Universität Wien

070280 SE BA-Seminar - Migration and business, 19th to 21st centuries (2023W)

10.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 7 - Geschichte
Continuous assessment of course work

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: German

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Tuesday 10.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 17.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 24.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 31.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 07.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 14.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 21.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 28.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 05.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 12.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 09.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 16.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 23.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00
  • Tuesday 30.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Seminarraum 5, Kolingasse 14-16, EG00

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Modern business implies the transregional and international mobility of people, capital, and knowledge. Nevertheless, business and migration history have developed as largely separate fields of research. The seminar will discuss links between them from the perspectives of economic, social, and cultural history.

Abstract:
In the 19th century, immigrant technicians and entrepreneurs were of crucial importance for industrialization just as the workforce of factories did not grow out of the local soil but implied migratory movements, both temporary and long-term. Today it is broadly accepted that high-tech industries require highly skilled immigrants and that mobile elites are needed to steer internationally active companies, export and direct investment. Below the management level, however, the mobility of people for gainful employment was and is much more often discussed as a problem of "labour migration" or "economic migration". In the second half of the 20th century, "guest workers" are the best-known example of migrations that were supposed to benefit economic growth but leave the receiving societies unchanged. Media love success stories of immigrants who made it big as entrepreneurs, but when migrant communities show entrepreneurship in craft and small trade, groups who feel they have native rights often complain of a foreign “invasion". Entrepreneurial migrant networks have frequently been regarded with suspicion. Jewish peddlers as well as the Rothschild were staples of anti-Semitic propaganda.
Thematic fields:
- entrepreneurial biographies and migration/elite mobilities
- Business history and labour migration
- Export/import/trade – mobility of people and goods
- Foreign investment and mobilities/migration
- Migrant communities and networks as the basis of entrepreneurial activity
- xenophobia, propaganda, conspiracy myths against ‘foreigners' and their enterprises

Assessment and permitted materials

The main goal of the course is completing a BA thesis.
-) Formulation of guiding questions and hypotheses,
-) placing the topic in the research field, deciding on sources and methods, drawing up a work plan and implementing the research work in the defined period of time.
Appropriate written assignments will pave the way to the final thesis:
1. formulation of a research topic,
2. review of secondary literature,
3. abstract + annotated bibliography.
Students will be asked to form working groups to support each other through peer feedback.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

The submission of the BA thesis is a prerequisite for a positive grade.
Grading is based on assignments during the semester (30%), seminar participation and presentation of research (20%) and the BA thesis (50%).
The BA thesis shows that the student is able to independently read into a topic, conduct research and write a text that makes a coherent argument.

Examination topics

Continuous assessment, attendance and participation, oral presentation, seminar paper (ca. 65.000 characters).
For further information see: https://gonline.univie.ac.at/wissenschaftliches-arbeiten/universitaere-arbeiten/

Reading list

Online verfügbar (DOI in u:search kopieren!):
Marten Boon, Business Enterprise and Globalization: Towards a Transnational Business History, Business History Review 91, Nr. 3 (ed.2017) 511–535, doi:10.1017/S0007680517001015.
Hartmut Berghoff, Andreas Fahrmeir, Unternehmer und Migration. Einleitung, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 58, Nr. 2 (01.10.2013) 141–148, doi: 10.1515/zug-2013-0202. (Einleitung zu einem Themenheft der Zeitschrift!)
Sarah Kunz, Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration Scholarship, Geography Compass 10, Nr. 3 (2016) 89–101, doi: 10.1111/gec3.12253
Jan Rath and Veronique Schutjens, Migrant Entrepreneurship. Self-employment as strategy of economic incorporation. In: Anna Triandafyllidou (Hg.), Routledged Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies (2. Auflage, Abingdon/New York 2023) 126–135, doi: 10.4324/9781003194316
Ursula Seeber, Veronika Zwerger, Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hg.), "Kometen des Geldes". Ökonomie und Exil (= Exilforschung. Ein Internationales Jahrbuch 30, München 2012), doi: 10.1515/9783110780086

Weitere Literatur:
Barbara Maria Lemberger, Migration und Mittelschicht: Eine Ethnografie sozialer Mobilität (Frankfurt am Main/New York 2019)
Jan L. Logemann: Engineered to Sell. European Emigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism (London 2019)
Maren Möhring, Fremdes Essen. Die Geschichte der ausländischen Gastronomie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (München 2012)
Martin Münzel, Die jüdischen Mitglieder der deutschen Wirtschaftselite 1927–1955. Verdrängung, Emigration, Rückkehr, Paderborn 2006

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Mo 09.10.2023 21:07