Continent on the Move: Migration in Europe, 1914-the present day

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Jessica Reinisch
• Assessment: a 1000-word book review (20%) and 4000-word essay (80%)

In this module we explore the impact of ethnic tensions, migration and expulsions on Central European history, identity and memory. We set the German experience of population movements and migration into a broad European context of struggles over nationalism, ethnicity, race and economic development across the continent. We juxtapose the problems of German minorities living outside of Germany in the first half of the century with the problematic integration of a range of new minorities in the second half.

Throughout the module we will inspect problems of population upheavals both from the perspective of those who managed them, as well as from the viewpoint of those who experienced or endured them.

Indicative syllabus

• Majorities and minorities in Central Europe
• Minorities and ethnic tensions between the World Wars
• Hitler's New Order (i) - ethnic Germans come 'Heim ins Reich'
• Hitler's New Order (ii) - forced labour in Germany
• Planning the post-war world - on 'ethnic unmixing'
• Expulsions from Eastern Europe
• Nationality and citizenship in the aftermath of war
• Cold War tensions and East-West migration
• Guest workers and economic migration to Germany
• Migration and memory at the end of the twentieth century