International Conference
In Search of the Migrant Child: Entangled Histories of Childhood Across Borders
September 19-21, 2022
University of California Berkeley
223 Moses Hall
Migration history is primarily a history of adults. Children are usually appendages to these adults, they are objects like luggage or figures in statistics. Thus, little is known about the experiences of migrant children and adolescents, be it that they crossed borders on their own, within peer groups or as part of their families. The conference “In Search of the Migrant Child: Entangled Histories of Childhood and Migration Across Borders” is meant to uncover and discuss various of these–to date often hidden–histories of children and young people in the 19th and 20th centuries. It asks how age shaped experiences of transnational migration in different contexts, and inquires how child migrants’ bodies were perceived, marked and managed. It explores how states addressed children specifically in their efforts to regulate, curtail, and also enable migration, and it scrutinizes how this specific form of migration catalyzed knowledge about childhood and migration. And, finally, the conference addresses how to grasp children’s voices historically.
This in-person conference concludes a series of digital workshops that were organized by the international standing working group “In Search of the Migrant Child” since Spring 2021. This series of events is the result of a collaboration between the German Historical Institute Washington with its Pacific Office at UC Berkeley and the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies in Dresden. The conference and the book launch are furthermore supported by the Institute of European Studies and the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at UC Berkeley, and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Organized by Sheer Ganor, Bettina Hitzer,
Friederike Kind-Kovács and Swen Steinberg
SEPTEMBER 19, 2022
5:30pm – Book Launch
Budapest’s Children: Humanitarian Relief in the Aftermath of the Great War
Friederike Kind-Kovács (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden, Germany)
Chair: John Connelly (University of California, Berkeley, US)
6:30pm – Reception
SEPTEMBER 20, 2022
9-9:30am – Welcome and Introduction
Welcome
Simone Lässig (German Historical Institute Washington with its Pacific Office at UC Berkeley, US) and Thomas Lindenberger (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden, Germany)
Introduction
Friederike Kind-Kovács (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden, Germany) and Swen Steinberg (German Historical Institute Washington with its Pacific Office at UC Berkeley, US)
9:30-11:00am – Keynote
Child Meets Microbe: Letters and Lessons on Migration at the End of the 19th Century
Speaker: Mahshid Mayar (Bielefeld University, Germany)
Chair: Sheer Ganor (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, US)
11:00-11:30am Coffee Break
11:30-1pm – Displaced Lives: The Challenges of Transnational Childhoods
Friederike Kind-Kovács (Hannah Arendt Institute for
Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden, Germany)
Displaced Childhood? Children’s Transnational Evacuation in the 20th Century
Bettina Hitzer (Hannah Arendt Institute for
Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden, Germany)
Making (No) Difference. Transnationally Adopted Children in West Germany, 1960s to 1980s
Chair: Ulf Brunnbauer (Regensburg University, Germany)
1:00-2:30pm – Lunch Break
2:30-4:30pm – (Un-)desirable Bodies? Children’s Experiences in/after Migration
Chelsea Shields (University of California, Irvine, US)
Dwelling on ‘Racial Memory’: Sex, Family, and Psychology from the Moyne Commission to the Marshmallow Test
Emma Wyse (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada)
Disobedient Acts and Embodied Empire: Correspondence and Control of Young Migrant Bodies, 1938-1945
Kelly Condit-Shrestha (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, US)
U.S. Immigration, German Jewish Refugees, and Flexible White Privilege, 1939-1940
Chair: Thomas Lindenberger (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden, Germany)
6:00pm Joint Dinner
SEPTEMBER 21, 2022
9:00-10:30am – Not Mere Victims: Children’s Experiences in
Migration (Hybrid)
Laura Hobson Faure (Panthéon-Sorbonne University-Paris 1, France)
Alone or Together? A German Jewish Child Refugee in the United States and His Attempt to Cope with Displacement and the Holocaust
Olga Gnydiuk (Central European University, Vienna, Austria)
Refugee Children’s Experience and Subjectivity in Migration after WWII
Chair: Nino Vallen (Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington at UC Berkeley, US)
10:30-11:00am – Coffee Break
11:00-12:30pm – Keynote
The Next Generation of Migrants: From Crisis to the Politics of Possibility
Speaker: Lauren Heidbrink (California State University, Long Beach, US)
Chair: Jeroen Dewulf (Director of the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley, US)
12:30-1:30pm – Lunch Break
1:30-3:00pm – More Than a Case File? Children’s Experiences in Transition
Antoine Burgard (University of Manchester, UK)
“A Precious Commodity”: Refugee Narratives, Truth, and the Culture of Disbelief Towards Young Migrants
Swen Steinberg (German Historical Institute Washington with its Pacific Office at UC Berkeley, US)
Knowledge in Transition: Unaccompanied Minor Refugees, Social Work, and Refugee Pedagogues in New York‘s 1940s
Chair: Sören Urbansky (Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington at UC Berkeley, US)
3:00-3:30pm – Coffee Break
3:30-5:30pm – Between Encampment and Foster Families: Child Migrants’ Voices
Susanne Quitmann (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany)
George Green’s Voice: A Concept for Studying the History of British Child Migrants (Hybrid)
Anca Cretu (Masaryk Institute, Prague/ERC Vienna, Austria)
The Experience of Childhood in Austria-Hungary’s Refugee Camps during the First World War
Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida, Gainesville, US)
Polish Jewish Child Survivors and their Non-Jewish (Surrogate) Families after the Holocaust
Chair: Simone Lässig (German Historical Institute Washington with its Pacific Office at UC Berkeley, US)
5:30-6:00pm – Conclusion
Sheer Ganor (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, US) and Bettina Hitzer (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden, Germany)
7:00pm Conference Dinner (by invitation)
An internal workshop and discussion of chapter drafts
will take place on Thursday, September 22, 2022
(by invitation)