International Conference on Migration

The Impossible Order: Europe, Power, and the Search for a New Migration Regime

Thursday, May 11 – Saturday, May 13, 2017

Since the end of the Cold War, migration within and to Europe has changed fundamentally. As a response, the EU has developed a system that sharply distinguishes between internal freedom of movement and harsh isolation against the outside. This is far from a feasible, let alone humane, migration order. The Iron Curtain morphed into Fortress Europe, an image of similar brutality and paradoxical instability.

The conference—including panels chaired by Academy president Michael P. Steinberg and joined by Academy fellow Jane O. Newman—will address the search for a comprehensive migration regime in Europe over the last three decades.

International migration researchers, journalists, historians, artists, activists and students will discuss the contemporary  history of the search, at a historical site, the Berlin Wall Memorial. An exhibition of migrant and refugee students from Bard College Berlin and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, will frame the discussions.

The Conference is organized by the Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam, and supported by the Federal Agency for Political Education, the Andrea von Braun Foundation, and Bard College Berlin. It also cooperates with the American Academy in Berlin, the Centre Marc Bloch and the Institute for Migration and Intercultural Studies, Osnabrück.

The conference will be held in English and German, and there will be simultaneous translation.

Read the full program online.