Dirk Hoerder

Migration and Transnational History

Abstract:

Recently some scholars have called to "bring the state back into" migration history. This raises problems: in the 19th-century migrations in the Atlantic World the (relatively) open departure and entry modes kept the states comparatively distant from migrants' trajectories. However, the states were present in forced migrations. I will discuss the evolution of migration "regimes" both as stateside imposed and as pattern emerging from human agency. This will included so-called free migrations and contract labor. I will distinguish state and nation – institution and culture and the consequences of customary merger of the two contradictory concepts in the "nation-state", which receives migrants and also experiences a continuous "leakage" or men and women seeking options for life-courses elsewhere. In the talk, I will move from the 19th century to the present and discuss the change of regimes over time and the agency of migrants in response or as countering bureaucratic institutions.

Biographical Note:

Dirk Hoerder is a professor emeritus of Arizona State University in Tempe, USA. He has been director of the internationally cooperative Labor Migration Project at the University of Bremen, Germany. He has published studies on migrant life-writings as source for societal history Creating Societies, Immigrant Lives in Canada (1999), on global migration in a long-term perspective Cultures in Contact, World Migrations in the Second Millennium (2002) and on the practice and theory of transcultural societal studies From the Study of Canada to Canadian Studies (2005). Dirk Hoerder has served on numerous editorial boards and advisory boards of professional associations. He has been president of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-language Countries and has been active in the International Council for Canadian Studies. He has been network chair for "Migration and Ethnicity" at the European Social Science History Conference and is currently coeditor of the website "Building North America".