Refugees remembered or forgotten? Forced migration and public memory
January 20-21, 2022 at the University of Bergen

Keynote speakers:

Tony Kushner (University of Southampton): Remembering Refugees

Katarzyna Nowak (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute): How to Write the History of Refugees and Refugeedom

Noora Kotilainen (University of Helsinki): Historical Media Representations of Refugees

Ever since the religiously motivated expulsions of the early modern period, the figure of the ‘refugee’ has been firmly established in European memory. In particular, the history of the Huguenot émigrés of the late seventeenth century figured prominently in the memory culture of Protestant countries, contributing to their self image as tolerant countries and as refuges for the persecuted. The celebratory narrative of helping the Huguenots combined humanitarian and utilitarian aspects. As a historical paradigm it subsequently could be mobilized in response to other groups seeking shelter from persecution.

Only few refugees, however, were actually seen as ‘new Huguenots’ and represented positively in the public memory of refugee-hosting countries. Nor were and are the experiences of the refugees identical with the representations of them. As Tony Kushner has shown in his pioneering study Remembering refugees – then and now (2006), positive connotations of the term ‘refugee’ increasingly were drowned by anti-alien resentments that led to relabellings of those seeking protection and to restrictions of basic asylum rights. Exploring the memory work associated with ‘the refugee’ in Britain, Kushner emphasizes that the topic is almost totally absent from mainstream history writing and heritage culture, and when it is at all included into national narratives, the history of the refugees is often instrumentalized in an self-congratulatory fashion, presenting them as helpless victims without any kind of agency of their own.

This workshop seeks to combine research on refugees/forced migration with memory studies. It explores the general topic of forced migration and public memory/historiography and discusses case studies from the Nordic countries. More specifically, the following aspects and questions are relevant:

– Refugees as agents of memory: How have refugees and diasporic refugee communities negotiated and communicated the traumatic memories of percecution and displacement? Which responses did they meet in their countries of settlement?

– Refugees/forced migration and national memory: In what way have histories of the reception and integration of refugees been incorporated into the historiography and memory culture of the receiving countries? Which refugee groups are remembered positively, which are presented in a negative way or simply forgotten? Which experiences of the refugees are communicated, which are silenced? How, if at all, have histories of displacement and exile been remembered in countries that caused forced migration?

– Uses of refugee history: How have historical narratives of forced migration and refugees been mobilized in reponse to refugees in the present? To what effect?

The event is the second workshop organized as part of the exploratory workshop series Histories of Refugeedom in the Nordic Countries (PI: docent Johanna Leinonen), based at the University of Oulu and Migration Institute of Finland, and funded by the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS).

The workshop is organized in cooperation with the Research Group for Transnational History and Cultural Encounters at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion, University of Bergen.

The program comprises three keynote talks that are open for all and workshops for invited participants.

Younger scholars (PhD candidates and postdoctoral scholars) who want to present a paper at the workshop, can apply by sending an e-mail (with a short abstract of the project) to the organizers of the Bergen workshop, PhD candidate Joanna Spyra () and Professor Christhard Hoffmann (). Deadline: 22 December 2021. The project will cover the costs for travel and accommodation for those invited to the workshop.

Due to new uncertainties regarding the development of the Covid-19 pandemic, the workshop might be held digitally. A decision will be made at the beginning of January 2022.