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.
In 1905, journalist Upton Sinclair’s fictional work, The Jungle. exposed the exploitative working and living conditions in Chicago’s meat packing plants for the mostly Polish, Slovakian, and Lithuania immigrants. There, immigrants worked long hours in dark, poorly insulated rooms with dangerous assembly-line tasks, established in order to process meat as cheaply as possible.
