Beyond the Nation?: Immigrants' Local Lives in Transnational Cultures

Alexander Freund

Oct 2012 · University of Toronto Press

About this ebook

Beyond the Nation? explores the lives of German-Canadian immigrants between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries — from the Moravian missionaries who came to Labrador in the 1770s to the German refugees who arrived in Canada after the Second World War. Internationally renowned historians of migration — including Dirk Hoerder and the late Christiane Harzig — detail these German-Canadians' experiences of immigration by investigating their imagined communities and collective memories.

Beyond the Nation? outlines how German-Canadians invented ethnicity under Canadian expectations, and provides moving case studies of how notable immigrant groups integrated into Canadian society. Other topics explored include literary constructions of German-Canadian identity, analyses of language use among these immigrants, and aspects of their lives that can be interpreted as transcultural and gendered. Transcending the master narrative of immigration as nation building, Beyond the Nation? charts a new course for immigration studies.

About the author

Alexander Freund is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Chair in German-Canadian Studies at the University of Winnipeg.