Refugee Crises, Old And New with Dr Daniel Gordon
From Afghanistan to Calais, refugees are today’s news, and all too often dehumanised. But are current refugee movements, and public responses to them, as unprecedented as media coverage suggests? This interactive session will give you a taster of the BA History option Migration and Mobility in Contemporary European History, by examining the history of refugee crises from 1939 to the present day. From Spain in 1939 to Hungary in 1956, from Berlin in 1961 to Marseilles in 1962, from Kenya in 1968 via Bosnia in 1992 to Syria in 2015, together we will ask why some refugee movements have produced moral panics in Western Europe while others have not.
We’ll also investigate how past refugee crises are remembered, and sometimes forgotten, in the present, by looking at how the heritage industry has attempted to memorialise sites of refugee arrival, using illustrated examples from France and the UK. This session aims to develop your skills as critically engaged citizens of tomorrow, at the intersection between the academic study of History and its application to the real world
