Performing Germanness: German Immigrant Identity in South Florida

GC140, Modesto A. Maidique Campus, Florida International University

South Florida continues to be a major tourist, business, and settlement destination for Germans to the U.S. since WWII. There are numerous German cultural institutions, including a German embassy, which supports many local cultural events, both in the German community and in other communities like the Jewish community. Most research on German immigrants to the U.S. is historical and focused on the major German migration wave of the 19th century, leaving the lack of research on recent immigrant populations from Germany recognized as a gap in the immigration literature (Gans 2014). Post-WII German identity is a complicated entanglement of historical negotiations and migrations, of pride and shame, with traces of post-colonial and diasporic identity formation centered around the concept of a defeated and occupied ‘evil’ Other. The research will assess how recent German immigrants have assimilated and perform their ethnic identity in South Florida where there are few old-stock German-American communities and a large Jewish population.