BER_F_03 Between Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Flight: Multiperspective Approaches to Jews/Judaism, the Middle East Conflict, and the Holocaust in Post-migrant Society
Objective/ Research Questions
The project analyses attitudes to the thematic complexes of Jews/Judaism, the Holocaust, the Middle East conflict, and anti-Semitism among various actors in German society. It investigates their causes in the face of different experiences and focuses on interlocking perspectives. The perspectives of “new” (fugitives) and “old” immigrants will be empirically examined against the background of the continuity of anti-Semitic attitudes in the majority German society. The aim of the project is to make visible the negotiation and learning processes that emphasize the commonality of experiences – for example, flight, expulsion, or racism – and norms beyond a “victim competition”. This is intended to create a basis for new, diverse cultures of remembrance and for preventive measures against anti-Semitism/racism.
The following questions will be addressed: What are the causes of anti-Semitic and anti-anti-Semitic attitudes among refugees and other migrants, both in their country of origin and in Germany? What role do experiences of flight and racism play? What role does the confrontation with debates play in Germany? How can the experiences of discrimination that immigrants and their descendants have had contribute to raising awareness of historical and contemporary anti-Semitism? Conversely, how is anti-Semitism evaluated and socially classified in light of one’s own minority experiences? Finally, how can memories of different social events be linked together beyond a logic of competition? And how can this historical plurality be turned into a post-migrant, diversity-oriented understanding of the present that changes the politics of memory and the self-perceptions of the majority society?
Thematic reference to social cohesion
In the recent debates on flight and migration, central cultural values are being negotiated in public space. Hardly any other subject area is as morally and politically charged as current and historical anti-Semitism, together with the associated Judaism, the Holocaust, and Israel/Middle East conflict. It is repeatedly claimed that the values of refugees, especially those from Arab countries, are fundamentally different from those of Germans. In this context, there is also a talk about “imported anti-Semitism”. This follows up older debates that have been ongoing since the beginning of the millennium, which place anti-Semitism in Germany primarily among people with a migration background from predominantly Muslim countries, as well as emerging from existing concerns about the expansion of Islamism in Germany and Europe.
The developments and sociopolitical reflections outlined above represent both a challenge and an opportunity for social cohesion. It is about conflicts as well as about integration processes between immigrant groups and members of the majority society, which are particularly evident in everyday and micro-situations. The confrontation with different ideas in these situations can contribute to change on an individual and societal level – migrants change not only themselves but also the norms of the host society. By drawing on experiences and knowledge from the countries of origin and Germany, it is thus possible to address continuities and differences in the experiences of flight, migration, and exclusion and to follow the transformation of German society towards a veritable migration society. The project investigates how people from different cultural backgrounds relate to each other and to a common overall social context in processes of cooperation and integration.
Through its work with people from different contexts of origin, the project has an inherent international perspective; a comparison of these different national and cultural points of reference is one of its foundations. In other words, the project makes an equally empirical-analytical and comparative-contextualized contribution. It locates anti-Semitism, racism, and flight in the (memory) political field of tension between the Holocaust and the Middle East conflict. Thus, the discursive framework of political culture and the affective dimension of cohesion are the focal points of the discussions encouraged by this project.
