Migration in Global Perspective
Today's societies as migration societies
We understand migration from a global perspective in three respects: it practically spans the globe just as it runs through all aspects of our coexistence, and here we mean globally comprehensive. In addition, we examine the connection between migration and globalisation from a lateral rather than a comparative perspective. Together, this results in a global perspective on today's societies as migration societies, i.e. as constitutively characterised by the mobility of populations. Methodologically, the department works qualitatively and conducts ethnographic and anthropological research, with research designs based on a critical and social-theoretical perspective.
It analyses cultures, politics and everyday life in three fields:
Three perspectives of the department
(1) From the margins to the centre: Hardly any area of our living and working environments today lies outside the effects of migration and mobility. The constant reconfiguration of society through human mobility requires an empirical as well as theoretical-epistemic understanding of how migration and practices of mobility change in concrete terms. We examine this change in the transformations of migrant labour worlds, in the social reconfigurations through digital media technologies and the changing compositions of populations and how these are negotiated culturally, symbolically and practically.
(2) Modes of governance, modes of migration: Migration policy is population policy across borders. The study of these modes of governance often goes beyond the conceptual framework of the national. We analyse processually what drives migration, how it is governed, and how migration and border regimes are constituted as a result. We analyse this in the cultural, political and infrastructural modes of governing flight and migration.
(3) Migration as a field of conflict: Why is migration so controversial in society? What social representations and cultural figurations of migration exist? How is migration recognised and classified? We examine migration as a field of conflict, in this country and elsewhere, which is at the centre of social, political and cultural disputes. Changes in racism, modes of representation as well as cultural lifestyles and practices play a prominent role here.
What these three fields of research have in common is the aim of contributing to an understanding of the transformation of our current global world from the perspective of migration. We work in interdisciplinary and international contexts of migration research and cooperate transdisciplinarily with socio-political, civil society and cultural actors. To this end, we are continuously developing new formats for communicating and disseminating science.
* * *