Postdoctoral project
The project explores the history of air routes as escape routes. Focusing on the case of Germany, it analyzes how commercial air travel shaped refugee and asylum migration. It traces these developments from the early days of aviation and the flight from National Socialism in the 1930s to more recent South-to-North migration patterns in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The ways migrants traveled, the infrastructure they relied on, and the routes and detours they took are not peripheral to migration history—they are central to it. These routes form a distinct historical subject, particularly significant because escape routes can be a matter of life and death. At the core of the project is the question: how did the emergence of a global airborne infrastructure influence refugee movements? What opportunities, loopholes, and access routes did air travel provide? And where were its limitations? The project also explores how and why airports became sites of migration and asylum seeking, as well as places of restriction, rejection, protest, and contestation. Beyond migration and mobility history, the project seeks to bridge global and contemporary history. Its transnational and mobility-centered approach expands the often nationally focused history of flight and migration in Germany, incorporating a broader international and global context.
