Migration is a crucial component of humanity. Humans have been forced to migrate due to
epidemics, natural catastrophes, climate change, persecution, and wars. Moreover, with
industrialization, economic motivations became a further determinant of migration. From the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these concerns have been studied in migration
studies and addressed primarily using economic rationalist approaches. Nevertheless, people
have also migrated voluntarily, prompted by the desire to explore the unknown. International
migration includes well-educated and upper-middle-class people. Today, the immigrants can
be the ones who come today and leave tomorrow or live in both the country they came from
and the country they immigrated to. Focusing on these latter groups, the dominant economic
rationalist approach in migration studies may not be sufficient to understand the different
aspects of the facilitated migration of our times.
In recent years, there has been an increasing number of studies aiming to understand the state
of being a migrant from the perspective of emotions by bringing together migration studies and
emotion studies. Emotions develop through interactions in and between social relations and
space. While migration leads to a change in both social relations and space, emotions acquired
in the homeland are transferred to the land of migration. New social relations in the land of
migration thus bring about the construction of a new emotional state. Therefore, it is possible
to say that the debates on assimilation, integration, multiculturalism, and transnationalism,
which occupy an essential place in migration studies, also have an emotional dimension.
In our workshop, we would like to explore different aspects of emotion in various Jewish
immigration experiences. We plan to discuss the emotional drivers of emigration and the
emotional aftermath of the immigration process. We will shed some light on the different
circumstances, internal and external distress, and motivation to migrate. Combining case
studies of different immigrant groups will allow us to shed light on current historiographical
research and examine the emotional aspects of immigration and immigrant groups.

Place: Freie University, Department of History and Cultural Studies, Room 2.2051,
Fabeckstraße 23-25, 14195 Berlin

Conveners: Dr. Maya Shabbat (maya.shabbat@gmail.com)
Dr. Olaf Glöckner (gloeckne@uni-potsdam.de )
Adem Muzaffer Erol, PhD Candidate (aerol@uni.potsdam.de)