Joachim Baur, "Staging Migration – Staging the Nation. Imagining Community at Immigration Museums", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 341–357

Abstract

Migration and migration history have become major themes in the global museum landscape. In this article I argue that the establishment of museums of immigration can be seen as an answer to the crisis of collectively shared narratives and the heterogenization of cultural identities. By presenting immigration as the common experience shared by most members of society, museums construct a master narrative of migration and thus contribute to re-visions of a national imagined community. After pointing to a few instances where the construction of an overarching migration narrative causes problems and sketching the ways in which the museums deal with it, I conclude with advocating to overcome the ‘methodological nationalism’ in museum representations of migration history.

Published In

Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017