Dr. Christina Reimann | Associated Researcher

Mobilities, Migrations, Reconfiguration of Spaces
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, D-10117 Berlin
Email: reimann  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de Tel: +49(0) 30 / 20 93 70700

Home Institution : Universität Göteborg | Position : Postdoc researcher | Disciplines : History |

Biography

After her Master's degree in History and Political Theory at Sciences Po Paris, Christina Reimann received her PhD in 2014 at the Humboldt-University Berlin with a thesis on education reforms and constitutional change in late 19th-century Belgium, England and France. After post-stations in Marburg, Mainz and Gothenburg she is since autumn 2019 working at the University of Stockholm. Her research deals with port cities as complex spaces of accelarated social and cultural change, as portals of migrations and globalisaton processes. She focuses particularly on the cities of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Gothenburg. Since autumn 2021, Christina has been lecturer in history at the University of Gothenburg and in autumn 2023 she was a guest lecturer at the French-German campus of Sciences Po Paris in Nancy.

 

CV File
Scholarship

PhD scholarships: DFG-Graduiertenkolleg; FAZIT-Stiftung; Centre Marc Bloch

Researchtopic

- Transnational history, Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries

- History of migration 

- Gender history

- Urban history, special interest for port cities

- History of social security and welfare states

- Cultural and social history of law and constitutions    


 

Title of thesis
Schule für Verfassungsbürger? Die Bildungsligen und der Verfassungswandel des späten 19. Jahrhunderts in Belgien, England und Frankreich.
Summary of thesis

The education reform debates were part of the constitutional change in the late 19th century: With these debates, civil societies reacted to the different forms of pressure that weighed on the liberal constitutions, and at the same time contributed to the dynamics of constitutional change. How this happened and which role organized social groups such as the education leagues played in this process is the topic of this book. The study analyzes the constitutional change in the period between 1865 and 1904 as a socio-cultural process and shows how the change of the bourgeois-liberal constitutions unfolded as an interplay between emancipatory and persistent forces. To this end, the book examines the education debates in Belgium, England and France as constitutional debates and from a “constitutional culture”-perspective. The centre of study are the Belgian and French Ligues de l'enseignement, the English National Education League and the National Education Association, which significantly shaped the education debates in their respective countries. To what extent did the education leagues contribute to constitutional change with their contributions to the education debates? To what extent were they involved in the loss of legitimacy and the inertia of the constitutions? How did they solidify the exclusion mechanisms of the bourgeois-liberal constitution, and to what extent did they also contribute to overcoming them?

Institution of thesis
Humboldt-Universität Berlin
Supervisor
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Metzler; Prof. Dr. Susanne Baer, LL. M.
Projects

Second book project: Body Eclectic: Visual media, Urban Space, and Renegotiation of Gender in Interwar Port Cities

Organisation of Events

22-24 April, 2020       Baltic Hospitality, Receiving Strangers / Providing Security on the Baltic Sea Coasts, c. 1000–1900 at Södertörn University, Stockholm, with Wojtek Jezierski ,Sari Nauman and Leif Runefelt

23–24 Nov 2017         ‘Port Cities and Migration in the Modern Era’ at the Centre for European Research at the University of Gothenburg (CERGU)

1–2 Oct 2015              ‘Migrations et frontières: La construction de frontières par des pratiques administratives et sociales (des années 1880 à nos jours)’ at the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, with Irina Mützelburg and Gesine Wallem

Body Eclectic: Visual media, Urban Space, and Renegotiation of Gender in Interwar Port Cities

This project offers a spatial and practical approach to the historical question as to how gender relations changed after/because of World War One. Drawing theoretically on the performative nature of gender, and by making extensive use of visual source material, I analyse the way in which gender relations and sexual difference were (re)negotiated through bodily behaviour in urban life. Whereas public performances by women’s rights movements were ebbing, political manifestations like marches or official ceremonies, and pleasure activities like funfairs or dancing events abounded in the urban space. Women engaged in paid work outside their and other people’s homes in unprecedented numbers and, consequently, took on a stronger presence in the urban space. I argue that the increasing performativity of urban life that crystallized around political-, pleasure- and work activities, absorbed and gave expression to what Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdman has called a ‘gender conflict’: Shifting gender norms and the increasing entrance of women into previously male-exclusive domains clashed with the still gender-segregated social order, which translated into the urban space. Urban space is gendered in so far as the access to, usages, experiences and appropriations of spaces are determined by gendered categories. This project examines the extent to which the gendered order of the urban space changed over the interwar period and how this transformation process interacted with changing gender identities.

The project sets out to generate new impulses to the still ongoing debate on the extent and way in which gender relations changed after/because of World War I. Unlike previous research, this research approaches the matter from a transnational urban perspective. Further, the project shifts the historiographical focus from discourse to the embodiment of social/gender relations and their spatial anchoring. Drawing on an eclectic source corpus, I analyse people’s bodily practices in the public urban space, at political and pleasure events, at work and when simply walking the streets. I study how people stood and arranged their bodies when queuing at a brand-new rollercoaster; how they positioned themselves when watching marches or parades; what they wore and carried along when demonstrating in the streets; which body language they employed in work contexts and how, in daily urban life, they walked and stood alone, in pairs or in groups in the urban environment. Scholars have identified the flourishing interwar visual culture and mediatisation as constitutive of changing notions of femininity, masculinity and queerness. Based on these insights, I analyse city photographs and films as to their representation of both intentional performances, e. g. at official ceremonies, and unintentional performances, e. g. people’s random movements in the streets. I unravel to what extent gender was constructed and negotiated practically and spatially throughout urban spectacles and mundane urban activities.

The study unfolds around three research questions, which, on a conceptual level, shall contribute to sharpening our understanding of the mutual constitution of gender and urban space:

-           How did people in the port cities perform gender around urban spectacles and in daily life and how did these intentional and unintentional performances change over the interwar period?

-           Which were the differences and similarities in people’s bodily behaviour in political and pleasure contexts, at work and at mundane street-walking and how can we explain these variations?

-           How and to what extent did social class, sexuality, age, ability, ethnicity and religion affect the practical enactment of gender?

The project challenges the usual national and metropolitan frame for studying interwar gender relations by examining urban places that are essentially constituted by and constitutive of transnational processes: port cities. Maritime cities are characterised by rapid cultural change, receiving impulses from overseas as well as from European capitals. Interwar port cities were marked by exacerbated socio-political conflict and strong gender imaginaries centred on the masculine-connotated (port) industries and trading business, queer seafarer milieus, and female-connotated service activities, including but not limited to prostitution. To be sure, important impulses for the transformation of gender relations in the interwar period emerged from progressive feminist artistic and activist circles located mainly in the European metropoles. However, assuming that people in capital cities invariably set standards for socio-cultural change does not give sufficient credit to the complexity of gender transformation, which this project approaches via its lens on the industrial port cities of Gothenburg and Le Havre.

 

Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World. Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570–1940

September 03, 2020

Christina Reimann , Martin Öhmann (Ed.)

Edition: Routledge
Collection: Routledge Advances in Urban History
ISBN: 9781003088950

This volume explores the mutually transformative relations between migrants and port cities. Throughout the ages of sail and steam, port cities served as nodes of long-distance transmissions and exchanges. Commercial goods, people, animals, seeds, bacteria and viruses; technological and scientific knowledge and fashions all arrived in, and moved through, these microcosms of the global. Migrants made vital contributions to the construction of the urban-maritime world in terms of the built environment, the particular sociocultural milieu, and contemporary representations of these spaces. Port cities, in turn, conditioned the lives of these mobile people, be they seafarers, traders, passers-through, or people in search of a new home. By focusing on migrants—their actions and how they were acted upon—the authors seek to capture the contradictions and complexities that characterized port cities: mobility and immobility, acceptance and rejection, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, diversity and homogeneity, segregation and interaction.

The book offers a wide geographical perspective, covering port cities on three continents. Its chapters deal with agency in a widened sense, considering the activities of individuals and collectives as well as the decisive impact of sailing and steamboats, trains, the built environment, goods or microbes in shaping urban-maritime spaces.


Hors-série de la revue Trajectoires: "Pratiques de frontière"

July 21, 2017

Irina Mützelburg , Christina Reimann , Gesine Wallem


Le Hors-série n°3 (2017) de la revue en ligne Trajectoires (CIERA) vient de paraître sous le titre:

Pratiques de frontière: Contrôle et mobilité en interaction de 1870 à nos jours

Praktiken der Grenzziehung: Wechselwirkungen zwischen Kontrolle und Mobilität von 1870 bis heute

Ce numéro a été coordonné par Irina Mützelburg, Dr. Christina Reimann et Gesine Wallem. Les contributions sont le fruit du Junges Forum organisé en octobre 2015 sur le thème  « Migrations et frontières : La construction de frontières par des pratiques administratives et sociales (des années 1880 à nos jours) ». 

Accès au dossier : https://trajectoires.revues.org/2338

Contenu du numéro:

  • Irina Mützelburg, Christina Reimann et Gesine Wallem
    Pratiques de la frontière : Contrôle et mobilité en interaction de 1870 à nos jours. Introduction [Texte intégral]
  • Sarah Frenking
    Fast täglich ergehen von Seiten des Publikums Anfragen an mich, wo die Grenze sei.“ [Texte intégral]
    Die Konstruktion der deutsch-französischen Grenze vor Ort um 1900
  • Inken Bartels
    Die Externalisierung der humanitären Grenze. [Texte intégral]
    Das Beispiel der ‚Unterstützung freiwilliger Rückkehr‘ durch die IOM in Marokko
  • Aurélie Audeval
    La spatialisation des identités assignées, Marseille 1940-1942 [Texte intégral]
  • Jonathan Miaz
    Qui peut rester et qui doit partir ? [Texte intégral]
    Les frontières au prisme des usages sociaux du droit d’asile en Suisse
  • Eva Hallama
    Zur Konstituierung von Grenzen und „Anderen“. [Texte intégral]
    Seuchenmedizinische Praxis in nationalsozialistischen „Grenzentlausungslagern“
  • Jérémy Geeraert
    Les frontières à géométrie variable de la citoyenneté. Accès aux soins des migrants dans un dispositif d’assistance [Texte intégral]

Schule für Verfassungsbürger? Die Bildungsligen und der Verfassungswandel des späten 19. Jahrhunderts in Belgien, England und Frankreich

July 01, 2016

Christina Reimann

Edition: Waxmann
Collection: Historische Belgienforschung
ISBN: 978-3-8309-3476-9

Die Bildungsreformdebatten waren Teil des Verfassungswandels im späten 19. Jahrhundert: Mit diesen Debatten reagierten die bürgerlichen Gesellschaften auf den Legitimations- und Veränderungsdruck, die auf den Verfassungen lasteten, und trugen damit zugleich zur Dynamik des Verfassungswandels bei. Auf welche Weise dies geschah und welche Rolle organisierte gesellschaftliche Gruppen wie die Bildungsligen dabei spielten, ist Gegenstand dieses Bandes.

Die Autorin analysiert den Verfassungswandel für den Zeitraum zwischen 1865 und 1904 als einen sozio-kulturellen Prozess und zeigt, wie sich der Wandel der bürgerlich-liberalen Verfassung als ein Wechselspiel zwischen emanzipatorischen und beharrenden Kräften entfaltete. Dazu untersucht sie die Bildungsdebatten in Belgien, England und Frankreich als Verfassungsdebatten und aus „verfassungskultureller“ Perspektive. In den Blick genommen werden die belgische und französische Ligue de l’enseignement, die englische National Education League sowie die National Education Association, die die Debatten ihres jeweiligen Landes maßgeblich prägten. Inwiefern trugen die Bildungsligen mit ihren Beiträgen zur Bildungsdebatte zum Verfassungswandel bei? Wie verfestigten sie die Ausschlussmechanismen der bürgerlich-liberalen Verfassung, und inwiefern trugen sie auch zu ihrer Überwindung bei? Welche Rolle spielte dabei die transnationale Verflechtung der Ligen?

Mehr Information hier.

Autoreninfo

Postdoktorandin am Centre Marc Bloch und assoziierte Forscherin am deutschfranzösischen Verbundprojekt „Saisir l’Europe“, studierte Geschichte und Politische Theorie an Sciences Po Paris und an der University of Kent, Canterbury. Sie war DFG-Stipendiatin im Graduiertenkolleg „Verfassung jenseits des Staates“ der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und wurde dort 2014 promoviert. Forschungsschwerpunkte: Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte des Rechts; transnationale Geschichte Westeuropas im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Im Wintersemester 2015/16 ist sie Visiting Fellow am SFB/TRR „Dynamiken der Sicherheit. Formen der Versicherheitlichung in historischer Perspektive“ an der Philipps-Universität Marburg.


Publications

 1. Monographe

Schule für Verfassungsbürger? Die Bildungsligen und der Verfassungswandel des späten 19. Jahrhunderts in Belgien, England und Frankreich, Munster/New York: Waxmann, 2016.

 

2. Editorial work

Sari Nauman, Wojtek Jezierski, Christina Reimann, Leif Runefelt (eds), Baltic Hospitality: Receiving Strangers & Providing Security in North-Eastern Europe, c. 1000–1900, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Lisa Kosok, Paul van de Laar, Judit Vidiella Pagès, Alina L. Just, Christina Reimann and Aurelio Castro-Varela (eds), ‘Pleasurescapes on the edge. Performing modernity on urban waterfronts (1880s-1960s)’, Journal of Urban History, vol. 48, Issue 6, 2022.

Christina Reimann, Martin Öhman (eds), Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World. Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570–1940, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2020.

Irina Mützelburg, Christina Reimann, Gesine Wallem (eds), ‘Pratiques de frontière. Contrôle et mobilité en interaction de 1870 à nos jours’, Trajectoires, Special Issue 3, 2017.

 

3. Journal articles and book chapters

‘Manoeuvring Urban Spaces In-between Public and Private: Women’s Lived Experiences of Early-twentieth-century Gothenburg, Immigrants & Minorities, 42 (1) 2024, 1–28.

‘Theatre and the making of the welfare city. An urban history of Gothenburg’s performance scenes, ca. 1880–1950’, in: Magnus Linnarsson and Mats Hallenberg (eds), Nordic Welfare Cities: Negotiating Urban Citizenship since 1850, Routledge, 2024, 60–82.

‘Registrieren, Einbürgern, Unterbringen. Umgang mit Migration in Antwerpen und Rotterdam im frühen Dampfzeitalter (ca. 1880–1914), in: Sebastian Bischoff et al., Belgien, Deutschland und die ‚Anderen‘. Bilder, Diskurse und Praktiken von Diskriminierung, Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung, Münster/New York: Waxmann, 2024, 217- 228.

‘Hospitality and Securitization in Times of Cholera: Eastern European Migrants in Rotterdam and Antwerp (c.1880-1914)’, in: Nauman, Jezierski, Reimann, Runefelt (eds), Baltic Hospitality: Receiving Strangers & Providing Security in North-Eastern Europe, c. 1000–1900, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, 359-386.

W. Jezierski, S. Nauman, C. Reimann, L. Runefelt, ‘Introduction. Baltic Hospitality, 1000-1900’, in: Nauman, Jezierski, Reimann, Runefelt (eds), Baltic Hospitality: Receiving Strangers & Providing Security in North-Eastern Europe, c. 1000-1900, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, 1-29.

‘Amusement Leaves the Port: Pleasure Institutions and the Reshaping of Gothenburg’s Material and Nonmaterial Borders, 1860s-1923’, Journal of Urban History, vol. 48, Issue 6, 2022, 1199–1438.

‘”Behaviour and Morality have Remained Irreproachable, and his Commercial Reputation is Good.” Applying for Naturalisation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Rotterdam and Antwerp’, Low Countries Historical Review (BMGN) 136 (3) 2021, 3–30.

‘Die Anfänge des Sozialstaates vom Rande aus betrachtet. Soziale Sicherheit in den Hafenstädten Antwerpen und Rotterdam um 1900‘, in Bischoff et al. (eds), „Mit Belgien ist das so eine Sache". Resultate und Perspektiven der Historischen Belgienforschung, Munster/New York: Waxmann, 2021, 159–170.

‘People on Lists in Port Cities: Administrative Migration Control in Antwerp and Rotterdam (c. 1880–1914)’, Journal of Migration History 6 (2) 2020, 182 –208.

Christina Reimann, Martin Öhman, ‘Introduction’, in: Reimann, Öhman (eds), Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World. Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570–1940, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2020, 1 –16.

‘Advertising and the Rule of Law. Law in Representation of Insurance in Late 19th Century Netherlands’, in: Minale, Amorosi (eds), History of Law and Other Humanities: Views of the Legal World Across the Time, Madrid: Universidad Carlo III de Madrid, Serie de Monografías del Derecho, 2019, 457–470.

‘Soziale Sicherungssysteme als Bewältigung des Raums? Rotterdam und Antwerpen im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert’, in: Saeculum. Jahrbuch für Universalgeschichte, 68/I (2018), 61–88.

‘Putting the Rural World on the Road of Progress? Experiences of Failure by Local Activists of the Belgian Education League (c. 1865–1884)’, in: De Spiegeleer/Liberaal Archief (eds), The Civilising Offensive. Social and Educational Reform in 19th Century Belgium, Berlin: DeGruyter Oldenbourg, 2018, 103–130.

‘Multiple Sources of Law and Socio-Cultural Boundaries: Social Insurance in the Port Cities of Antwerp and Rotterdam around 1900’, in Katacevic et al. (eds), History of Legal Sources: The changing Structure of Law,Belgrade: University of Belgrade/Faculty of Law Publishing, 2018, 153–164.

‘Zwischen Verfassungskrise und Verfassungskult: Der Verfassungswandel in Belgin im späten 19. Jahrhundert’, in: Bischoff et al. (eds), „Belgium is a beautiful city“? Resultate und Perspektiven der Historischen Belgienforschung, Munster/New York: Waxmann, 2018, 43–54.

‘Die Bildungsdebatten im Wandel der bürgerlich-liberalen Verfassung in England und Belgien im späten 19. Jahrhundert‘, in: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 2/2017, 167–191.

Irina Mützelburg, Christina Reimann, Gesine Wallem, ‘Introduction: Pratiques de frontière. Contrôle et mobilité en interaction de 1870 à nos jours’, in: Trajectoires, Special Issue 3, 2017, 13p.

‘Der belgische „Schulkrieg“: Ort gesellschaftlicher Spannungslinien und transnationaler Verflechtungen’, in Bischoff et al. (eds), Belgica – terra incognita? Resultate und Perspektiven der historischen Belgienforschung im deutschsprachigen Raum, Munster/New York: Waxmann, 2016, 34–43.

‘L'hybridation des pratiques politiques européennes’, in : Charrier et al. (eds), Circulations et réseaux transnationaux en Europe (XVIII-XXe siècles). Acteurs, pratiques, modèles, Bern: Peter Lang, 2013, 117–130.

 

4. Book reviews

Ellen Debackere, Welkom in Antwerpen? Het Antwerpse vreemdelingenbeleid, 1830-1880, 2020, in: Low Countries Historical Journal (BMGN), vol. 137, 2022.

Alice Kessler-Harris, Maurizio Vaudagna (eds.), Democracy and the Welfare State. The Two Wests in the Age of Austerity, 2018, in: Francia-Recensio 2019/4.

Verena Peters, Der “germanische” Code Civil. Zur Wahrnehmung des Code Civil in den Diskussionen der deutschen Öffentlichkeit, 2018, in: H-Soz-Kult, 23/03/2019.

Peter Collin (ed.), Justice without the State within the State. Judicial Self-Regulation in the Past and Present, 2016, in: Neue Politische Literatur, 2018:1.

Brad Beaven, Karl Bell, Robert James (eds), Port Towns and Urban Cultures. International Histories of the Waterfront, c. 1700-2000, 2016, in: H-Soz-Kult, 10/08/2017.

Detlef Lehnert (ed.), Konstitutionalismus in Europa. Entwicklung und Interpretation, in: Francia-Recensio 2016/3.

Michael Fisch, Werke und Freuden. Michel Foucault – eine Biografie, in: Francia-Recensio 2015/4.