongoing cross-border debates on the “identities” of individuals, groups, or larger spatial entities such as Europe.

Friedrichs, Anne / Severin-Barboutie, Bettina 2021: , Mobilités, catégorisation et appartenance: un défi de réflexivité, in: Annales HSS 76 , H. 3, S. 445–455.

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This article considers the Polish-German workers, mainly from the eastern parts of Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire, who moved to the Ruhr Valley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Extrapolating from this case study, it suggests a way of rethinking our conception of societies by shedding light on the processes through which demarcation and belonging were produced at local, state, and trans-European levels as an increasing number of people arrived, stayed, or sometimes moved on. The intellectual and social figure of the “Ruhr Poles” is particularly revealing because it points to competing spatial affiliations whose meanings shifted depending on geographical setting and social context. An analysis of the interwoven processes of differentiation and evaluation in which these migrants were involved provides insights into the influence that regional actors exerted through administrative practices of categorization. It also shows the diverse ways in which newcomers to the area represented and normalized social relationships. Finally, the article discusses the consequences of these interacting processes for the legal and scholarly categorizations of individuals who moved in ways that were not defined by the nation-state grid between multiple spaces such as the Ruhr Valley and Polish-speaking areas. Overall, the article demonstrates that even as the model of the “nation-state” was becoming prevalent in scholarly and public discourses across Europe, different constructions of belonging based on origin, achievement, and visions of the common humanity of subjects coexisted in the Ruhr region as an economic zone shaped by mobilities.

Friedrichs, Anne 2021: Tracer les limites des sociétés dans une perspective transeuropéenne: Les « Polonais de la Ruhr » à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle.  Annales HSS 76, H. 3, S. 489–529, Cambridge University Press.

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Historians, philosophers, geographers, and social anthropologists have often pointed out that migration is a conditio humana, in an attempt to foster solidarity or at least sympathy if not empathy for people on the move. Scholars, however, have rarely addressed the dual question of how the representation of human mobilities has affected constructions of belonging on different scales, and their own position as scholars who categorize and classify these articulations. This historical and epistemological question lies at the heart of the approach proposed in this dossier for the Annales. By exploring this topic, we hope to encourage researchers working on different periods and spaces to situate and develop their research on the history of migration and other forms of mobility within a broader analytical framework that would reveal the struggles of various actors with categorizations and allow researchers to reflect on their own position towards them. After a general introduction, the dossier offers three contributions: on migration tales in Medieval Hungary (Nora Berend, Cambridge), on a trans-European perspective on changing societies using the example of the "Ruhr Poles" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Anne Friedrichs, Mainz) and on approaches to an interdisciplinary, time- and context-sensitive study of female mobility in the Mediterranean region (Delphine Diaz, Reims). They all reflect on different practices of representing human mobility, thereby uncovering the varying significance of social constructions of belonging over the longue durée.

 

Anne Friedrichs und Bettina Severin-Barboutie 2021: Migration. Dossier Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 76, H. , Paris: Cambridge University Press.

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In exemplarischen Studien aus literatur-, theater- und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive beleuchtet der Band das wechselseitige Verhältnis von Theater und Krise und rekurriert dabei auf die Tatsache, dass das Drama seit jeher eine Antwort auf kulturelle und gesellschaftliche Krisen darstellt – weist es doch mit der Peripetie ein ästhetisches Modell der Krise auf, in dem das Moment der Entscheidung zwischen Heilung und Katastrophe fokussiert, gespiegelt und verfremdet wird. Zugleich fungiert Bühnenkunst selbst als Motor gesellschaftlicher Emergenz, ist sie doch in der Lage, bestehende Ordnungen in Frage zu stellen, vermeintliche Sicherheiten zu erschüttern und Normalitäten zu stören, um sie auf diese Weise überhaupt ins Bewusstsein zu rufen.

Hier können Sie den Band einsehen.

Kreuder, Friedemann 2021: „Staging Differences. Krisenexperimente mit der Glokalisierung im zeitgenössischen immersiven Theater“. In: Marta Famula / Verena Witschel (Hg.): Theater und Krise. Paradigmen der Störung in Dramentexten und Bühnenkonzepten nach 2000. Paderborn: Brill Fink, S. 147-160.

Unser Band "Humandifferenzierung", der auf der Basis des Syposiums des Forum Humandifferenzieung im Juni 2020 entstanden ist, ist im März 2021 erschienen Hier können die Informationen bei Velbrück eingesehen werden.