Migration

Migration, the change of residence of people through immigration, emigration and internal migration, is not only in times of globalisation one of the most important aspects of human mobility. Migration creates new spaces and everyday practices as well as new forms of cultural networks and social communication. Migration is closely related to issues of integration and the creation of cultural diversity. The EKW is therefore particularly interested in how migration changes our society in its everyday life. The Ludwig-Uhland-Institut has been dealing with these questions since the 1950s. More recently, refugee studies have experienced a boom against the background of the overcoming of EU external borders by refugees in the summer of 2015. The social negotiations following the 'long summer of migration' also open up new horizons for empirical cultural studies. Escape is understood as a form of migration. With this analytical setting, the subject distinguishes itself from a research perspective that runs the risk of reproducing the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate mobility that is made in the political regulation of refugees. For Empirical Cultural Studies, on the other hand, the relationship between such political categories and migrant living conditions is more interesting. The focus here is on the arrival of the refugees, especially in exchange with specific neighborhoods and local authorities in concrete places. In order to strengthen the EKW's perspective on the processes, and to carry it to the outside world, various collaborations currently exist, for example with the Tübingen Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies, the district or the city of Tübingen. Overall, the research field of migration is thus one of the Institute's main research areas.