One issue that has not been an explicit part of the program of TFMI but popped up again and again is history and the way of dealing with as well as the way of teaching history. Migration poses a great question to this topic. One of them is: how is it possible to include immigrants in history: the history of immigration, the history of immigrants and their descendants and last but not least the history of the country. The narrative of the past is the narrative about the future and thereby the concepts of history are the key to the tapestry of nations and their states. This means, immigrants will only be included on the level of a feeling of belonging when this issue is addressed.

The history of the building, which is standing for the changing history of the country, has been brought up in the BaMF. And it was underlying many conversations which I had with several groups during the conference.
I want to reflect a little on one conversation that we had in this morning. The history of the BaMF-building in the time of the NAZIS brought us to the issue of the feeling of guilt and the contention of the past. So the question came up, how German children of immigrants can grapple with the German past. And this is as difficult as it is because Germans are still struggling with their past. The dominant idea seems to be, that immigrant children could somehow not relate to German history, that the past as horrible as it is belongs to Germans, to people who had family members involved. Even though, the two world wars that Germany started affected people around the globe and started migration over the globe and they prepared the dominant patterns of discourse that not only Germany is struggling with – one of them is the concept of purity.

On the other side, immigrants carry the question of how to let their children know of their history, a question most difficult if they came as refugees, like our friend from Ruanda. Better to let them know the reasons for migration, the history of the family, the burdens that migration was supposed to safe them from - what lays behind? Or let them find out themselves? Feel an oddness and alienation once they realize that their parents didn’t share something that important with them? Letting a taboo emerge concerning all matters of the past? But how can an immigrant family embrace both its own past and the past of the nation it belongs to now? And how can a nation come to terms with its history and the histories of old-established and newcomers which bring in a global history and by that challenge the concept of a national history, of a national narrative?

Somehow every perspective is so unique and still it holds universal patterns. The story of the immigrants and especially their kids is, that everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere. But by leaving their home they loose the connection to where they came from and still get not accepted where they go to, where they work, live and give birth to a new generation.

In a world that accepts the idea of being global the concept of territory, culture and community is no longer valid. People find new alliances. The homecountries of their ancestors might mean nothing to them and the community that they are belived and said over and over again to belong to, might be a horror to them.

Even though Germany has improved over the last years and we can see from the presentations of politicians and people that are working in the field of integration, things are developping. However, it is shocking repeatedly how the discrimination of immigrants and there descendants is not an issue at all In Germany. This is different in the US, where ethnic minorities have found many ways of adress these prolems and this is only one of the important issues that come up in many disscussions during the workshops and informal meetings in the forum.

And though the degree of phenomena, the measures against integration problems and number of immigrants might be different in every represented country, we are finding the same issues to be important everywhere: language skills, sense of belonging, media debates and campaigns against migration, fear of the others, lack of education and paticipation, controlling immigration and emigration, evaluating the success or failure of policies etc.

Hoping to continue…