The Margins of Citizenship: "Deportability", Illegality and Statelessness in the 20th Century

The Margins of Citizenship: "Deportability", Illegality and Statelessness in the 20th Century

Organisatoren
Kathleen Canning, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Jana Häberlein, University of Basel; Barbara Lüthi, University of Cologne; Miriam Rürup, Hamburg Institute for the History of the German Jews
Ort
Loveno di Menaggio
Land
Italy
Vom - Bis
22.07.2013 - 25.07.2013
Url der Konferenzwebsite
Von
Julia Kleinschmidt, Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Between July 22-25, 2013 the German-Italian Centre Villa Vigoni, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, hosted a workshop on “The Margins of Citizenship“, discussing political phenomena with genealogical roots in historical forms of in-/exclusion such as illegality, statelessness and deportability. For example, in history the absence of (or rather possession of the wrong) documentary proof no doubt had fatal consequences for numerous individuals and social groups with an effect on their citizenship status. Some of these questions had already been discussed at a previous conference at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington DC in 2012.1 Whereas the former conference focused more on the relations between non-documented persons and the means by which nation states and public authorities choose to deal with those people, the Villa Vigoni workshop dealt with current projects by international scholars on statelessness, illegality, and deportation going way beyond their legal implications. The format of the Villa Vigoni workshop allowed for intense discussions and debates, each paper having been circulated beforehand and each presentation being followed by a response from another participant.

In his keynote, WILLIAM WALTERS (Ottawa) pointed to the absence of the actual transportation of deportees as an object meriting theoretical and empirical enquiry in its own right. Scholarship should focus more intensively on the importance of the vehicle of deportation itself and the overall question of mobility in the deportation process. He focused on the “airplane“ as one crucial deportation tool of the last twenty years. Based on examples, Walters demonstrated the visibility/invisibility of present-day deportation processes and mentioned one rather new invention of deportation: the charter flights. He argued that even if the public cannot actively notice the process of deporting, the state and / or the authorities send out a clear message with this seemingly invisible process. The “aeropolitics of deportation“, he argued, are dependent on the infrastructure of transportation. He pointed out that transportation offers a diagonal perspective for the genealogy of migration.

In their responses, ROBERTA PERGHER (Bloomington, IN) and ALICE SIRONI (Geneva) analysed the presentation from a historian’s and a lawyer’s perspective. Pergher pointed out that wartime deportation has to be distinguished from deportation of illegalized migrants and that particularly the individual types of deportations are of interest. She also raised the issue of “belonging” and focused on the privileges of owning legal documents to travel as a citizen. Sironi concentrated on the securitarian approach on migration. On the international level, migration as such is seen as the norm, while in most states migration issues are regulated by criminal law. Regarding removal flights, she described the hybrid nature of scheduled and charter flights. In her conclusion, Sironi mentioned the important role of civil society in putting pressure on FRONTEX (“European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union”) and the European Union to be more sensitive regarding the protection of human rights.

In the first panel on statelessness ANNEMARIE SAMMARTINO (Oberlin, OH) spoke about the imagined formation of the German nation with its three main stateless groups in the Weimar Republic: ethnic Germans from either France or Poland, Russian political emigrants and Jews from Eastern Europe. Sammartino argued that citizenship and therefore statelessness is less about the actual composition of the population within a state's territory, but more about the idea of an ideal nation-state. It became apparent that the Nansen passport could be the solution in giving people on the one hand an identity document but on the other hand without bonding them to a nation state – and as Sammartino declared, it can be seen as “a sort of anti-passport” that gave no citizen rights but yet a feeling of safety to the owner. The treatment of stateless persons was largely dependent on a sense of their incompatibility with the future state; therefore the Nansen passport was acceptable because it held the promise that they would not reside in the state in the future.

DANIELA CAGLIOTI (Naples) concentrated on the effects of the First World War on the notion of a narrow definition of citizenship in Europe. Even if a first wave of issuing citizenship laws had been implemented in the decades before 1914, she observed a crucial turning point in times of war. By pointing out that policies of exclusion came along with policies of inclusion, Caglioti described specific conflicts between law and practices in establishing nationality and nation state-bound citizenship in states like France and Germany. Very vividly, she also illustrated the agency of certain individuals in negotiating their legal status, by claiming rights based on the knowledge that precedent groups of people had already obtained these rights. Caglioti explicated that citizenship-policies during the war were defined by the dichotomy friend / enemy and as such delivered the blueprint for the definition of citizenship in categories of membership / non-membership.

The second panel on citizenship and the boundaries of legality focused more on the theoretical framework. KATHLEEN CANNING (Ann Arbor, MI) looked at the categories of national belonging. She suggested rethinking the boundaries of citizenship with the help of German historiography based on the assumption that losing one’s Staatsbürgerschaft did not have the same meaning as losing one’s Staatsangehörigkeit. The modern German citizenship always depended on the belonging to a nation. Historians have to deal with the difficulty, that the English term citizenship may imply manifold participatory dimensions. With regard to categories such as “class” and “gender”, Canning indicated that scholars should still pay more attention to the different dimensions and diversity of practical and participatory citizenship. The chance of historiography may be to explain the formative character of citizenship in historical time and space and gain insight in its internal and external boundaries.

SERHAT KARAKAYALI (Halle) spoke about the “transversal phenomenon of illegality“. He pointed out, that the public and official discourse often refers to “illegal migration” as an “exceptional“ practice in a “state of emergency“. The term “illegal migration” can therefore be considered as a semantic “all-rounder” that does not specify a concrete legal status. For example, German authorities had given resident and working permits to legalize migrant laborers, who did enter the country by tourist visa and without official legal agreements, yet were not coined “illegals”. Guest workers who have not been acknowledged in their actual status, could thus benefit from economical needs and the practice of non-regulated migration.

The third panel „Rescue and Relief: From the National to the Supranational and Return“ dealt with the relations between refugees, the nation state, and international organisations in and after the Second World War. ATINA GROSSMANN (New York City) opened the panel with a paper on Jewish refugees during the Second World War. She questioned the existing narrative about Displaced Persons (DP) and gave an insight into the geographical „margins“ of Jewish pre-war and war experience. She stated that, even though located at the margins, centres could be found there – for example Teheran or some Russian areas. Furthermore Grossmann argued that for Jewish Displaced Persons the category “stateless” and not being part of a war-nation could be one possibility to gain benefits, especially by identifying themselves as citizens of a nation not yet in existence.

In his presentation, ARTURO MARZANO (Florence) concentrated on the poorly researched history of Italy’s role as a place of transit for Jewish Displaced Persons to British Palestine and the USA. Marzano focused on the practice of the Hakhsharot, founded all over Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War and the importance of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNNRA) / International Refugee Organization (IRO) in contrast to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JOINT) for the DPs who wanted to stay in or pass through Italy. He explained the different approaches of the actors involved in the Hakhsharot in their strategy to achieve “relief“ and “rehabilitation“. The camps hosted nearly 50% of the refugees who were receiving UNNRA aid and were the places where they were trained for their new life in Palestine. Marzano stated, that the Jewish DP's considered them as the best opportunity to leave Europe in these times.

MIRIAM RÜRUP (Hamburg) questioned the different approaches of the newly founded states of the Federal German Republic and Israel regarding stateless (German) Jews in the 1950s. On the one hand she described that the attempt of the German federal law to allow the “renaturalizing” of former denaturalized Jews did not only address German-Jewish citizens but was soon broadened to include mainly ethnic Germans from the East. The Zionist vision on the other hand was not to restrict Israeli citizenship to those living on the territory of the nation state but to theoretically include all Jews in a global and spiritual sense. The Law of Return therefore created a kind of transterritorial citizenship. Rürup showed the interdependence between the establishment of universal human rights on the international level and both attempts of the new-founded states to offer citizenship to their non-territorial bounded ethnic people.

The final panel again addressed 'Deportation' and succeeded in completing the circle of the different approaches of this conference. First speaker JACQUELINE STEVENS (Evanston, IL) reflected on the methods of scholarship when dealing with deportation and citizenship and its relevance in practice. She demonstrated this by sharing her experiences drawn from her work in a US-based Camp for “Deportados” on the Rio Grande. These examples elucidated the deportation policies and practices at the US-Mexican border in progress since several years. US authorities established a practice to deport their own citizens on a basis of ostensible racial discrimination, affecting mainly “Latinos”. But according to Stevens, this is not an Agambenian “bare life” or the racist biopower outlined out by Foucault, but an “experimental biomass” whose disarticulation by inquisition of ascription – the law and forensics of citizenship – is creating the political body.

In the final presentation, TOBIAS BRINKMANN (University Park, PA) discussed his research on Jewish Migration to Danzig after the end of the First World War. He chose this example to clarify the vulnerability of Jewish stateless people who lived in a “legal abyss” and did not receive legal protection from several European governments. In contrast stood the exceptional status of Danzig with its self-administrating mandate of the League of Nations. The outcome of this situation was that the Danzig territory did no longer belong to Germany but neither to Poland. Thus Danzig gained a kind of independent legal status between two nation states. Therefore Jewish migrants were allowed to immigrate from Poland to Danzig even without documents. Brinkmann illustrated that “stateless territories" such as Danzig and also Shanghai may be good examples of how to protect stateless people.

One of the most interesting outcomes of the conference was the assumption formulated by Roberta Pergher, that the history of deportation should be detached from the history of crisis. Recent developments have shown that deportation – used in order to regulate migration – is a tool implemented in highly democratic states as well as in totalitarian systems. Another point that occurred several times during the discussions is the importance of Jewish history for the history of citizenship, migration and deportation. Nevertheless, Brinkmann questioned why the Jewish experience seems to be so prominent while Russian or Kurdish stories are much less known and investigated nowadays. Also, the importance of non-governmental actors was emphasized on several occasions. Therefore the story about the human-state-relationship should be extended to include more actors than just states and (non-)citizens. As some examples showed, statelessness appeared to be not only a disadvantage but in certain times and certain places also opened up new avenues, for example the possibility to choose a new citizenship and put the state in the position to offer identification papers to those who wanted to be citizens. Stateless people are thus not only acted on but also active agents – and this fact may be able to blur the common understanding of citizenship as a “gift” offered by the states to certain people. The conference illustrated a wide range of topics on the phenomena of statelessness, illegality, and deportability. But at the same time it showed that historical research on issues that already have been a topic in related disciplines for some time – such as the more recent and global history of statelessness and the importance of enhanced mobility for the process of deportation – still needs to be deepened and broadened alike.

Conference Overview:

Introduction: Jana Häberlein (Basel) / Barbara Lüthi (Cologne)

Theoretical Framing

William Walters (Ottawa): New Territories of Power?: Marginalized Citizenship as a Security Issue

Responses from a Historian’s and a Lawyer ’s perspective:

Roberta Pergher (Bloomington, IN)

Alice Sironi (Geneva)

Statelessness

Annemarie Sammartino (Oberlin, OH): Imagining the Future between the Citizen and the Stateless in Weimar Germany

Peer Reader: Jacqueline Stevens (Evanston, IL)

Daniela Caglioti (Naples): Citizens and Aliens in Wartime: Naturalizing and Denaturalizing in Europe during World War I

Peer Reader: Kathleen Canning (Ann Arbor, MI)

Citizenship and the Boundaries of Legality
Kathleen Canning (Ann Arbor, MI): Citizenships inside, outside and beyond the nation: German vocabularies and their effacements

Peer Reader: Serhat Karakayali (Halle)

Serhat Karakayali (Halle): Illegal Migration and the Emergence of Guest-Worker Regimes

Peer Reader: Jana Häberlein (Basel)

Rescue and Relief: From the National to the Supranational and Return

Atina Grossmann (New York City): Remapping Relief and Rescue: Flight, Displacement, and International Aid for Jewish Refugees during World War II

Peer Reader: Tobias Brinkmann (University Park, PA)

Arturo Marzano (Florence): International Rescue and Transnational Relief: The Hakhsharot for Jewish DPs in Italy, 1945–1948

Peer Reader: Atina Grossmann (New York City)

Miriam Rürup (Hamburg): Overcoming the Experience of Statelessness? Comparing Postwar German and Israeli Responses to Statelessness

Peer Reader: Arturo Marzano (Florence)

Deportation

Jacqueline Stevens (Evanston, IL): The Limits of Citizenship: Detention and Deportation of U.S. Citizens in the Twenty-first Century

Peer Reader: Annemarie Sammartino (Oberlin, OH)

Tobias Brinkmann (University Park, PA): From Transterritorial Subjecthood to Transnational Displacement: Jewish Migrants in the Free City of Danzig after 1918

Peer Reader: William Walters (Ottawa)

Final discussion

Note:
1 Tagungsbericht Living on the Margins: ‘Illegality’, Statelessness and the Politics of Removal in 20th Century Europe and the United States. 09.02.2012-11.02.2012, Washington DC, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, 19.04.2012, <http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=4199> (15.1.2014).


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