„Forced Migration of Scholars and Scientists in the 20th century“

The 20th century has been named a century of forced migration. Among those who were forced to leave their countries of origin educated people have been overrepresented.
Some waves of academic refugees have been investigated more intensively than others; some got less attention up to now. The expulsion by the Nazi regime is relatively well researched but even in this case desiderata exist. The planned special issue of the OeZG is designated to a comparative perspective, at least in the collection of finally published papers (we are completely aware that we cannot expect from potential contributors to produce comparative studies themselves but we hope that everyone will try to make use of a comparative perspective at least).
The focus of the papers should be on migrants who either before or after their flight participated in scholarly work in universities or other academic environments. Explicit reference to the social history or the social structure of the educated class (what is called in German Bildungsbürgertum) is desired.

Special attention should be given to group or class characteristics of the refugees, difficulties during the process of re-establishing in foreign environments, organized help for refugees, political or any other cleavages inside the refugee populations, return after the end of the dictatorship periods of their country of origin, but also changes with regard to the research routines or programs, publication strategies, changes of habitus etc.
Potential topics:
• Expulsion of scholars and scientists during the Nazi-period in occupied European countries
• Expulsion of scholars and scientists from other European regions and/or during different periods, e.g. fascist Italy, Spain under Franco, Soviet Union and communist countries, Greece during the Regime of the Colonels, Near and Middle East
• Refugees help initiatives and/or organizations, academic self-help and donations, visiting scholarships for refugee academics, foundations and their programs for refugee academics, etc.
• Settlement of refugee academics abroad and reception of refugees’ academic work abroad
• Return and remigration after the end of the dictatorship periods

We prefer papers making use of a comparative perspective but case studies or investigations of small groups like schools of thought etc. are welcomed too.

Send abstracts before 1 May 2009 to christian.fleck@uni-graz.at. The deadline for final versions is 1 September 2009. All submitted papers will be reviewed anonymously. The special issue will appear in spring 2010.