Museums about emigration in Europe, an antidote to the rise of the extreme right

For some years now, a review of the narratives of European museums has been taking place, in accordance with new historical research and the concerns and complaints of today's society.

A large part of these stories try to overcome Eurocentric, nationalist and colonialist visions and also those that have a bias on gender issues.

The objective of this resignification of museum spaces is to analyze the blind corners of History, often uncomfortable, in order to have a better understanding of the past and present.

Among the topics most affected by these new visions, colonizations and migrations could be highlighted.

Spain, following statements about the “decolonization” of museums by Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture, has entered European debates on the narratives of certain events of the past.

The objective is to obtain a more precise, factual and complete vision of the historical context of each moment, or, as the historian Álvarez Junco has shown on numerous occasions, to learn what to do with a dirty past, without having to renounce it.

More information

Museums in Europe and the United States confront their colonial past

This attempt to put an end to simplistic visions about the past is allowing migratory movements to be introduced into national narratives, as an essential element to understand the structure of current societies and not as a social problem, as shown by certain European political discourses.

Until a few years ago—and still today in countries like Spain—official narratives, and even those in textbooks, forgot to show the impact of migrations on the constitution of current societies.

This forgetfulness prevents us from understanding the world in which we live.

If referring to colonization is essential to understand the European 19th century and its industrial and economic boom, allusions to emigration are essential, among other things, to understand the reconstruction of the European post-war period and, in the Spanish case, the reality economic and political of the Franco regime.

All of this is causing emigration to become a leading issue in several European countries, although not always with the same objectives.

In France, last summer the Museum of the History of Immigration was reopened in the imposing Palace of the Porte Dorée, built for the international colonial exhibition of 1931. This museum highlights the economic, political and social contribution of emigration in France, without forgetting that, at different times, the society of this country also had to pack its bags for political or economic reasons.

At the same time, it allows us to reflect on how migratory flows are closely related to the economic and political situations of the countries, which turns people into subject-objects dependent on the call effect or restrictive entry policies.

The exhibition, which has a large number of period documents and photos, is organized chronologically through 11 historical milestones related to emigration from 1685 to the present.

Chronology has been, precisely, one of the most debated issues among some historians of emigration, since this concept usually refers exclusively to the contemporary era due to its connection with the emergence of citizenship and Nation-States.

One of the rooms of the Emigration Museum in the imposing Palace of the Porté Dorée, in Paris.Alamy Stock Photo

In Ireland, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum opened in 2016 in a former 19th-century industrial warehouse.

This permanent exhibition, although it also analyzes population movements in Europe, has a very different orientation and objectives from those of the French museum.

Firstly, given Irish history itself – and also the objectives of this exhibition, which will be discussed later – the museum focuses on the Irish diaspora spread throughout the world, with hardly any mention of the emigration that have received in the last century, despite the fact that 17.4% of its population is immigrants, according to UN data from 2020. Secondly, the museum is a private initiative focused fundamentally on tourism with the main objective of show Irish values ​​and culture and how its citizens maintain the link with their native country, while exporting their traditions.

This causes the concept of emigration to be confused at times with that of national identity, blurring, and even trivializing, the very meaning of emigration.

For example, Barack Obama is cited, despite not being Irish or the son of Irish, and four former presidents of Spain are even named for their relations with Ireland!

(without mentioning names).

Unlike the French museum, in this case the content is not chronologically organized, but rather thematically and the historical component only has a relevant role in the first rooms in which the emigration of the great famine (1845-1849) is discussed. among other episodes.

These two national exhibitions are just two examples of how population movements are entering national discourses, albeit with different objectives.

The temporary exhibition

Wer wir sind

in Germany, the traveling exhibition

Nous saisonniers, saisonnières

in Switzerland or the Red Star Line museum in Antwerp are other examples that, as in the case of France, try to include migrations in their national narratives.

All these representations show how Europe has been characterized throughout contemporary times by its mobility—migrations and exiles—both of workers and white-collar emigrants, without forgetting intellectuals.

This renewal of museum and social discourses is accompanied by transactional historical studies, which try to transcend national frameworks, since only in this way can society be understood in its complexity.

The incorporation of the migration story into European museums, supported by the historiography that has worked on this issue for decades, comes at a particularly important and complicated moment.

The rise of ultranationalist and xenophobic discourses means that it is currently necessary to include migrations in museum stories to show that the formation of current societies cannot be understood if migratory movements are not taken into account as explanatory elements of our culture. economy and politics.

These narratives must be done with rigor and seriousness, to avoid falling into nationalist discourses that immerse us again in the same debates and errors.

At the same time that xenophobic discourses show the need to update narratives to highlight their own contradictions, these same far-right movements turn this task into a great challenge.

Their presence in European institutions hinders the organization of public museums that rigorously analyze our migrant past.

Meanwhile, we will always have to resort to

One franc, 14 pesetas

or to

Chocolat, the true story of a man sans nom

to remember that contempt for migration is denying ourselves.

Sergio Molina

is a professor of Contemporary History at UCLM and a specialist in the history of European integration, Franco-Spanish relations and Spanish migrations to Europe in the second half of the 20th century.

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