From the late 1980s to the 2010s over 2.5 million migrants from the countries of the former Soviet Union settled in Germany, the majority Russian Germans and a smaller, but no less significant, number of Russian Jews. This large wave of post-Soviet migration has tended to be overlooked in the historiography of migration and multiculturalism in Germany. Countering a tendency to study Russian Jews and Russian Germans in isolation from each other, this talk will focus on the question of how post-Soviet migrants use memory to define their identities and to make claims for recognition in Germany. Particular attention will be paid to the different ways in which Russian Jewish and Russian German commemorative narratives are used by organizations and members of these communities to position themselves in German memory debates.

Biography:

James Casteel, a historian by training, is Associate Professor at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and in Global and International Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he also serves as Program Director for Migration and Diaspora Studies. He is the author of Russia in the German Global Imaginary: Imperial Visions and Utopian Desires, 1905-1941(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). His current research project explores the role of memory in processes of migrant incorporation among post-Soviet migrants in Germany since the late 1980s.