Clinging to lost-homeland identity actively blocked expellee assimilation

Evidence

In 1951, during a West German Social Science Congress on ‘Refugees’, the sociologist Theodor Geiger (a socialist of Jewish origin who had been – like Brandt – forced into Scandinavian exile in 1933 by the Nazi regime) claimed that the success or failure of integration did not only depend on economic, but also on psychological factors; he considered the latter to retard integration and thus comdemned them as irrational. Geiger demanded that the German refugee policy should turn to the future, stating ‘Against the romanticism of the old home you should directly go into battle, because the clustering into homeland groups insulated the displaced and prevented them almost from assimilation.’ — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 381

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Diaspora identities are positional political choices, not primordial ascriptions — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 332; ‘Expellee’ as a political label was highly adaptable and did not track actual origin — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 752; Expellee memory culture aimed to transmit identity against assimilation — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 807 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Diaspora identities are positional political choices, not primordial ascriptions #responds-to (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 332