Beyond the Nation?

Alexander Freund

"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...