Dear all,
please note, the organisers are offering financial
help with travel and accommodation for those whose
contributions are accepted.
Best,
Debbie
From: Dirk Schumann <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: CFP: Mass Migration and Urban Governance
(GHI, Washington
D.C.)
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006
Call For Papers
Workshop at the German Historical Institute,
Washington D.C., May,
11-12, 2007
Mass Migration and Urban Governance: Cities in the
United States and in
Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Conveners:
Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke College)
Marcus Gräser (University of Frankfurt/Main)
American urbanization in the 19th and 20th centuries
has always been
described as a unique experience. Migrants from the
peasant villages
and
small towns of Europe and Asia as well as African
Americans from the
southern States converged on the metropolises. The
American city was,
as
Jon C. Teaford aptly phrased it, "a mass of segregated
and
unassimilated
humanity." It resembled a patchwork and its ethnic
divisions were at
once a source of dynamism and of conflict. "When there
are added to one
American city more Italians than there are Italians in
Rome, we have
something new in history," remarked the sociologists
Robert E. Park and
Herbert A. Miller in 1925.
Yet from a comparative perspective the assumption of
an American urban
exceptionalism may be questioned: Urbanization in
Central Europe during
the 19th and early 20th centuries was no less the
result of mass
migration, mostly from rural areas. Most, but not all
migrants had the
same ethnic background as the old-stock city dwellers.
Some German
cities, however, especially in the Ruhr area and in
Silesia, and, to a
lesser extent, Berlin, experienced an influx of Polish
peasants.
Likewise, in most of the big cities in the Hapsburg
empire - especially
Vienna and Prague - urbanization and migration divided
along lines of
ethnicity: Prague was split between Germans and Czechs
and a
considerable part of the population of Vienna was
Czech, Galician and
Italian.
While none of the Central European cities had an
ethnic make-up that
really resembled the situation in a typical big
American city, the
experience of mass migration - either mono -or
multiethnic - had a
crucial impact on urban governance in both Central
Europe and in
America: The aim of this workshop is to examine this
impact, asking
questions such as: How did mass migration change the
local political
regime and its administrative capacity? How did the
degree of
democratization, the processes of naturalization and
the local party
traditions influence the political and social
inclusion/exclusion of
migrants? And how did the various symbolic attempts to
unify a
fragmented city, correlate with the local politics of
inclusion/exclusion?
The workshop will provide a platform to focus on:
a) comparative studies of two (or more) cities
b) local case studies
c) research on national politics of citizenship
and its
implication
for the local political arena
d) the contribution of contemporary sociology and
literature to
the
phenomenon of migration and city-building
e) questions and prospects for further research
Conference presentations and discussion will be in
English. Proposals
from Europe and the United States are welcome. The
deadline for
submission is November 15, 2006. Participants will be
notified by the
middle of December. They will receive lump sum
reimbursement for their
travel and lodging expenses. Please submit a paper
proposal of no more
than 500 words (one page) and a short CV to both
conveners
([log in to unmask];
[log in to unmask]).
Dirk Schumann
German Historical Institute
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