European refugees between South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Self- and external categorisations in contested spaces of the twentieth century (E05 (ehem.B05))

• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442261292

This project examines the renegotiation of the relationship between territories and populations in the twentieth century by focusing on human differentiation and mobility and shows how self- and external categorization affected the transfer of categories and political self-understandings. Thematically, the project will focus on the history of people who fled from persecution and the Second World War to the British-ruled territories in South Asia and the Middle East and took different paths after 1945. Some remained there, while others returned or moved on. It shows how the respective mobility of these people in colonial and post-colonial context produced diverse and sometimes competing human categories (e.g. ‘European refugee’, ‘Sche'erit Hapleta’).

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1482: Studies in Human Differentiation
• Applicant Institution: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
• Project Head: Dr. Anne Friedrichs