MIGRATION & MEMORY
How to Commemorate History in Diverse Societies?

Memory has become a powerful historical currency. Representing and writing history has also become a question of commemoration and the politics of memory. In most cases, debates about memory still take place within the framework of nation states or state-like entities such as the European Union. Migration cuts through these national boundaries and categories. Thus, a new dimension opens up by weaving migration into the tapestry of national commemoration..

The interviews with the artists started by asking the interviewee about his or her personal places of commemoration when it comes to migration. Then the question was raised if and how migration has made it into the collective imagination, i.e. if there were public and collective places of remembering migration. This concept borrowed on the French historian Pierre Nora’s idea about lieux de mémoire or places of commemoration. However, it applied and enlarged Nora’s nationally-framed concept to a nation-transcending force, namely processes of migration and incorporating migration into historical narratives and practices of commemoration.