Migration in Textbooks: A comparative Research Project

During the last decades, migration has world wide gained in importance, not in the least in the countries of Western Europe. Europe has historically been and continues to be a continent that displays various forms of migration. The expansion of the European Union, the continuous (re)-unification of families, the careful liberalization of labor markets, de-colonization, the collapse of the Soviet system, the end of the Cold War and the pervasiveness of the worldwide flow of asylum seekers clearly indicate that emigration will continue throughout the decades to come. Integration and interethnic coexistence in terms of existing immigrants as well as future immigration present an important and powerful challenge to the design and development of European society. What was originally thought of as short-term admission and integration problems of immigrants has turned out to be a long-term, social, political and cultural challenge. 

The movement of people across borders will continue to be a defining characteristic of Germany and Europe in the 21st century. Social, cultural and demographic diversity are likely to increase rather than decrease in the future. The Europe of the future will be increasingly marked by the diversity of and differences between people, groups and cultures. Pluralism will be a central theme of future collective identities and will directly be defined by a diversity based on migration. 

While immigration became one of the main rationales behind the founding of the U.S., this, for obvious reasons, was not the case in European states despite the existence of various migration movements. In Europe, immigrants were and are frequently viewed as foreigners over long periods of time and are accordingly stigmatized, disadvantaged and excluded. The diversity of the past and the present, all too often, is an insufficiently developed or nonexistent part in the consciousness of European states and their national cultures. In order to face the various challenges that are presented by this lack of awareness, new and stronger initiatives are necessary in the area of education.

The project compared the ways in which migration and immigration history is treated in the teaching materials of the previously mentioned countries, starting in 1945. The most important forms of migration, which marked the European post-war history, are escaping, persecution, colonial repatriation, labor migration, ethnic migration ("repatriation" of co-ethnic minorities to their homeland, for example the re-immigration of emigrants to Germany) as well as illegal migration. Central questions are how the changes that occur as a result of migration affect national self-understanding, the ways in which foreigners are perceived and how this latter perception, in turn, affects the foreigners themselves.

Three key areas formed the basis for the analysis of the teaching materials:

1. The first area deals with immigration and emigration:
   How is emigration depicted and interpreted? How are the various forms of immigrations (of refugees, persecuted, colonial migrants, labor migrants, returning emigrants (Aussiedler) asylum seekers, and illegal immigrants) depicted? Which explanatory tools are given in order to understand immigration and emigration? Is there a discernible change in the way in which these issues are addressed from the late 1950s to the 1970s to today? 
    
2. The second area deals with the treatment of foreigners: 
   Is there a description of the migrants or their lives in the host countries? Is there a discernible change in this depiction for the periods under examination? 
   Which integration mechanisms are available to the various migrant groups in their host communities? How is co-existence described and how are concepts for an interethnic co-existence identified? Which inclusion or exclusion mechanisms for migrants can be described? How, if at all, is the different treatment of migrants justified? Is the success of certain migrant groups being emphasized?
    
3. The third area deals with the host countries' self-identification as a (non-) immigrant society. 
   The treatment of foreigners also reflects the way a society treats itself or its own self-image. Are different self-images in different countries discernible? Is a change in the depictions apparent? Which explanations are given for societies' self-depictions? Is national self-understanding moving towards a "European identity of diversity"?