Migration is a natural part of living systems, and human history is no exception. Yet it remains one of the most debated public issues of our time.
Both people and borders move. Who is allowed to move, and who is granted rights, lies at the heart of how nations define belonging. In Germany and the United States alike, these debates have been deeply intertwined with evolving ideas of race and ethnicity.
These timelines trace how citizenship and belonging have been constructed, challenged, and redefined through laws, social movements, global events, and cultural works — and how those histories continue to shape the present.
Published in 1959, Paule Marshall’s ,[object Object],, Brownstones tells the coming-of-age story of second-generation immigrant, Selina Boyce, who struggles to forge an identity that reconciles her Bajan roots and American surroundings. Set in Brooklyn, New York during the Great Depression and World War II, the novel depicts the efforts of Selina and her parents to overcome poverty and surmount racism. Marshall’s novel draws attention to the roughly 300,000 individuals who fled plantation colonies in the Southern Americas during the first decades of the twentieth century for the United States.
