Forced Migration and Intergenerational Relations. Adolescent Transformations of Parental Experiences of Forced Migration and Remigration as Exemplified by the “GDR Children of Namibia”.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Witte
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 515408579

This research project studies the intergenerational relations of a hitherto under-researched group, the so-called “GDR children of Namibia”. The study thus closes a gap in research, since a transgenerational approach to forced migration in the context ‘GDR/Namibia’ has not been established so far. With its focus on biographical representations of adolescent descendants of the “GDR children”, which grow up in Namibia, the study generates theoretical as well as methodical-methodological knowledge, that extends the current research on migration and adolescence from a postcolonial perspective. Furthermore, the analysis meets the desideratum of a transgenerationally-oriented research on coping with GDR experiences and those of German reunification in the context of (re)migration by reconstructing transformations of the experiences of the so-called “Dritte Generation Ost" (“Third Generation East”) by the children of these remigrated “Wendekinder” (children of the German reunification who were born in the GDR). The term “GDR children of Namibia” refers to a group of roughly 430 people who, under the aegis of a solidarity project between the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) between 1979 and 1989, were taken from Namibian refugee camps in Angola and Zambia and sent to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The purpose of this program was to safeguard these children from the dangers posed by the war of liberation being fought against the occupying forces of South Africa, and to raise them to become the elite of a free Namibia in the future. Following Namibian independence and the reunification of Germany in 1990, they were returned, unprepared, to Namibia. These biographies have been researched, based on 30 biographic-narrative interviews. It shows, that the forced migration to the GDR, the socialisation there as well as the experience of German reunification and their remigration to Namibia continue to affect the biographies of those concerned until today. The narrations of the interviewed “GDR-children”, of which many are parents now, mark the intergenerational importance of forced migration experiences in the relations with their adolescent children. As a result of the transmission of the parental experiences and in the light of the radical social transformations, specific biographical demands of transformation and neoformation – along the categories of education, parenting, belonging, gender, family, friendship and collectivity as well as political socialisation – become apparent for the adolescents in postcolonial Namibia. The study elaborates for the first time how these parental experiences are transformed biographically by the adolescent children.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Namibia
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Sarala Krishnamurthy; Professorin Dr. Caroline Schmitt