Where do we come from? Answers to the question can be found in the map ... Niklas will tell you soon what he sees in the map.
Alright, here comes my text:
Our map by ZeeMaps shows the migration of the four schools from Poland, France, Ukraine and Germany. United over the Internet, we tried to illustrate the migration history of us, our parents and their parents, our grandparents. Different colors show different schools and generations. Every school has a flag marker: Orange for the Germans, fuscia (pink) for Melitopol, green pour les Française and finally, blue for the Polish team. Every nation also has colors for the markers for individual students. To make things easier, the colors are shades from the original school colors. That leaves us Yellow for us students in Berlin, burgundy for the Ukraine, olive for our French mates and light blue for Jerzykowo.
Now, as we have been working on this map for over three months, many markers have been added and the connections have already been analyzed in our brainstorming padlet wall, in the mind map, and several texts the German team did in their history lesson. My job now is to incorporate all these thoughts into this text to display our opinions on the map.
When you first look at the map, the first thing which strikes your eye is that about 90% of all markers are set in Europe. So, obviously, you would zoom in and start with the viewing tour there. Arriving in Europe, there is plenty to see. Remarkably, none of the Polish markers leaves Polish borders. All are set in Poland, so that means that all families of our polish mates have lived in Poland for at least two generations. Next to Poland, there are the markers from Ukraine. They are the complete opposite of Poland: I’ve done the math and came to the conclusion that there are more Ukrainian markers outside of Ukraine than inside Ukraine! These markers are scattered all over East Europe and Russia. Why is that? Back in 1990, the whole area of today’s Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus was under the control of the UDSSR, the predecessor of today’s Russia. So, back then, all those markers were in one country. But in 1991, when the UDSSR was dissolved, new state borders were formed and the families were suddenly separated trough borders. Some may have moved within the former UDSSR and ended up in Ukraine, while their ancestors came from today’s Russia or Kazakhstan.
Moving west, we have the French markers. There are also some outliers, but the majority of the markers sits in France. One of Cassandras ancestors comes from the small French island Martinique, so they probably emigrated to France for better surrounding situation (Jobs, education, etc.). One special marker is set in Kentucky, USA. Thomas’ marker is located in Morocco. As far as my research is correct (Wikipedia!), Morocco was once under French administration until it became independent in 1956. Also, Morocco has a high unemployment, especially in the young generations, which leads to emigration into other countries with better perspectives.
The last country remaining is Germany. As far as I can see, Germany has the most amount of markers set outside of the country. This could be immigration into Germany, but also emigration from Jews who fled from Nazi-Germany into all kinds of countries.
Almost every part of the world has a German marker. We have the USA (also with my markers), South America, Southern Africa, Turkey, India and Malaysia and the Philippines. The only continents who are not represented are Australia and Antarctica. As I said, I believe that these markers are mostly Jews or other minorities that feared persecution from Hitler’s Regime and searched for asylum. Nowadays, as the Nazis are defeated and Germany is under democratic control again, the children of these refugees now move back to Germany for better job situations or so. I don’t know if I am guessing right now, but if not, tell me your history!
But no matter where we come from, we are all Europeans.
I hope you liked this comment, and I’m looking forward to meet you in the future!
Niklas
The conclusions of Polish students:
People that live in Europe are from all around the world. In project, there are four countries. German and French students are from almost every continent. I think their families have immigrated to these countries mostly because of very high life quality there. Specially Germany is a country which attract a lot of people from abroud because of hight living standart. Nowadays, a lot of refugees migrate to these countries, too. Immigrants in France usually comes from the countries which were French colony in the past, so they speak French and know French culture. It is easier for them to assimilate in France then in the other country. Ukrainian students are often only from old USSR terrain. Travelling within USSR was common before '89. Sometimes even the government pushed people to move to another part of USSR. In Poland, borders were closed from 1939, so we don't have a lot of people from other countries here. Polish people had limoted possibilities to immigrate , too. I think now some people migrate to Poland, because there are now good conditions here.
I think the factors which influence immigration the most are history and economy.
Kacper
As we can see on the map people move usually from the east to the west and from the south to the north. But the for most of the people the distance is not really huge. Maybe it is funny but it is true. People are situated all over the world but if we will divided earth into two parts, east and west, we will see that people live in a lots of countries but they usually don’t cross borders from east to west semisphere.
Only 5 person who lives in France aren’t from there. That is surprising becuse France has a lot of residents from another countries so we expected that the families of different roots will be more. Germany has more colorful origin. We can find there people from every continent except Australia. I think it is because our partner school is from Berlin. Berlin is very multicultural city and it is attractive for people from different countries. Usually immigrants do their first step in the new homeland in the capital. That is why the capitial cities usually have more immigrants then the province. Probably, French schools in Paris have a lot of immigrant students, too. People who live in Ukraine are from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. It is connected to their history. In the past these countries were one country - the Soviet Union. But now take a look at Poland. They have never migrate to other country. Why? It’s an effect of polish partition and the years of communistic system. People from there cannot migrate to other country because of it. We have tried to explained it in our video presentation. But it is also becuse we are school in the countryside. In big cities in Poland there are people from other countries, too but not so many like in Germany. There are some German students and Ukrainian students whose origin is in Poland. That is interesting becuse it is connected to our history and the movement of people after the Second World War. The German students comes form the part of Poland which belonged to Germany in the past and the Ukrainian students comes from the cities which in the past were Polish.
Zuza