End of this page section.

Begin of page section: Contents:

Exile Caribbean

Transatlantic and interamerican migration: the example of Austrian refugees

The project examines the migration of Austrian refugees to the Caribbean region (transatlantic dimension) as well as their onward migration within the Americas (inter-American dimension) in the period from 1933 to 1955. The migrants who left Austria by 1945 are mainly Jewish refugees who sought refuge from the fascist regimes in the Caribbean. After 1945 there were also Nazis among the refugees in the Caribbean region. The fact that during the period under investigation, with the exception of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, these were exclusively British, French, Dutch - and thus European colonies or two US-associated territories - raises the question of why the Western governments, who had decided at the international refugee conference in Évian in July 1938 to stop accepting refugees from the Third Reich, did not open their Caribbean colonies to the mostly qualified European refugees, even though there was a lack of settlers in most of the colonies. For those refugees from the German Reich who managed to find refuge in the European colonies despite political (and religious) resistance, the situation worsened with the start of the war, as they were now classified as “enemy citizens” regardless of their asylum status and locked up in internment camps became. With regard to these procedures, we want to comparatively examine European and US refugee policy in the Caribbean region.

Project team:
Roberta Maierhofer, Christian Cwik, Verena Muth

Funding provider:

The preparation of the application for this third-party funded project was supported by the Faculty of Humanities at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz (Anbahnungsfinanzierung).

Contact

Center for Inter-American Studies
Elisabethstraße 59/II 8010 Graz
Phone:+43 (0)316 380 - 8213
Fax:+43 (0)316 380 - 9767

Mon-Fri 9am-5pm

Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. M.A.

Roberta Maierhofer

Phone:+43 316 380 - 8198

Please contact me via email. Thank you!

End of this page section.

Begin of page section: Additional information:

End of this page section.