ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Interwar Population Science and the “Right to Migrate”: How Science and International Organizations Normalized Ethnic Cleansing as a Tool of Economic Development

• In Event: Making Economies: Planning and Economic Knowledge, 1930 - 1980

English Abstract

The mid- and late 1930s are described as years of protectionism, autarky, and ‘deglobalization.’ Yet, during this time, “the right to migrate” was elevated to the status of an international doctrine. Poland, in particular, promoted emigration as a national “right of underdeveloped countries to exist,” gaining support from Geneva-based international organizations that willingly positioned themselves as potential regulators of population transfers. For example, the International Labor Organization claimed that emigration was its “true doctrine” and a legitimate solution to the problems faced by poor nations. However, in reality, the “migration for settlement” paradigm used language of development and demographic balance to internationalize the pursuit of ethnic unmixing and homogenization. This paper aims to explain why emigration persisted as a tool of international policy-making in an era of walls and closed borders. The focus will mainly be on Poland’s negotiations with the League of Nations, Nazi Germany, and Latvia, as the idea of forced and planned migration was re-normalized in bilateral relations and international diplomacy.

Author

• Malgorzata Mazurek, Columbia University