Seite - 12 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 2/2016

12 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Johanna Rolshoven, Joachim Schlör | Erzwungene Bewegungen und neue Ankerplätze The trend towards the increased permeability of these fields of study bears on the fact that the disciplines that have so far been commanding the topics of exile and migration—(political) history and literature studies, together with migration studies with the traditional “push-pull” explanatory model—are increasingly being challenged by a multitude of approaches brought forward by cultural studies, economics, and history of law. The complex lifeworld of the migra- tion actors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are studied in their “capillaries” with regard to their cultural signification. The histories and biographies of individuals, families, or groups “on the move” are scrutinized as sets of practices, from the preparation for a trip to its aftermath in memories. This leads to the adoption of not only transnational and postcolonial concepts, but also the study of material culture, gender studies, or the history of memories. Oya Topdemir Koçyiğit (University of Istanbul) compares the current situation to past deve- lopments, drawing a longue durée panorama of generational experiences of flight and loss that transcend the individual. She explains how differences between “own” and “other” ground the persistence of exclusion, rejection, and denunciation. Alejandro Miranda (Western Sydney University) presents the example of an artistic pro- fessional mobile practice. He uses a mix of travel and migration as the backdrop for his diffe- rentiated ethnographic study of unspectacular and everyday mobilities that create a livelihood and produce an encounter, exchange, and transformation of cultural practices and knowledge. Artur Depner and Simon Goebel (Augsburg) analyze the political rhetoric of the German parliament in the wake of the migratory events. They show how meaning is produced under the effect of global social moods. Their cultural analysis of political reference to flight and immigration offers insights into the interdependence and interactivity of language and action, and the resulting private and public reasoning over migratory issues. Christine Egger (University of Passau) re-narrates the concrete and visible effects of the 2015 migration in the German town of Passau, which more than one million refugees passed through in a single one year. Energy, empathy, engagement, and inspiration guided the city’s population. It is a city where the memories of earlier arrivals of migrants was still alive. The importance of place and the local is also present in a contribution by students. Lisa Eidenhammer and Omar Khir Alanam (University of Graz) provide a snapshot story of an encounter of an Austrian student with a Syrian refugee, the identification of disparate percepti- ons of the migratory events of 2015, and also the van attack in the city center of Graz that honed the emotional participation of the two interlocutors in different ways. Representing mobilities in movement is the aim of artist Michael Hieslmair’s and architect Michael Zinganel’s (Vienna) video animation, accompanied by a text: it shows the rise and fall of border checkpoints as a function of the modulation of migratory processes, border regimes, and seizing local opportunities. The conversation with historian Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge) allows us to listen to his long and rich engagement with historical lifeworlds and their respective logics. The historian is also challenged to find appropriate concepts and terminologies in order to provide a realistic account and interpretation of mobilities, which are much more needed at a moment like this when the overall coverage of events tends to overemphasize emotional and defensive aspects.