The challenges going through Vergangenheitsbewältigung in trendy Germany: Muslim immigration and rising antisemitism.
Supervised by: Dr Zuleika Rodgers, Affiliate Professor, Division of Close to & Center Jap Research
Challenge background
In trendy Germany, the method of coming to phrases with and studying from the atrocities of the Holocaust constitutes a elementary pillar of nationwide identification. Germans are taught that they should confront Germany’s antisemitic, genocidal historical past to forestall the recurrence of comparable horrors. This technique of coming to phrases with the previous has its personal identify: Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Nevertheless, latest occasions have challenged this central tenet of ‘Germanness’. Notably, the 2015 inflow of 1,000,000 refugees (primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan) added new contexts to discussions round antisemitism and Holocaust commemoration as a key a part of German nationwide identification, particularly: the way to make Vergangenheitsbewältigung related to their identification as migrants and the way to fight antisemitism amongst them? The latest eruption in violence between Israel and Palestine provides new urgency to this concern.
Analysis questions
Confronted with a altering inhabitants, Germany has needed to discover new approaches to preserving reminiscence tradition. This challenge goals to look at how Germany is coping with the implications of the 2015 wave of migration in relation to Vergangenheitsbewältigung, with regard to Muslim communities. Particularly, it asks two analysis questions: 1) how is Germany trying to make the nationwide programme of Vergangenheitsbewältigung related to its new (post-2015) migrant inhabitants, and a couple of) how profitable are these initiatives at combating anti-semitism and serving to younger Muslim migrants to combine into German society?
Aims
- To evaluate how the elevated presence of Muslim migrant communities has impacted antisemitism in Germany
- To critically look at Germany’s method to integrating Muslim migrants into the reminiscence tradition of Vergangenheitsbewältigung
- To analyze whether or not this concentrate on combating antisemitism in new Muslim communities ignores the expansion of antisemitism in different elements of society
Methodology
I’ll make use of a qualitative analysis approach. This includes small pattern sizes, however allows me to gather advanced knowledge primarily based on contributors’ opinions and perceptions. I’ll:
- conduct thirty-minute interviews (on-line, recorded, in German) with between 5 and ten Berlin-based Muslim Germans (aged 18–25) with a migrant background
- make use of a semi-structured method, asking questions related to the challenge’s goals but in addition leaving area at no cost dialogue
- contextualise these questions via latest occasions: particularly, how do they really feel the latest battle in Gaza has affected such points?
- topic the info to thematic evaluation to determine key themes and analyse how these relate to my analysis questions.
To find interviewees, I’ll ship an introductory letter to Muslim societies at Berlin universities and Muslim-focused neighborhood centres, inviting individuals to contact me if they’re serious about participating. My pattern body will take demographic variables into consideration. When it comes to gender and nationality, the distribution doesn’t pose an inherent concern, however I would favor a combined pattern. When it comes to migration background, I’ll focus totally on individuals who arrived in or after 2015, however may even enable for different backgrounds, if essential.
I’m specializing in Berlin as probably the most ethnically numerous space the place Jewish and Muslim communities exist in shut proximity and the place reminiscence tradition is most bodily distinguished. Whereas the capital metropolis is probably not consultant of the nation as an entire, it is a vital context for the problems I need to analysis.
