The Strange Rise of the 'Right to Migrate' (1936-1938): Poland, the League of Nations, and the Normalization of Ethnic Unmixing

• In Event: Developmental Migration: Human Mobility, Populationist Politics, and the Transnational Engagements of the Interwar Polish Second Republic

Abstract

The mid-and late 1930s have been described as years of protectionism, autarky, and ‘deglobalization’; and yet, during this period, “the right to migrate” was elevated to the status of international doctrine. Poland particularly championed emigration as a national “right of underdeveloped countries to exist” and found support from Geneva-based international organizations who willingly situated themselves as a potential regulatory force for population transfers, but, in reality, the “migration for settlement” paradigm used the language of development and demographic equilibrium to internationalize the quest for ethnic unmixing and homogenization. This paper seeks to explain the persistence of emigration as a tool of international policymaking in the world of walls and closed borders, focusing primarily on Poland’s negotiations with the League of Nations, Nazi Germany, and Latvia when the idea of forced and planned migration was normalized (again) in bilateral relations and international diplomacy.

Author

• Małgorzata Mazurek, Columbia U