Culture talks @ Goethe

Presented by the Goethe-Institut & CERC Migration
As part of the festival Longing/Belonging across Goethe-Institutes in North America, the Goethe-Institut Toronto is hosting a salon conversation on negotiating cultural difference and navigating belonging in diverse societies with Senator Ratna Omidvar and Prof. Naika Foroutan of the Berlin Institute on Integration and Migration. The two experts will compare transatlantic notes on countries of immigration, ambivalences and ambiguities of national identity and concepts of belonging; alliances based on ideological positioning on diversity and migration, and questions around diaspora.
Prof. Naika Foroutan is a CERC Scholar of Excellence at Toronto Metropolitan University during fall 2024. Foroutan is Professor of Social Sciences at Berlin’s Humboldt University, where she heads the department of integration studies and social policy at the Berlin Institute on Integration and Migration. She also co-directs the German Center for Integration and Migration, a research institute that provides empirical analysis on migration integration and racism. Foroutan’s research focuses on countries of immigration, their shifting identities as well as prevalent attitudes towards minorities and the impact of pluralization on norms and values. In her book The Post-migrant society: A promise of plural democracy she developed a theoretical framework for analyzing social transformations in migration-impacted societies. Her latest book is “Es wäre einmal deutsch.”
The German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), headed by Prof. Foroutan, was commissioned by the German government to develop a long-term National Discrimination and Racism Monitor. Its aim is to record and understand the extent as well as causes and consequences of racism in Germany. Initial data collection on the German population’s perception of racism has shown that there may be analytical, empirical, and phenomenological differences between Germany and North America when it comes to understanding racisms. While a CERC Scholar of Excellence, Foroutan explores the idea of "collateral racism,” entering one's life indirectly through observation or witnessing. Foroutan will also be participating in a full-day Scholar of Excellence workshop at TMU on the theme of re-centring academic leadership in migration studies, which will be a self-reflexive discussion with female scholars on how the socio-economic and political context in which they live and their own personal experiences have shaped their research and methodologies.
The Honourable Ratna Omidvar, C.M., O.Ont., is Senator for Ontario in the Senate of Canada. Ratna Omidvar is an internationally recognized voice on migration, diversity and inclusion. In 2016, she was appointed to the Senate of Canada as an independent senator for Ontario. Senator Omidvar is a Member of the Order of Canada, a Member of the Order of Ontario and a recipient of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Omidvar is the founding Executive Director and now a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Global Diversity Exchange (GDX), Ted Rogers School of Management at TMU. GDX is a think-and-do tank on diversity, migration and inclusion that connects local experience and ideas with global networks. It is dedicated to building a community of international leaders who see prosperity in migration. Previously, she was the President of Maytree, where she played a lead role in local, national and international efforts to promote the integration of immigrants. Omidvar, who had studied and taught German at the Goethe-Institut New Delhi, was also a speaker at the 2016 GOETHE FILMS series “A Long Way: Europe between refuge and fortress” at the TIFF Lightbox.
Part of the Goethe-Institut focus Longing/Belonging

TMU CERC in Migration and Integration

Naika Foroutan @ TMU

Ratna Omidvar - Independent Senator for Ontario, Senate of Canada

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Goethe-Institut Toronto, 100 University Avenue, Toronto, Canada