Post-Socialist Britain? Narratives of Germany and Poland in the UK Press

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A webinar with guest speaker Dr Charlotte Galpin (University of Birmingham) as part of the Global Language-based Area Studies research theme at the School of Modern Languages. Professor David Clarke, Head of the School of Modern Languages, will be the discussant during the webinar.

Abstract
This paper presents early work on the media strand of the new AHRC-funded project ‘Post-Socialist Britain? Memory, Representation and Political Identity amongst German and Polish Immigrants in the UK’. The project explores connections between collective memory and political identity in the process of migration, with a particular focus on countries with experience of state socialist rule. ‘Post-Socialist Britain?’ takes as its point of departure the growth in support for anti-immigrant, radical right and Eurosceptic parties across Europe. This phenomenon has frequently been explained in these contexts as underpinned by collective memory of authoritarianism. Yet, those who give such explanations usually assume that those remembering authoritarianism do so in their country of origin. Using the case studies of German and Polish migrants in the UK, Post-Socialist Britain? breaks out of this national mould to explore if and how memory is linked to political identity when the individual moves to a new national context.

The media strand of the project seeks to understand the discursive space in which Germans and Poles in the UK construct their political identities and how this might interact with memories of the country of origin. The public sphere is important for political identity: it is a space for democratic participation and solidarity but also a space of exclusion of marginalised groups. How far and in what way post-socialist migrants are addressed and can participate as members of the political community therefore becomes key. Using narrative frame analysis, we explore representations of German and Polish history and German and Polish migration in the most widely read online broadsheet and tabloid UK newspapers at key moments between 2014-2019. Through our analysis, we explore the extent to which memories of state socialism are mediatized in ways that take into account the UK’s diverse patterns of migration.

Biography
Dr Charlotte Galpin is Senior Lecturer in German and European Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Birmingham. She has a PhD in Political Science and International Studies and an MA in European Integration from the University of Birmingham, and a BA in French and German Studies from the University of Warwick. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Bath. In autumn term 2019/20 she held the Alfred Grosser Visiting Professorship in Civil Society Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Her research focuses on European identities, EU citizenship, Euroscepticism and the European public sphere, with a particular focus on the UK and Germany and, in her recent work, she applies gender and feminist approaches to these issues. She has published in journals including Citizenship Studies, Comparative European Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, Social Movement Studies, German Politics and Society, Journalism Practice, and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. Her monograph, The Euro Crisis and European Identities: Political and Media Discourse in Germany, Ireland and Poland, was published in 2017 with Palgrave Macmillan.

Event format
The event will take place online as a Zoom webinar and will not be recorded.

Simultaneous Translation
The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Wednesday 10 November to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

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