I attended a campus event on Wednesday January 16th, 2019 at 12:45pm in Dulles Hall. It was a lecture by Dr. Danielle Derone that focused on“Families Separated: ‘An Emotion History’ of Unaccompanied Jewish Refugee Youth, 1933-1945”. Derone shared the emotions felt by German Jewish Refugee children as they traveled to America and were placed with foster families through a migration scheme orchestrated by the German Jewish Children’s Aid (GJCA) organization. This scheme brought 1,200 German Jewish youth, all under the age of 16, to the United States to escape Nazi rule. The process consisted of parents giving up custody, the children traveling across the Atlantic Ocean, and placing them with foster families.
Derone’s lecture gave me insight into specific experiences and emotions expressed by refugees at the time. So far, in class we have not reached this level of detail in the story of migrants. We have been looking at things from a macro level in which data is reported on migrants, but not necessarily given by migrants. Their perspective seems to get lost at this level. This is the perspective I want to learn more about.
I am happy I was able to attend Derone’s lecture on “Emotional History” and Sellman’s lecture on “Representing Forced Migration” within a day of each other. I think they both provided multiple lenses with which to view migration experiences. Derone shared the feelings recorded while the Jewish youth were at sea on their way to America. Some felt scared and homesick while others were excited for new freedoms and adventure. These stories were complemented by information shared by Sellman on the association of language used to describe migration and water. Migration is often described as a flood or a wave. Sellman also focused on the role of the Mediterranean Sea in migration and the extreme danger it presents. Through their lectures, they both acknowledged the water as a pathway to opportunities and freedoms, while also representing uncertainty, loss, and danger.
Derone and Sellman also challenged romanticism and assumptions. Derone challenged the notion that all of the Jewish refugees wanted to be reunited with their families. This was false because some teenagers preferred the freedom they experienced when they were separated from controlling or dis-functional family members. Other teenagers stayed with foster families because of access to resources like better educational opportunities. Additionally, Derone challenged the assumption that the Jewish children will want to be in the United States. In fact, many foster families expected to receive a child who was openly grateful and happy to be with them. Instead, some foster families received children who wanted to return to Germany or obtain visas for the rest of their family. The key thing to take away from these corrections are that the circumstances are complicated and each child has unique emotional reactions that do not always match our assumptions.
Sellman challenged the romanticism of exiled migrants in literature. The literature tends to portray them as brave, intellectual, and worldly. The exiled migrants are seen as independent and in control of their circumstances. In reality this is not the case for the majority of migrants who have been forced to flee because of economic hardship and political turmoil. Migration is not usually independent, it is generally a mass movement of people.
Derone and Sellman spent most of their time detailing different parts of a migrant’s journey. Derone focused on what happened once the migrants reached their place of refuge and Sellman focused on the path taken to get there. Derone explained the feelings Jewish children experienced when they settled in the United States. They had varying levels of emotional detachment and drive to take advantage of all the opportunities presented to them. Sellman explained the pain, dread, and fear felt as migrants attempted to cross the barrier and seek refuge.
In conclusion, the lectures by Derode and Sellman introduced me to unique ways of looking at migration. I am excited to continue gathering and comparing additional perspectives on this topic. In addition, I hope that during the Politics of Immigration course I am taking this semester I will have the chance to examine the relationship between statistics and individual stories through micro and macro approaches to the issue.