Commenting on the judicial scandal of the conviction of Mohammed Yousry, the official translator for the mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing, Emily Apter argues that translators occupy an increasingly dangerous position in the post-9/11 world. Through her analysis of the trial and the accompanying controversy on translation, she shows that translators are assumed to have divided loyalties and the ability to move incognito among language communities that touch but do not cohere. Hence, Yousry’s case reveals how translators become scapegoats in the culture and language wars over migration and Islam in the aftermath of 9/11. In accordance with her recently published book The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature, she pleads for an “English Plus” movement that might thwart the drive to monolingualization, cultural isolationism, and political unilateralism, which characterize current policies of the United States.

Author(s): El-Tayeb, Fatima | Abstract: My aim in this brief article is to introduce a new international and interdisciplinary project on Black Europe which could be of some interest to German Studies for a variety of reasons that will hopefully become evident. In doing so, though, I would like to focus initially on one particular aspect of this project; it is, incidentally, the one that might seem less than fascinating at first sight: the attempt to re-discover and re-contextualize archival materials on the black presence in Europe. My central argument here is that a rethinking of the uses of archives could open up a number of exciting possibilities going beyond this particular subject: in making history usable and relevant for people who would not normally go near an archive, for students who have abilities in information processing their teachers often fail to tap into, for activists linking worldwide through internet-based networks, and for a new reading of existing but largely unknown or ignored materials.

Author(s): Glick Schiller, Nina; Nieswand, Boris; Schlee, Gunther; Darieva, Tsypylma; Yalcin-Heckmann, Lale; Foszto, Laszlo | Abstract: In this essay we examine five different pathways by which migrants with whom we have worked are incorporating themselves within Germany. Our approach to incorporation brings into the literature on migration the insight that social integration can take place within a process of social and cultural differentiation, a point that has been developed in work on ethnic identity in Africa and in US studies of multiculturalism and cultural citizenship (Schlee and Horstmann 2001; Flores and Benmayor 2000). However, rather than focusing on cultural and identity processes, we begin with an interest in the context of social relations out of which cultural similarities and differences are defined.To differentiate our definition from the dominant discourse about migrant integration, we will speak of pathways of incorporation. In examining these pathways of incorporation, we note that migrants often live their lives in more than one nation-state at the same time. In four of the five pathways we describe, migrants become connected through social linkages and various forms of identity to Germany that at the same time connect them to organisations, communication systems or identities that extend transnationally (Glick Schiller, 2004).All five pathways challenge ways in which migrant integration is commonly conceptualised within German discourse and public policy about Auslander. The fact that there are five pathways identified from our research highlights the weakness of past migration studies that tend to cast all patterns of migration settlement into the same mode arguing for a single model of migrant integration.The five pathways we identify through our research can be called (1) Christian modernists, (2) local public foreigners, (3) familial networks, (4) vernacular cosmopolitanisms and (5) regional cosmopolitanism. In describing these five modes of incorporation, we draw from Boris Nieswand’s ethnography of Ghanaians in Berlin, Nina Glick Schiller and Evangelos Karagiannis’ ethnography of Nigerians and Congolese in Halle/Saale, Gunther and Isir Schlee’s data on Somali in Germany, Holland and England, and studies of German Turkish media in Berlin by Ayse Caglar and of Russian media in Berlin by Tsypylma Darieva. Lale Yalcin-Heckman contributes comparative points drawn from her research on Muslim labour migrants’ families and associations in Germany and France.

November is the time after October, a time when revolution seems to be over and peripheral struggles have become particular, localist, and almost impossible to communicate. In November a new reactionary form of terror has taken over which abruptly breaks with the tradition of October.

In recent years the question whether Germany was or was not a country of immigration became the bone of party contention, as the governing Gerhard Schroder/Joschka Fischer coalition of Social Democrats and Greens demanded a recognition of the changing face of Germany, and Chancellor Schroder made a thorough reform of migration to and citizenship in Germany a centerpiece of his political efforts. By contrast, the Christian Democratic and Christian Socialist position papers and official party platforms stated again and again that Germany was not and could never become a classic country of immigration, because of the country’s history, geography, and social reality. This debate draws on a German historical memory that typically goes back only to the early years of the Federal Republic. Both proponents and opponents of the notion of Germany as Einwanderungsland have focused only on the past 50 years within the context of the democratic framework of the Federal Republic. The 1950s, however, may be a rather untypical period in modern German history, for by 1950 Germany (East and West) had become a fairly mono-ethnic country. A broader historical reconsideration might ultimately strengthen a demand for more reflections on the nature of the process of “integration” and for successful models of “multiculturalism.”