In the current debates concerning refugees, we observe, in some European countries, at least three ways in which history tends to “disappear”: the past is either absent because it is unknown (it thus looks as if we have never dealt with refugees before...); actual developments are put in a quasi-historical perspective, by claiming that certain countries have always known certain types of policies, resulting in a rather static and a-historical picture as well; migrants are urged to leave their histories home. This seminar will look into ways to do “justice” to history, both in the political debate and in scholarly work.

Presentation

In the current debates concerning refugees, we observe, in some European countries, at least three ways in which history tends to 'disappear': 

(1) the past is either absent because it is unknown (it thus looks as if we have never dealt with refugees before...)

(2) actual developments are put in a quasi-historical perspective, by claiming that certain countries have always known certain types of policies, resulting in a rather static and a-historical picture as well;

(3) migrants are urged to leave their histories home. 

This seminar will look into ways to do 'justice' to history, both in the political debate and in scholarly work.

Program 

Thursday 23rd

9:30 Arriving, coffee and welcome

• 10:00 Jan Willem Duyvendak (Amsterdam / Paris IEA) Remembering migration past in Amsterdam and the Netherlands
• 11:00 Christophe Bertossi (Paris) History and moral boundaries in contemporary debates about French citizenship

12:00 Coffee break

• 12:15 Nancy Foner (New York) The US as a classic immigration country: the uses and abuses of history

13:15 Lunch break

• 14:30 Paolo Boccagni (Trento) Giving migrants' biographical history its place through home studies. A case-study from Italy
• 15:30 Yannick Coenders (Amsterdam) Disconnecting uncomfortable pasts: explaining the blackness of blackfacein the Dutch Sinterklaas tradition

16:30 Coffee break

• 16:45 Tibor Dessewffy (Budapest) Dreaming homogeneous – the alternate currents of history in Hungarian public discourse

17:45 Concluding the first day

Friday 24th

• 9:30 Oliver Esteves (Lille) The centrality of the American ghetto motif in British race relations debates:a confusing continuum
• 10:30 Paul Mepschen (Leiden) The genesis of Dutch autochthony. Displacement, nostalgia andrespectability

11:30 Coffee break

• 11:45 Catherine Perron (Paris) TBA

12:45 Concluding discussion

13:15 Lunch break

14:30 Lecture by Nancy Foner:  "The Not So Good Old Days: How the US Became a Multicultural Society”