School of Sociology Seminar Series: 'Framing Fortress Europe: A Literary Intervention' - Britta Jung

The next seminar in our series is by Britta Jung

'Framing Fortress Europe: A Literary Intervention' 

Thursday, 11 April, 1pm, D418, Newman Building

While mobility has always been part of human activity and can be traced back to the dispersing of archaic and modern humans across the continents some two million years ago, the advent of the modern nation-state in the 18^th and 19^th century and the rise of nationalism in the late 19^th and early 20^th century have transformed the migration process and subjected migratory flows to substantial regulation. As a result, the (migrant) Other has increasingly been framed as a threat to national security and social harmony, either in moral, social or political; or indeed in ethnic, racial or religious terms. Despite a general embrace of liberal values and the adoption of a legally binding UN-convention regarding the elimination of racial discrimination in 1969, the idea of institutionally targeting specific immigrant groups to avoid a so-called ‘race suicide’ maintains its populist appeal and resurfaces in times of crisis to this day.

In the aftermath of 9/11 – and more recently terrorist attacks in European capitals such as Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid – on the one hand, and the financial crisis and the global refugee crisis on the other hand, hitherto celebrated visions of multi-, inter- and transculturalism have become less optimistic and more guarded in recent years. Mainstream parties are divided on how to respond to the marked shift in public discourse, which is echoed in the rise nationalist movements and right-wing populist parties. After decades of publicly and diplomatically pursuing policies of both integration and inclusion vis-à-vis migrant communities, local and national government policies in Europe seem to increasingly enable nationalist discourses by banning and stigmatising migrants from the Middle East and Africa as a deviant Other. Ostensibly established (trans)national spaces, borders and boundaries are being once again put up for reconsideration, with border controls within the Schengen-Area being temporarily reintroduced and an increasing fortification of the EU’s external borders. This talk seeks to explore the way literary works engage with the Fortress Europe in its newest, post-war iteration. After all, literary works are not only representations of specific social worlds, but – more often than not – conjure up possible, idealised and/or alternative worlds which may affect the extra-literary world. They are – or can be – an important intervention.

Britta C. Jung is an IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UCD Humanities Institute. Her project ‘Contested Identities. A Comparative Study of the Migrant Experience in Contemporary German, Dutch and Irish Literature’ addresses – among other things – the urgent need to critically (re)examine the terms of the migration debate, including collective and national identity, belonging, displacement and transnationalism. Additionally, Dr Jung is currently conducting a comprehensive study on behalf of the Higher Education Authority and Léargas regarding the attitudes toward and learning experience of foreign languages in the context of Erasmus+ in Ireland.

Dr Jung’s PhD was jointly awarded by the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and the University of Limerick in November 2015. She has published extensively in the areas of German Holocaust Studies and Youth Literature. Her German-language monograph on the transnational turn of the German memory discourse was published by Vandenhoek & Ruprecht in October 2018 and a coedited volume on the literary representation of the Central and Eastern European borderlands is due for publication in summer 2019.