Exhibiting migration stories in Germany: Histories, heritage, contact zones and immigration Country

Abstract

Immigration museums were invented, took root and proliferated across Australia (1986), the United States (1990) and Canada (1999)-three English settler societies, which in the twentieth century, morphed into multicultural democracies. Yet, in Europe, immigration museums have not been as widespread, with museums opened in Denmark (1997), the United Kingdom (2000), Spain, Sweden and France (2007). In Germany, while discussions and debates around the need for a national migration museum began with exhibitions mounted in Essen and Cologne in the late 1990s, and subsequent years have seen a series of major exhibits about migration, no plans to build a national immigration museum have emerged.