Report: Vienna workshop „Telling People Apart: Distinguishing, Categorizing and Representing Displaced Persons and Refugees between Europe and Asia in the Twentieth Century”, 15.11. 2024 – by Pauli Aro
Global and social distinctions between people are subject to historical change. After the collapse of the Nazi regime and the Japanese Empire in 1945, new categories emerged based on people’s wartime mobility and violence endured. Members of the Collaborative Research Center “Human Differentiation” in Mainz, the ERC research group “GLORE – Global Resettlement Regimes” and the FWF team “Norms, Regulations and Refugee Agency“ (both at Vienna) presented and discussed their research, seeking to differentiate and contextualise the distinctions between various post-World War II refugee groups during the workshop „Telling People Apart: Distinguishing, Categorizing and Representing Displaced Persons and Refugees between Europe and Asia in the Twentieth Century”, jointly organised by Anne Friedrichs (Mainz / Munich) and Kerstin von Lingen (Vienna).
Conveying at the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, this engaging workshop offered important presentations about the negotiations behind the categorisation of postwar Displaced Persons. Johannes Glack (Vienna), for example, discussed the IRO’s rehabilitation program for DPs with disabilities, emphasising the role that norms about working capacities had in shaping rehabilitation programs. Pauli Aro (Vienna) outlined French efforts to recruit German expellees from the Banat region in Southeastern Europe as labour migrants. Lena Christoph (Vienna) presented her findings on US and IRO efforts to select Russian refugees in the Philippines for resettlement to the United Stated in 1950-51. Jiayi Tao (Vienna) confronted us with the ambiguous place held by Korean civilians in postwar China: After the collapse of the Japanese Empire, they were no longer imperial subjects, yet neither were they considered to be Korean citizens.
Other presenters furthermore emphasised that not only refugee groups were constructed but that through the DP politics, various actors hoped to give prominence to specific visions of society. Marina Perez de Arcos (Oxford), for example, provided important insights into the immediate impact and the long-term consequences of the relief organisation CARE’s operation in Austria during the early Cold War. Sarah Grandke (Regensburg / Canberra) highlighted the role of Polish and Ukrainian DPs as Memory Activists in refugee camps in Western Germany and Austria and how they erected some of the first Concentration Camp memorials after World War II.
In her closing session, Anne Friedrichs (Mainz / Munich) encouraged a discussion of her future research project on the transition from European refugees to post-Imperial people. While badly hit by the flu season with a couple of planned presentations cancelled last minute, this workshop was a fruitful experience for all participants, encouraging us to exchange and challenge important ideas and offered new insights and frequently unexpected similarities or connections between the various projects.
