Rooted in two Countries? Migrant Heritage, emplacement and the ‘Canon van Nederland’.

Rooted in two Countries? Migrant Heritage, emplacement and the ‘Canon van Nederland’. In the cultural heritage sector theorizing emplacement is considered to be vital for identity: “people need to anchor there identity concretely to a location (emplacement)” (Grever&Van Boxtel, 2014). The question is up to what extent this can also be true for migrants, whose roots are in two different places and who have a physical distance with regards to their motherland and part of their memories. In a study on ‘national histories’ as a incentive for identification and (private and collective) identiti... Mehr ...

Verfasser: van Faassen, M.
Hoekstra, F.G.
Dokumenttyp: conferenceObject
Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27144377
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://pure.knaw.nl/portal/en/publications/d58f7c0e-fed7-4d9e-ac7b-635aa05b2aed

Rooted in two Countries? Migrant Heritage, emplacement and the ‘Canon van Nederland’. In the cultural heritage sector theorizing emplacement is considered to be vital for identity: “people need to anchor there identity concretely to a location (emplacement)” (Grever&Van Boxtel, 2014). The question is up to what extent this can also be true for migrants, whose roots are in two different places and who have a physical distance with regards to their motherland and part of their memories. In a study on ‘national histories’ as a incentive for identification and (private and collective) identities formation the importance of the history of the country of origin and the history of the country of residence was explored for high school students with a migratory background. Although the history of the country of origin was seen as important, the history of the own family scored even higher (Grever&Ribbens, 2007). In today’s migration debate in the Netherlands however, remarkably little attention is paid to the fact that in the past large groups of Dutch nationals were also migrants, who had to find their way in societies that were unfamiliar to them and often abide by their own ethnic identity. To depolarize the debate and to preserve the scattered migrant heritage, the Huygens ING is constructing a linked (open) dataset consisting of a collective biography of migrant(family) live events. The project’s primary research focus is on a use case of Dutch migrant families who migrated to Australia between 1949-1992. It could serve as a model for migrant data worldwide, both as a source of identity for migrant communities and as a resource for cross-disciplinary research for academia. In this paper we will elaborate on the fact that migrant heritage is both international and multi-facetted, in which official papers and registration systems complement more personal letters, photos and other memorabilia. All collections throw their own light on part of the migrant history, but individual migrants are usually aware of only ...