Global Resettlement Regimes: Ambivalent Lessons learned from the Postwar (1945-1951)

Project Information

GLORE

Grant agreement ID: 101053242

DOI

10.3030/101053242

EC signature date 5 September 2022

Start date 1 February 2023

End date 31 January 2028

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 159 469,00

EU contribution

€ 2 159 469,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GLORE (Global Resettlement Regimes: Ambivalent Lessons learned from the Postwar (1945-1951))

Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2025-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Global Resettlement Regimes: Ambivalent Lessons from the Postwar (1945-1951) – Dr Kerstin von Lingen, Vienna

During and after the Second World War, millions of people in Europe and Asia were displaced from their homes. There was nothing new in forced population movement, but in an era of political tensions caused by Cold War rivalries and decolonization, the management of mass migration and the resettlement of millions of people can tell us a global and connected story of a new international order after 1945. Previous historical research has largely focused on the international framework for resettlement, and on the personal experiences of displaced people, but we lack an understanding of the complex practices of resettlement. By using archival as well as digital humanities methods, we shall fill this gap. We shall link the varied experiences of individual actors to the grand story of international humanitarian law, questions of post-imperial state-building, citizenship, and identity formation.
We examine both the failures and the successes, along with the learning processes that helped to produce a global understanding on how to manage mass resettlement. This project will reveal the policies of nation-states and international organizations, as well as highlight the agency of refugees and their own ‘resettlement strategies’.
This project argues that the late 1940s and 1950s saw the construction of global resettlement regimes. Earlier scholarship on displacement and resettlement has generally treated post-war experiences in Europe and in Asia as separate domains. In contrast, this project shows the connections between the European and the Asian spheres, and further links them to Australia and the Americas. This project explores the potential of global history with an innovative interface to legal history, by (a) analysing the role of international organizations and experts linked with the United Nations system (UNRRA and IRO) in formulating policies that had a global impact; (b) analysing the interactions of this global resettlement regime with national policies and regional/local experts; (c) analysing the movements of refugees across national borders and continents, and the role of communities in reshaping refugee lives; (d) focusing on select biographical and intellectual archives and experiences.
The project will use Social GIS methods to map these flows of actors and knowledge, especially through an intensive focus on the International Tracing Service (ITS) / Arolsen archives, which have hitherto seldom been analyzed in global perspective. It will link this empirical corpus with data gleaned from other international, national, and local archives, as well as non-archival sources, such as refugee memoirs and biographies, and representations of refugee resettlement in newspapers and literature. The project will follow these connected strands of enquiry by weaving together four interlinked optics: (a) on normativity; (b) on refugee’s lifeworlds and ‘state of exception’; (c) on global history and spatial studies, esp. the paradigm of ‘carceral geography’, in studying refugee camps; and (d) the emergent field of global intellectual history, and memory studies. The project will publish and convey the ‘lessons learned’ about post-war refugee resettlement which can inform discussions today.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Refugee agency is often overlooked, while the research into the management of migration and the internal logic of organizations involved and their personnel is quite detailed. This project delves now into the agency of migrants in ‘navigating the system’ and trying to influence the resettlement process according to their wishes. Additionally, current literature pays limited attention to non-European refugees. With our project we show the capacity of Asian refugees to negotiate with international organizations and national governments and move towards their own desired futures. The same is true for the subproject scrutinizing the long-neglected group of ethnic German refugees. Their agency and engagement with international organizations, notably UNRRA, and their strong commitment to overseas destinations (especially Latin America and Australia) reveal that the history of post-war displacement and resettlement should be understood as a global history, rather than a European one. In our project, a focus on marginalized groups as unaccompanied children and Displaced persons with disabilities or medical issues over a significant time after liberation analyzes the engagement of humanitarian organizations with refugees in need. Here, we see a reverse logic: while care of the needy was of priority in the first months after liberation, the treatment of these groups years after (and their possibly removal out of state sponsored hospitals and facilities into a self-sustained live or in foster families) became the focus of help. Especially in the case of children, group interests are particularly visible (for example, religious welfare groups, or nationalist groups which claim to bring children “home”, in order to rebuild the nation), and those might not correspond with the most pressing needs of children. The second larger focus lies on “hubs of displacement”; here, the project focuses on Asia and zooms in into the Chinese port city of Shanghai and the Philippines (especially Manila and the camp on the island of Tubabao) as examples. In analyzing the work of international care organizations trying to resettle the people from these ports, we can discuss issues of being in transit with notions of post-colonial order and white refugees being displaced in Asian destinations and being resettled with the clear aim to get them back into the western hemisphere. While segregation of groups is the core interest of international organizations and a realty of daily life in these places (also due to language barriers), we see prevailing race hierarchies which set white refugees above the local inhabitants. However, as new finds we also see mechanisms of acculturation, circulation of knowledge and exchange, as well as learning processes of the camp managements during these periods while the settlements existed. The subproject on the migration of objects finally can show which role was attributed to “things they caried”, which for many refugees were equal to markers of identity, kinship and belonging, reminding them of their lost life back where “home” had been, and giving them strength to survive and rebuild a new reality.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The research conducted scrutinizes refugee agency and the less-researched history of their experiences, lifeworlds and possibilities in the post-WWII world. A blog, a film series, storymaps as well as Podcasts aim at broadcasting our findings into the public. Our goal is changing the image of the “silent and thankful” refugee towards a powerful actor and migrant navigating the system of relief and resettlement, shaping hubs of displacement and daily life in camps, and scrutinizing memoirs, letters and life narratives. The material gives us some answers on the mystery of a reconstruction of identity and feeling of belonging within refugee and exile communities.

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