Why Studying Migration Matters (Jannis Panagiotidis)

In this thought-provoking conversation, Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu (RECET) and Jannis Panagiotidis (RECET) dive deep into the question of why migration — as a scholarly field and an intrinsic aspect of contemporary world — deeply matters to historians and policy makers. Panagiotidis and Nguyen Vu also explore new research avenues such as the examination of precarious Whiteness of Eastern Europeans and the importance of migrant perspectives in the debates on migration.

Jannis Panagiotidis is the Scientific Director of the Research Center for the History of Transformation. From 2014 until 2020, he was Junior Professor for Migration and Integration of Germans from Russia at the Osnabrück University Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS). At RECET, he works on a project investigating liberal global orders and freedom of movement and guides a research project on post-Soviet immigrant communities in Germany. He wrote the books: The Unchosen Ones. Diaspora, Nation, and Migration in Israel and Germany (Indiana UP, 2019) and Postsowjetische Migration in Deutschland: Eine Einführung (Beltz/Juventa, 2021).