CITAS Ringvorlesung | Fit For Citizenship?: Polish Migration and the Politics of Respectability in the Early Twentieth Century (Kate Wroblewski)

The focus of my talk will be to examine how Polish labor migrants in the early twentieth century learned how to present themselves at the border as upwardly mobile, self-sufficient actors. Far from a neutral site, the border provided a venue for labor migrants to demonstrate their fitness for belonging by adopting the trappings of respectability and showcasing their potential for self-transformation. The border thus was and continues to be a place for the performance of liberal economic values, both for the labor migrants who are hoping to showcase their fitness and for the states that police those values.

Kate Wroblewski is lecturer and assistant director of undergraduate studies in history at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. She is a specialist in nineteenth and twentieth century world history, including transatlantic and global migration, as well as questions of citizenship and law. Throughout May 2022 she is in Regensburg as a Visiting Fellow.

When?  Monday, 16 May 2022, 18:15 CET

Where?  H19, Sammelgebäude, Universität Regensburg

Die CITAS-Ringvorlesung wird organisiert in Kooperation mit dem Leibniz WissenschaftsCampus Europa und Amerika in der modernen Welt.