Reinventing the Global Citizen: Afro-Asian Decolonization and the Politics of Integration in Cold War Germany, 1949-1992 Restricted; Files Only
Compton, Alexander (Summer 2024)
Abstract
Between 1949 and 1989, East and West Germany recruited tens of thousands of African and Asian men and women to study within their borders. By bringing these students to divided Germany, German organizations claimed to support the development of communities struggling for independence from European colonialism. This dissertation traces the contested process by which German institutions attempted to transform African and Asian students into loyal postcolonial subjects from the founding of two German states in 1949 to the formation of the European Union in 1992. By analyzing the ideological origins and evolution of German integration policies, the project intervenes in a historiography that has overlooked Germany’s role in postcolonial worldmaking due to the country’s early decolonization in 1919. In doing so, the dissertation also challenges assumptions about Germany’s role in postwar histories of race, migration, and multiculturalism. Long before diversity became permanent in the eyes of the state, my dissertation argues, postwar German institutions used integration policies to control the activities of racial “others” and to reconcile the promises of global citizenship with the entangled anxieties unleashed by the Cold War and Afro-Asian decolonization. By examining how both German states pulled on a shared past and European alliances when developing their integration policies, this dissertation also contributes to scholarship challenging the assumption that capitalist and socialist states developed along radically different paths. Instead, the project considers postwar Germany as an entangled history and shows how both German states adopted strikingly similar approaches to integration and cultural othering prior to the multiculturalism debates of the 1980s. The project also historicizes integration as a contested political and legal concept. From the 1950s, the dissertation argues, German institutions promoted temporary integration into divided German society as a tool for teaching African and Asian students how to use their human rights “rationally.” In turn, students of color appropriated the language of integration to demand equal rights as members of the global academic community, as “guests,” and as human beings. The final chapters examine how debates about the integration of African and Asian students in divided Germany informed the tightening of Europe’s postcolonial border regime.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Temporary Diversity and the Politics of Integration 11
Entanglement and Progress 16
Antiracism and Multiculturalism 22
Emotions and the Family 27
National Sovereignty and the Limits of Human Rights 32
Solidarity, Resistance, and European (Post)Coloniality 37
Chapter Overview 41
Chapter 1. Race and Reconstruction: Youth Development and the Politics of Global Integration 44
Global Integration and the Short Life of West German Race Relations 48
International Contact and the Globalization of Integration 62
Conclusion 74
Chapter 2. Displaced Bodies, Damaged Cultures: Cold War Developmentalism and the Reinvention of the Global Citizen 77
Global Integration and the Transnational Politics of Care 80
Everyday Racism and the Limits of Care 91
Displaced Bodies, Damaged Cultures 104
Conclusion 119
Chapter 3. Antiracist Intimacies? Cross-Cultural Education and the Global Family 123
Cross-Cultural Education and the Politics of Intimacy 125
Mentorship between Familial Bonding and Racial Control 142
Host-Families and the Demise of Cross-Cultural Education 159
Conclusion 172
Chapter 4. Unruly Guests: African Student Defectors, International Dorms, and the Limits of Postwar Democracy 175
International Dorms and the Spatial Politics of Afro-Asian Autonomy 179
Postwar Democracy between Defection and Integration 191
Integrated Dorms and the Weaponization of Democracy 205
Conclusion 221
Chapter 5. Fear of Equality: University Representation and the Rise and Fall of Collaborative Integration 224
The Rise of the Third World and the Politics of Collaboration 227
Affective Solidarities and Collaborative Integration from Below 243
Pan-Africanism and the Downfall of Collaborative Integration in the Soviet Bloc 257
Conclusion 272
Chapter 6. Rights of Belonging: Postcolonial Mobility and the Transnational Politics of Deportation 274
Legal Resistance and the Costs of Deportation in West Germany 278
African Student Resistance and the Consolidation of Socialist Hospitality 287
Liberation through Defection? African Student Mobility and the Iron Curtain 299
Conclusion 311
Chapter 7. Rational Sovereignty: Economic Integration and the Europeanization of the Global Citizen 313
Postcolonial Sovereignty and the Rationalization of University Admissions in the FRG 319
International Labor and the Limits of European Integration in West Germany 335
Black Proletarianism and the Repeal of Visa-Free Entry in West Germany 354
Late Colonial Revolutions and the Unequal Integration of the Socialist World 376
Conclusion 389
Conclusion: Market Rationalism and the Consolidation of European Sovereignty 394
Bibliography 412
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File download under embargo until 21 August 2030 | 2024-07-19 18:52:37 -0400 | File download under embargo until 21 August 2030 |
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