NCGS Workshop and Seminar Series #2 (Virtual)

“Third-World” Refugees, Rights, and West Germany in the 1970s and 80s

Speaker: Bill Sharman (Graduate Student, Duke University, Department of History)

During the 1970s and 80s, thousands of refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia began seeking asylum in West Germany each year. Banned from working and often forced to live in camps, these so-called “Third-World” refugees became objects of police surveillance, social-

scientific knowledge, and humanitarian intervention. While scholars have examined how the West German media, state, and society responded to refugee “crises,” this talk uses archival sources, documentary films, poetry, and oral histories to illuminate the intellectual and social worlds of refugees themselves. Far from being passive victims in need of “help,” many non-European refugees developed critiques of racism and bureaucracy, forged friendships and political alliances, and demanded justice through activism. Their assertions helped recast immigration as a matter of rights—not merely of contract labor or compassion—and altered perceptions about West Germany’s place in the post-1945 world.

Moderation: James Chappel (Duke University, Department of History)

Co-Conveners: Duke University, Department of History; UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of History