{"title":"Eurocentrism and the International Refugee Regime","authors":"L. Madokoro","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077423","url":null,"abstract":"As refugees know, and scholars have demonstrated, there are many ways in which the international refugee regime is Eurocentric. This includes legal definitions of refugeehood, mental maps of who is a refugee, ideas about where refugees come from, and who takes the responsibility for receiving and caring for refugees. In the fields of Refugee Studies and Critical Refugee Studies there exists a robust literature on the question of Eurocentrism, particularly as regards the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, recognized as the cornerstone of the contemporary international refugee regime. There are many valid critiques. Yet the tendency to condemn existing practices on the basis of Eurocentrism alone occludes the generalized anti-refugee sentiment, or the generalized view of refugees as a problem, which influenced the shape and character of the 1951 convention. As this essay will demonstrate, the Eurocentric nature of the convention was partly the result of an effort to make the so-called ‘refugee problem’ more manageable, though as a solution it ultimately exacerbated other issues. The tensions inherent in the convention’s approach became clear in 2015 when a record 1.3 million refugees sought asylum in Europe. States and opponents resisted this movement by","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"34 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41603285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Refugees as a ‘World Order’ Concern: (Western) Europe and the Middle East since the 1980s","authors":"Agnes Bresselau von Bressensdorf","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077419","url":null,"abstract":"‘Refugees welcome!’ In September 2015, pictures of crowds of asylum-seekers arriving at Munich’s central railway station were broadcasted around the world. The message that this image conveyed suggested an open-minded Germany, awakening memories of the autumn of 1989 when thousands of people from the German Democratic Republic flooded into the West. This time, however, the migrants were largely displaced people fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. They had trekked through the so-called ‘Balkan Route’ to the Hungarian border and, for humanitarian reasons, the West German government had agreed to take them in. However, the influx of refugees grew rapidly, and the initial warm reception shown in Munich and other German cities soon gave way to anxious debate and controversy. Was the German and European asylum system being overwhelmed? Were there sufficient strategies in place to integrate these newcomers? Comparisons were made both with the problem of integrating displaced persons following the end of World War II and with the rise in the number of asylum-seekers in the early 1990s. Yet one crucial aspect has so far been neglected: a critical-historical look at the entanglements of global, transnational and regional developments in the 1970s and the 1980s. The way Europe deals with refugees and humanitarianism today cannot be properly analysed without an understanding of these years. Since the mid-1970s, most regional and global refugee movements came from the countries of the ‘Global South’. These states were experiencing wars of independence and mass expulsions of peoples in the wake of decolonisation, in proxy wars in the Cold War confrontation or in Central American civil wars. Above all, after the war in Vietnam, it was the exodus of hundreds of","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"29 - 33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46193567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Die Fluchtbewegungen „2015“ im Jahrhundert der Externalisierung","authors":"Jochen Oltmer","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077411","url":null,"abstract":"AmAnfang stand ein recht simples Instrument, umGrenzen neu zu ziehen: Das Visum ermöglicht die Auslagerung von Grenzkontrollen auf das Territorium anderer Staaten. Konsulate der Transitund Ankunftsländer kategorisieren Intention und Merkmale einer potentiell mobilen Person bereits vor einer Durchoder Einreise und legen Reisebedingungen (Zeitpunkt, Dauer, Sicherheitsleistungen) fest. Menschen können abgewiesen werden, ehe sie aufgrund des Eintreffens an einer Grenze und des Betretens eines Territoriums Rechte auf Prüfung eines Einreisebzw. Asylgesuchs erwerben. Damit verhindert ein Staat auch, dass Grenzgänger:innen womöglich vor Ort Unterstützung für einen Bleibewunsch durch Grenzbeamte, Rechtsbeistände, Mitreisende, Verwandte oder Bekannte finden. Materielle und immaterielle Kosten einer Abweisung an der Grenze bzw. einer Ausweisung oder Abschiebung vom Territorium lassen sich, so das Kalkül in den Transitund Ankunftsstaaten, vermeiden: keine Aufwendungen für den Rücktransport, keine mentalen Belastungen für Beschäftigte von Grenzschutz und Polizei, keine Konflikte mit Hilfsorganisationen und Staaten, in die oder durch die rückgeführt wird. Die folgenden Bemerkungen ordnen die Fluchtverhältnisse der 2010er Jahren in eine längere Linie der Externalisierung von Grenzkontrollen im „langen“ 20. Jahrhundert ein, das vom Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs bis in die Gegenwart reicht. Auf diese Weise soll es erstens gelingen, Einblicke in die Mechanismen und Funktionen der Infrastrukturen zur Kontrolle und Steuerung von Migration zu gewinnen. Zweitens wird die Frage verfolgt, warum trotz einer ausgeprägten Externalisierungspolitik der Europäischen Union (EU) seit den 1990er Jahren die Zahl der Asylsuchenden in Europa von 2011 bis 2016 erheblich anstieg.","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"8 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42238420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Europäische Zuständigkeitsregeln für Asylverfahren: Intentionale Externalisierung und unbeabsichtigte Pfadabhängigkeit","authors":"Daniel Thym","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077413","url":null,"abstract":"In den heißen Monaten der Flüchtlingskrise wurde das europäische Asylrecht vielfach als Begrenzung nationalstaatlicher Handlungsbefugnisse empfunden. Zaghaft rechtfertigte der deutsche Innenminister de Maizière die unterlassene Grenzschließung mit dem Hinweis, dass das deutsche Recht “in vielerlei Hinsicht vom europäischen überlagert” werde. Es schien, als ob humanitäre EU-Vorgaben die Bundesregierung am entschlossenen Handeln im nationalen Interesse hinderten. In der historischen Genese, rechtlichen Bewertung sowie aktuellen Ausprägung ist die Situation freilich komplexer, als es die verbreitete Chiffre von der “europäischen Lösung” als Inbegriff einer humanitären Willkommenskultur suggeriert. “Europa” diente immer auch als Instrument, um die Asylzuwanderung effektiv zu steuern.","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"24 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48924924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Post-war Refugee Problem and Its Repercussions for 2015","authors":"G. Cohen","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077424","url":null,"abstract":"Since its outbreak in 2015, the so-called ‘Syrian’ refugee crisis has been routinely dubbed by the media the worst instance of mass displacement in Europe since the end of World War II. Although violence in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s had already brought back scenes of war refugees to the continent, this comparison is not devoid of merits. The scale of population movements following the collapse of the Third Reich in May 1945 was certainly far superior to the approximately one million refugees who in 2015 reached southern Europe or the Balkans while on their way to Germany or other host countries. Furthermore, a large proportion of post-war refugees comprised millions of ethnic German expellees who had been forcibly evicted from East-Central Europe and who were not merely fleeing war—in this case the eastward advance of the Red Army. Rapidly, however, the so-called ‘last million’ of unrepatriable displaced persons (DPs) languishing in camps in occupied Germany and Austria formed the bulk of Europe’s displacement crisis, a number that is equivalent to the one million Syrians, Afghans, Eritreans and Iraqis who crossed the Mediterranean in recent years. The ‘DPs’, wrote Hannah Arendt in 1949, exemplified the ‘emergence of an entirely new category of human beings [...] who do not possess citizenship.’ Seven decades later, the ‘migrants’ of today once again put on display the spectacle of statelessness in the heart of Europe. A key difference between these two moments, however, is that between 1945 and the early 1950s ‘Europe on the move’ remained an intra-continental phenomenon. Regrouped in the former territory of the Third Reich, Jewish survivors and anti-communist Poles, Ukrainians and Balts indeed all originated from Eastern Europe. The victims of Hitler and Stalin predominantly emigrated to Palestine/Israel, the United States, Canada or Australia. However, despite their resettlement out of the continent, the administration of the DPs between 1945 and 1951 paved the way for the Europeanization of the international refugee regime. When the Conference of Plenipotentiaries representing 26 nations adopted the UN Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees on July 25, 1951, human rights law acknowledged the exemplarity of the European case. Although the convention attached the universal concept of ‘fear of persecution’ to the granting of political asylum, it nonetheless bound the condition of acquiring the status of asylum seeker to Europe’s geography and history. The definition of refugees as victims of","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"40 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41632749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Diesseits und jenseits der “Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft”. Religiöser Pluralismus und gebildete Stände im langen 18. Jahrhundert","authors":"Frank Hatje","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077427","url":null,"abstract":"“Religiöse Lektüre können wir gar nicht finden”, notierte der Hamburger Jurist Ferdinand Beneke 1809 in sein Tagebuch. Beneke, der sich uns als typischer, wo nicht gar idealtypischer Vertreter der gebildeten Stände in seinem immensen Tagebuchcorpus präsentiert, scheiterte bei seiner Suche allerdings nicht etwa daran, dass es keine religiöse Literatur gegeben hätte. Vielmehr gefiel ihm nicht recht, was 1809 auf dem Buchmarkt zu haben war. Es “gehört zwar nicht zu dem lächerlichen VernunftReligionsEisen, aber dagegen ist es wieder etwas pietistisch geronnen, u. solch Zeug, so wenig ich bey manchen Menschen heuer dagegen habe, können Line, u. ich wenigstens nicht brauchen, denn uns verlangt nach ganz andern Harmonieen als das bloße TonleiterSpiel der Vernünftler, oder die KinderMusik der Sekten, oder die StümperPhantasien der Mystiker,—uns verlangt nach AeolsHarfenstimmen obwol schon ein schöner, herziger, feyerlicher Choral uns erfreut”. Was wir Benekes Tagebuch entnehmen können, ist, erstens, dass religiöse Literatur Bestandteil der regelmäßigen Lesestunden mit seiner Ehefrau Caroline war, deren gemeinsames Lektürepensum ansonsten von Geschichte und Naturgeschichte bis zu Jean Paul und Friedrich Schiller reichte. Zweitens war der Jurist Beneke über das Angebot religiösen Schrifttums und die verschiedenen Richtungen im Protestantismus gut unterrichtet. Seine Aufzeichnungen verraten","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"59 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43703104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Honour to Bildung. Rethinking the Body in Making German Civil Society, 1750–1850","authors":"H. Lempa","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077426","url":null,"abstract":"With his concept of neuständische Gesellschaft, Reinhard Blänkner suggests that education or, rather, Bildung, becomes the practice that defines one's social status in the German lands between 1750 and 1850. I build on this argument by pursuing two separate but closely intertwined ideas: first, that Bildung stems from and, at the same time, displaces an older foundation of social status, honour; and second, that in this displacement the practices of the body played a pivotal role in shaping civil society. I start with some observations on civil society (Zivilgesellschaft) in the middle of the 18th century. Then I examine an important civil society project centred on a set of pedagogical reforms and experiments known as the Philanthropismus during the last decades of the 18th century. The rising critique of the Philanthropismus and the development of a counter-discourse of Bildung in the first decades of the 19th century is the theme of the following section. In the last sections of the article, I delve into the proliferation of the Bildung discourse in bodily practices, especially in social dancing, in the first half of the 19th century. The article ends with some general observations on the meaning of honour, Bildung, and the body in the making of Zivilgesellschaft. This article is not a detailed study or even a set of case studies but an attempt at rethinking the understanding and conceptualization of the time-period between 1750 and 1850 in the German lands.","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"44 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43971829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Refugees and Economic Migrants: Disentangling the Keywords of Displacement and Policy Consequences in Modern Europe","authors":"P. Gatrell","doi":"10.1177/16118944221077412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221077412","url":null,"abstract":"As we enter the third decade of the new millennium, the categorical distinction between refugees and migrants remains salient, yet problematic. Setting aside the question of its magnitude and causes, the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ unleashed in 2015 disclosed once more the persistent yet convoluted attempts on the part of modern states to determine who qualified as a ‘genuine’ refugee and who was deemed to be an ‘economic migrant’. Furthermore, it raised once more the question what obligations states thereby assumed towards those who sought and were granted asylum. The distinction has become part of the currency of public debate and media usage, as if it were straightforward and incontrovertible. It allows advocates of restricted immigration to claim that they nevertheless adhere to humanitarian principles because they support the rights of refugees who can establish a valid claim to have been persecuted. This short article traces the articulation of that distinction in international political debate and how it was affirmed at key moments in 20th-century European history.","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"17 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43301520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘We Want Light!’ Prague Students and the Failing Scientific-Technological Revolution in the Post-Stalinist Era (1956–1968)","authors":"M. Polák","doi":"10.1177/16118944211072648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944211072648","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1960s, the faith in scientific and technological progress pertained to both the Western and the Eastern power bloc. Czechoslovakia was no exception: the scientific-technological revolution was supposed to another step to reaching Communism. The pages of newspapers and magazines were full of articles on the newest scientific and technical discoveries, the automatization and chemization of the industry, and the rationalisation of managing the socialist companies. It was also the faith in expert governance of state and economy that grew in this period: these were supposed to change the position of the scientific specialists and also the students as the future experts. This article follows the way promises connected to the scientific-technological revolution created expectations on the modern student life only to deepen the contrasts between the official declarations and everyday reality. It focuses on several areas of the university environment where the discrepancies were most visible: the lacking equipment of the university building and classrooms, ineffectively managed internships, inflexible placement system, and inadequate material and technical conditions at the university dormitories. These contrasts have also roused the discontent of the students who did not feel recognized. In October 1967, the situation culminated in a demonstration of students from the Strahov dormitory who demanded the repeated blackouts to be solved. The violent suppression of the demonstration resulted in students leaving their patron organization – the Czechoslovak Youth Union – on a large scale and starting autonomous student units independent from both the Union and the Communist Party.","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"127 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42815644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rediscovering a Jesuit Legacy of Natural History: Pierre-Martial Cibot and Sino-European Exchange of Fungus Knowledge in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries","authors":"D. Lu","doi":"10.1177/16118944211072647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944211072647","url":null,"abstract":"The French Jesuit missionary Pierre-Martial Cibot stood conspicuous in Sino-European exchange of natural knowledge. However, his exploratory research on Chinese fungi, which is significant to the body of mycological knowledge, remains largely undiscussed and needs to be reappraised in the cross-cultural and historical context. Drawing on Cibot’s 1770s writings on Chinese fungi, this article provides a microhistorical treatment of their intricate interactions with late 18th- and 19th-century scientific scholarship. Cibot was arguably the author who wrote the first scientific treatise in China on local fungal species. His Christian faith and European epistemic base occasioned tensions with the acculturation of nature in China, which, together with his concerns with European natural history, agriculture and medicine, led to his critical appropriation of Chinese fungus lore. The writings were not published without change. Cibot's findings about Chinese fungi, mingled with confusion, also circulated unevenly in the European world. Nevertheless, they inspired new scientific studies, engaged with practical concerns, and even aided humanities research. Cibot's efforts highlight the agency of a multitude of border-crossing actors beyond European scientific centres, and invite a broader historical framework for understanding the making of modern mycology as a global enterprise.","PeriodicalId":44275,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Modern European History","volume":"20 1","pages":"84 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47534198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}