Immigration has become an important question worldwide in the last decades, above all in West European countries. Europe, historically, as well as currently, is a continent that features multifaceted forms of immigration. EU-Enlargement, continued family reunifications, the careful opening of job markets, decolonization, the collapse of the Soviet system and the end of the Cold War, as well as the ongoing explosiveness of refugee movements, make clear that immigration will also be dealt with in the coming decades. Integration and inter-ethnic cohabitation, as well as future immigration and remigration, form important and explosive organization and development tasks for European societies. These tasks are also urgent in the area of educational systems. The problem of assimilation and integration of immigrants, primarily thought of in the short-term, has proved in the meantime to be a long-term societal, political and cultural task, which the societies of Europe are insufficiently and variously equipped to handle.

The movement of people away from borders and spaces will also remain a shaping characteristic of Germany and Europe in the 21stcentury. Social, cultural and demographical diversity will sooner increase as decrease. The Europe of the future will be more sharply shaped by the diversity of people, groups and cultures. Plurality will be a central moment of future collective identities and this plurality will, not least, be a diversity shaped through immigration.

Contrary to typical immigration societies such as the United States, Canada or Australia, immigrants in European countries have been and are often still perceived as foreign, accordingly stigmatized, discriminated against and excluded for long periods of time. Within European nation-states, their national cultures and national public offices, the diversity of Europe both historically and in the present as immigration societies is often not at all or only inadequately in consciousness. In order to cope with the manifold challenges this presents, heightened and novel initiatives are needed, particularly in the area of educational systems.

If the (socially necessary and also desired) cooperation in an inter-ethnic and intercultural complex society, as it has long been in Germany, is to be successful, much must also change in textbooks.

This project compares exposure to the history of migration and immigration in various European countries and how it has been presented in teaching materials since 1945. The most important forms of migration that have shaped European post-war history are flight, displacement, colonial repatriation, work migration, ethnic migration (“repatriation” of co-ethnic minorities in their country of origin, for example, the immigration of re-settlers to Germany) as well as illegal immigration. The question of the reception of and reaction to the changes evoked through immigration in the national self-image and in the perception of non-natives is central. 

The project examines the themes of migration, immigrant societies and inter-ethnic (intercultural) cohabitation after 1945 as they are portrayed in the teaching materials in the selected countries. In particular:

• how the themes of migration, immigration societies, inter-ethnic cohabitation after 1945 are and have been portrayed in the individual countries;
• what differences can be detected between the individual countries;
• what approaches of explanation can be found for the differing perceptions of migrants and immigrants and inter-ethnic cohabitation;
• what tendencies toward societal cohesion and integration of migrants in the respective host-societies signify and which measures are provided for this cohesion and integration.

Activities

A conference took place in Berlin in 2005 on Historical-Political Education in the Immigration Society: Chances – Perspectives – Challenges. The organizers were the Georg Eckert Institute and the foundation “Memory, Accountability and Future (Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft)” in cooperation with the Network Migration in Europe association.

In 2006 the international conference “Educating for Migrant Integration – Integrating Migration into Education: European and North American Comparisons” took place at the University of Toronto. The Georg Eckert Institute organized the conference together with the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and the Network Migration in Europe association. Conference participants came from Germany, England, Ireland, France, The Netherlands, Finland, Mexico, the USA and Canada. This project, which examined the subject of the integration of immigrants in national education systems and which explored the situation as it was in Germany in 2005, has ended for the time being with the conclusion of the conference. A publication is planned for 2008.

Publication

Hanna Schissler: Toleranz ist nicht genug. Migration in Bildung und Unterricht, in: Reflexion und Initiative. Band IV zur Arbeit der Körber-Stiftung, Hamburg, 2004, pp. 39-50

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