Preliminary Programme

Historical history book analyses show that up until the 1980s, migration was not a real issue. On the contrary, teaching materials conveyed a static image in which migration or mercenary services did feature, however only appearing as exceptions or not classified in any way as migrations. The focus on the nation state which predominated in history teaching had two influences: The image of the traditional nation-state is based on a barely-moving population, which as a rule is projected backwards to an original indigenous people; movement occurs at most within the nation, which emerges outwards with a gate-keeper function. Nations tend to see themselves as a supposedly single genetic-cultural organic entity. The narrative of a stable and constant citizenry was dominant, even in the multicultural Swiss society. Migration was usually portrayed as an unnatural and problematic process. Emigration was long more or less silently ignored and sometimes regarded as a flaw, since it was difficult to reconcile with the later prosperity; migration itself was hardly seen as immigration, but at most as a seasonal influx of "guest workers", who would then return.

Highlighting the processual nature of the development of a nation-state is recent. It wasn’t until an orientation towards social history had facilitated the sensitization to this issue and only in the teaching materials since the 1990s has migration become a key topic in the classroom and from this point been considered part of social history.

This paper shows with historical references how and why migration history was effectively suppressed up until 1980. By referring to current teaching materials, it also explores the learning potential of migration history using contemporary examples. (Show less)

As recent surveys have indicated, teachers in Bulgaria rely predominantly on textbooks in their classrooms. These textbooks as institutional and institutionalized texts in the context in question are both centrally approved – the Ministry of education, science and youth evaluates and sanctions a number of textbooks for each subject each year for school boards to choose from; and written with a view to conform to state-approved curricula in the respective subjects. According to those curricula the term of “migration” is explicitly introduced in 8th grade geography textbooks and the concept and phenomenon are systematically and comprehensively discussed along the three nodes which form the “backbone” of the textbook: Europe – the Balkans – Bulgaria, which accounts for the choice to use this specific case study as an entry point to discussing the challenges to representing migration in Bulgarian textbooks.
On the one hand, being framed by the state documentation in this subject-specific area as “problematic” in the sense in which the term prescriptively occupies subtopics of “Typical problems related to population” (of Europe, the Balkans and Bulgaria), migration is listed among “aging, military and ethnic conflicts, and unemployment” thus already raising the question of how textbook representations tackle a “problematic” discourse. On the other, following the three-node model textbook representations in this case would serve to elucidate contextually-inflected representations of migration (including immigration and emigration) from the point-of-view of Bulgarian society within larger geo-political contexts (the Balkans and Europe). At the same time representations of migration and migrants feature in the textbooks for the same year in history (Middle Ages 4th-15th centuries) and Bulgarian literature, even if not explicitly stated as a topic and learning goal in the subject-specific curricula. These provide further historically and culturally inflected representations of migration, contributing to a complex – simultaneously concordant and contradictory – picture of migration as it is presented in Bulgarian textbooks. (Show less)

In a globalizing world the migration became more and more widespread, being faced by increasing segments of the population. During the last decade, temporary and permanent labor migration significantly changed the Romanian society. Millions of Romanians went to work abroad, and at the same time smaller numbers of people came from other countries to earn their living in Romania. The main question of our study is whether the Romanian educational system is prepared to face and/or interested in this two-sided reality? How do the textbooks present to the youngsters the phenomenon of migration? How are current realities linked to the historical cases of migration? Do the current textbooks overcome the bias of previous generations of textbooks against migrants and in favor of sedentary autochthonous people? The analysis will focus on the way the history and geography textbooks depict the historical aspects of migration, as well as how they tackle with the more recent features and dimensions of migration. The second part of the paper will analyze concrete attempts to implement educational policies fostering awareness on the problems of migration (e.g. the curricula for the high-school optional course: Contemporary Migrations. 20th-21st centuries. Speaking with and about migrants). (Show less)