“‘Harlem in Germany’: Race, Migration, and the American Analogy in the Federal Republic”

As West Germans discussed “difference” after 1945, they sought out a self-consciously “Western” and liberal way to discuss difference. The talk examines different examples of how US social science on race shaped policies on migration in West Germany, including how invoking “Harlem” as a racialized space shaped urban housing policy for migrants in Germany, and how a theory of child development borrowed from US social science was used to justify new restrictions on child migration.

Lauren Stokes is a historian of modern Germany, with a particular focus on migration and race in German history. Her first book, Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany, appeared with Oxford University Press in February 2022.