Migration in Global Perspective
Description
We are interested in all aspects of human mobility from a global perspective. This perspective takes two dimensions into account. On the one hand, migration is clearly a global phenomenon that shapes the daily lives of people all over the world. However, “global” also refers to the broader dimension of contributing to an understanding of our world, which is currently undergoing transformation—specifically from the perspective of migration.
Since we in Europe have evolved from countries of immigration to societies of migration, there is hardly any area of our social life that is not shaped by migration. For us, therefore, migration research is not research on a specific population group (such as female migrants). Rather, in the way it produces knowledge, it builds bridges across social, state, and disciplinary boundaries.
Migration is no exception. We therefore advocate for conceptual, methodological, and epistemological reinterpretations with far-reaching sociopolitical implications. In contrast to approaches that treat migration as a self-contained, exceptional phenomenon and locate migrants as a social group—as it were—before, during, or after migration, we are interested in the productive potential of human mobility.
When we assume a society of migration, we ask: What conditions, practices, and discourses accompany the “migrantization of our societies”? Other forms of circulation are also relevant here, such as the mobility of labor, goods, and data, which are built upon global technical, social, political, and financial infrastructures. Without the digital revolution, they would be unthinkable. We investigate how we must understand human mobility under these conditions.
Accordingly, our perspective has methodological implications that significantly shape the structure of our research designs. We conduct research within the traditions of critical ethnology—and thus qualitative migration studies—in close collaboration with our discipline of European ethnology and with disciplines internationally oriented toward social and cultural anthropology. In our teaching and research, we collaborate with students at all levels of education at the Institute for European Ethnology. In our conceptual work, we draw closely on the diverse traditions of critical theories, which we further develop and rethink. Overall, we aim to make empirical and theoretical contributions to the analysis of social reality—a reality that is fundamentally shaped by migration societies.
Ultimately, this broader understanding of migration also forms the foundation for the interdisciplinary exchange that is essential today—both within internationally oriented networks and through open, transdisciplinary collaboration with society. As part of this “third mission” of science, we work in cooperation with art and cultural institutions or develop appropriate formats through educational and media work in collaboration with socially relevant actors. To reinforce such a shift in perspective, we need new formats of science and knowledge exchange that, on the one hand, build on cooperation with non-scientific institutions and make the generated knowledge permanently available to society. On the other hand, we understand this work not only as a communicative tool but also as methodological approaches within epistemic collaborations through which we can jointly investigate how our present is permeated by practices of mobility.
Three key areas of our teaching and research
(1) Migration is no exception. Taking this as a starting point means exploring migration as a lens through which to view global social developments.
Human mobility is a historical constant. However, with the emergence of nation-states and colonial expansion, it has crystallized into what we today call migration. According to this logic, however, minorities as well as social, cultural, and legal exclusions are both defined—and also combated. Thus, mobility became a matter of state regulation, which we encounter today as the seemingly unchallengeable mantra of “migration exceptionalism.”
From the very beginning, this exceptionalism has been linked in a perplexing way to contradictory promises: on the one hand, the emancipation of citizens and a democratic promise; on the other, the constant need for labor and a promise of economic growth. A human rights stance gradually won through struggle—the promise of asylum and protection, the right to rights—is an essential part of this development, as are increasingly globally intertwined forms of work and life. This ever-contradictory connection survived internally within traditional notions of integration and remains largely unfulfilled to this day. At the same time, we observe entirely new connections between mobility and social transformation within geopolitical, postcolonial, and often war-torn constellations
(2) Migration as an area of conflict. Migration is how social change is narrated, experienced, and negotiated. Examining this means reflecting on the ways migration is represented across society as a whole.
Migration has become a central area of conflict in the present day and, as such, a battleground for political and social debates as well as increasing instrumentalization. This research focus examines the connections between migration and processes of cultural and anthropological differentiation from a global perspective—processes that have become unthinkable today without digital reconfigurations.
Crucial to this are the ways in which migration is represented: How are social changes narrated, experienced, and negotiated? Through which concepts, narratives, and practices does this occur in the media and in everyday life?
Our work is grounded in the perspective that social conditions surrounding migration are fundamentally shaped by specific and evolving manifestations of racism. We therefore adopt perspectives from racism theory to theoretically and empirically analyze the practices and logics of differentiation that structure the reality of migration societies. In doing so, we are interested in anthropological conceptions and constructions of the relationship between human differentiations, as well as the distinctions between the human and the non-human (nature, God, animal, machine). In this way, we supplement classical questions of racism theory with analyses of anthropological and non-anthropological differences, thereby opening up new horizons. In research and teaching, we engage in dialogue to strengthen anthropological research with regard to its historical and current dimensions within migration societies.
(3) Mobility practices are changing. Understanding this requires empirical attention and reflective theorization.
Our third research focus examines changing forms of mobility in the context of digitalization and automation processes, as well as the development of artificial intelligence. In this regard, the transformation of mobile work plays a key role. Our research aims to gain methodologically innovative, empirically grounded knowledge about contemporary mobility practices and conditions.
New forms and practices of mobility and migration in the realm of platform work and the automation of labor in general form a focal point of our ongoing research. Central questions include: How does digitalization already require and facilitate migration today, and how will it do so in the future? What does migration (and mobile work) mean under digital conditions and within changing geopolitical constellations? What impact does the expansion of digitized and logistically managed border landscapes have on human mobility?
We are not only interested in the effects of digital technologies on mobile work and the epistemic shifts in our understanding of migration. What is relevant overall is how migration society is fundamentally reconfiguring itself in relation to the expansion of basic technological infrastructures. Here, the changing relationship between population, territory, and history plays a fundamental role. For example, we examine the effects of the digital transformation on anthropological distinctions (woman/man; healthy/sick, normal/delinquent, etc.) as well as on essential cultural binaries: the changing relationship between public and private, night and day (in relation to work), lived digital and physical geographies and temporalities, mobility and immobility. We also examine how digital infrastructures are reconfiguring notions of society and community, as well as of belonging. Who is viewed as different, as foreign, as xenos, and the resulting cultures and practices of exclusion are likewise a crucial part of cultural transformations in the digital age.
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