CANCELLED Transborder Nationhood and the Politics of Belonging in Germany and Korea

Because of the Jesusita Fire this event has been postponed until next year.
The talk addresses transborder membership politics in historical and comparative perspective, examining changing German and Korean policies towards transborder coethnics (Germans in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and Koreans in Japan and China) during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. “Ethnic Germans” or “overseas Koreans” are often treated as prepolitical, self-subsistent ethnonational entities; and the transborder membership politics of Germany and Korea have been cast as clear exemplars of ethnic nationalism. Yet transborder populations’ status as “co-ethnics” or “co-nationals” is not given by the facts of ethnic demography: it is constructed through, contested in, and contingent on representations, claims, and struggles in transborder regions.

This talk is part of the Research Focus Group on Identity series.

hm 4/28/09, 5/8/09