History of World Refugee Policy, 1950-1973

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ulrich Herbert
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390729895

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

This project undertook the first empirical analyses of the history of international refugee aid after the Second World War. Its main results can be summed up as follows: Until the 1960s, the international community addressed the refugee issue as a sort of singular, transitory and exceptional emergency case, mainly limited to Europe – not a continuous world problem. An institutionalized global refugee policy only emerged gradually, between 1950 and 1970. How, why and under what circumstances did this change occur? This project elaborates on these overarching questions and is concerned with the causalgenetic explanation of how the global community developed its treatment of refugees. It analyzes how the international community tried to handle the refugee issue, and how those approaches changed after the Second World war. The projected resulted in one monography and one anthology.

Publications

• Ein vergessenes Jubiläum. Das „New York Protocol“ von 1967 jährte sich im Jahr 2017 zum fünfzigsten Mal, in: Zeitgeschichte-online, November
  Schönhagen, Jakob
  
• ‘Addis Ababa, 1969: The Convention on the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa’, in Online Atlas on the History of Humanitarianism and Human Rights, edited by Fabian Klose, Marc Palen, Johannes Paulmann, and Andrew Thompson, April
  Schönhagen, Jakob
  
• Vor dem 5. September. Die „Flüchtlingskrise“ im historischen Kontext, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 70 (2020), 30–32, S. 27-36.
  Schönhagen, Jakob & Herbert, Ulrich
  
• Ambivalentes Recht. Zur Geschichte der Genfer Flüchtlingskonvention, in: Geschichichte der Gegenwart, 11. Juli
  Schönhagen, Jakob
  
• Forum: 2015. The Refugee Crisis in Historical Perspective, in: Journal of Modern European History, ISSN 1611-8944.
  Schönhagen, Jakob
  
• Geschichte der internationalen Flüchtlingspolitik ein Forschungsbericht, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, Vol. 62, S. 401-457, ISBN 978-3-8012-4290-9.
  Schönhagen, Jakob
  
• Geschichte der internationalen Flüchtlingspolitik 1945 – 1975. Wallstein Verlag.
  Schönhagen, Jakob
  
• Migration und Migrationspolitik in Europa 1945-2020. Wallstein Verlag.
  Herbert, Ulrich & Schönhagen, Jakob