The second episode of the Migration Storytelling Salon focuses on migrant struggles and international solidarity from the 1970s through the 1990s. In the 1970s, West Berlin was marked by resistance and struggles for a more just world.
Migrants were central actors in these struggles. They organized as workers and students, within urban movements. Right in the heart of Berlin, they protested for the right to stay, for better working and living conditions, for women’s rights, and for international solidarity.
But what was work in the factories like, and what was daily life in squatted houses like? What were the experiences at the immigration office? How did migrant workers, exiles, and people in solidarity organize their resistance against structural discrimination? What did it mean to build cross-border solidarity in a divided city? And how did the narratives and struggles change in the period around the fall of the Wall?
Using photos, documents, and music, eyewitnesses will share stories of migrant self-organization, including Max Welch Guerra, who arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974 as a political refugee from Chile via Italy.
You are warmly invited to bring your own mementos. Afterward, you can continue the conversation over cold drinks and snacks while looking at the items everyone has brought.
With: Max Welch Guerra | Political scientist & urban researcher Moderator: Aurora Rodonò | Stadtmuseum Berlin, Curator of Migration History
- Limited seating
- Meeting point: Schlütersaal (1st floor)
The Migration Storytelling Salon
With the “Migration Storytelling Salon,” the Stadtmuseum Berlin is launching a new, quarterly event series. In it, individuals from migrant and diaspora communities share their stories of migration and resistance.
In the spirit of storytelling and oral history, the focus is on sharing everyday stories from the perspective of migration.
The setting is informal: Participants exchange experiences and present photo albums, music, or videos that accompany their stories. Visitors are invited to bring their own objects, photos, or documents.
Upcoming Dates
Fri | Nov 7 Migration Storytelling Salon: The Wall Fell on Our Heads! The Fall of the Wall and Reunification from the Perspective of Migration.
The third installment of this event series focuses on the encounters between migrants from East and West after decades of the city’s division and on the “racist turn” in the 1990s.
