Prof. Dr. Naika Foroutan (Lecture)/Barbara Meyer, Dr. Onur Suzan Nobrega and Çığır Özyurt (Panel discussion): “Country of Immigration” as a Cultural Task

Societal identity is dealt with by language and narrative, with the tools of culture; with techniques that are very familiar to performing artists.

The people lining up in front of LAGeSo in Berlin are called “asylum seekers", "migrants" or "refugees". People who move from Brooklyn to Berlin due to the lower cost of living are "expats", people coming to Berlin from Kosovo are "economic migrants" and the people who fled Czechoslovakia in 1945 were called “displaced persons”. 

Although Germany is located centrally in Europe and people have always traveled to, from or through it, there is no strong narrative that deals constitutively with these facets of identity.

As the Associate Director of the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research, Prof. Dr. Foroutan researches these topics and demonstrates that “immigrant nation Germany” is not a question of empirical evidence but instead one of narrative and thus the task of the people who tell stories and create art.

Moderation:
Dr. Boris Vormann (John-F.-Kennedy-Institut, FU Berlin)

Participants:
Prof. Dr. Naika Foroutan (Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung, HU Berlin)
Barbara Meyer (Schlesische27)
Çıgır Özyurt (Initiative Grenzen-Los!e.V./JugendtheaterBüro Berlin)
Dr. Onur Nobrega (Medien- und Kulturwissenschaftlerin / Goldsmiths, University of London)