The Transfer Project “Migration Lab Germany”
The transfer project “Migration Lab Germany” of the Center for Educational Integration at the University of Hildesheim addresses the question of how learning about migration, flight and other topics of the migration society takes place in Germany.
The project team of the Center for Educational Integration cooperates in the transfer project “Migration Lab Germany” with museums, schools, migrant organizations, memorial sites, and cultural and political education projects. The cooperation partners include the House of Immigration in Cologne, the German Emigration House in Bremerhaven, the House of the Wannsee Conference, the Foundation for Digital Play Culture, the National Socialist Documentation Center in Munich, the Campus Rütli School in Berlin, the Each-One-Teach-One initiative, the Neuengamme Memorial in Hamburg and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.
15 innovative projects are selected nationwide
The Migration Lab project team provides scientific support and consultations to the projects and partner organizations.
The transfer project initiated by Prof. Dr. Viola B. Georgi is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration, the Federal Agency for Civic Education and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future. The project team at the University of Hildesheim is working closely with the US non-profit organization “Re-Imagining Migration” as well as the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge and the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
Migration Lab as a laboratory exceeding institutional and conceptual boundaries.
“The focus is on learning about and dealing with migration-related social phenomena. Learning about migration, its causes, social and individual consequences, takes place primarily in cultural, political and historical education in schools, extracurricular educational projects, museums, theaters and also in memorial sites. Each of these places of learning and encounter stands for potentials and limitations in dealing with the topic, has specific frameworks, approaches, methods and learning arrangements. History lessons, extracurricular youth education, memorial projects or youth theater productions can therefore each make a special contribution to learning about migration,” says Prof. Dr. Viola B. Georgi. Georgi is director of the Center for Educational Integration – Diversity and Democracy in Migration Societies at the University of Hildesheim.
“The institutions and projects we have brought together in the project are rarely in a theoretical nor in a practical exchange with each other. The project ‘Migration Lab Germany’ opens up a kind of laboratory – a space for reflexion, exploration and encounter – that transcends institutional and conceptual boundaries and brings together actors who explore and work on the topic of migration with children, adolescents and (young) adults in different ways. Furthermore, a web archive with educational materials and portfolios of model projects is to be developed and successively expanded nationally and internationally. We are particularly pleased about the upcoming cooperation with us institutions, projects and universities,” says Georgi.