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 : Södertörns Högskola Stockholm | 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 is lecturer in history at the University of Gothenburg and in autumn 2023 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

1. Collaborative project funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies: 'Baltic Hospitality: Receiving Strangers / Providing Securityon the Northern European Littoral, ca. 1000–1900', individuel contribution: Hospitality and Securitization in Times of Cholera: Eastern European Migrants in Rotterdam and Antwerp, 1880–1914

2. Second book project: Gateways to modern womanhood? Performing gender in interwar Gothenburg and Le Havre

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

Activities

Cooperations: As part of the HERA project "Pleasurescapes", our research team is creating an exhibition that will be on display in the Hamburg City Museum in 2024.

Gateways to modern womanhood? Performing gender in interwar Gothenburg and Le Havre

World War I transformed gender relations in European societies. The interwar ‘gender revolution’ was mainly composed of legal and political reforms, changing labour markets, changes in behaviour and mediatized metropolitan images of the modern girl. Historians agree that interwar gender regimes took shape in urban contexts – yet, only big metropoles such as Paris and Berlin have been under scrutiny so far. We know very little about how gender transformations affected middle-sized, historically male-dominated port cities that were nonetheless highly exposed to international trends. Being less under the sway of national elites than capital cities and home to a fluctuating population, port cities have been approached as agents of cultural transformation. The project studies the conflictual ways in which gender was renegotiated through bodily performances in the urban spaces of interwar Gothenburg and Le Havre. The parallel focus on urban life in Gothenburg and Le Havre stresses differences and similarities as to the reshuffling of gender relations between a previously neutral country where women became politically enfranchised, and a previously warring country where women remained unenfranchised. The parallel approach captures similarities and variances between European cities that often tend to be overlooked for the benefit of generalizing statements about ‘the urban experience’. Studying gender performances in interwar port cities promises three new historical insights: - The focus on port cities allows to trace the ambiguities and resistances inherent to the process of fluctuating gender relations that previous studies on metropolitan culture tend to dissimulate. - Analysing how port city residents appropriated and interacted with metropolitan images of changing gender identities illuminates the spatially situated character of the interwar and international ‘gender revolution.’ - Given their different national contexts, the parallel study of Gothenburg and Le Havre also re-examines notions of port cities’ shared character.

Baltic Hospitality: Receiving Strangers/Providing Security on the Northern European Littorial, ca. 1000-1900

The purpose of this project is to determine how the tension between hospitality and hostility has been practically resolved by reception or rejection of strangers ca.1000–1900. The (proto-)urban areas and harbors of the Baltic and North Sea coasts have a historical legacy of being spaces of connectivity and intercultural encounters. Social orders established at the land/sea intersection, susceptible for disruption by the arrival of others, offers a unique opportunity to study the contingencies of in/hospitality (Schmitt 1950, 1981, Derrida 2001). We will identify continuities and changes in how strangers were defined and what security measures were taken towards them by local communities in this region. In order to enable comparisons of reception/rejection of strangers we will develop new conceptual tools bridging over the nationally devised categories of refugee, migrant, displaced person and their pre-modern counterparts. We argue that a flexible yet consistent focus on host-guest relations is better apt for analyzing pre- and early state means of securitization in a transhistorical perspective.

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

‘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: Urban Community and Public Services, c. 1850–1940, Routledge, forthcoming.

Christina Reimann, ‘Situating female migrants in interwar Gothenburg’, Immigrants & Minorities, accepted for publication.

‘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.