America Goes Abroad. American Emigration to the European Metropolis in the 1920s and Today

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Potsdam, language: English, abstract: In this paper, I will compare the motives as well as differences and similarities of American expatriation to European cities in two different time periods. For this, the research will look at the emigrant generation of the 1920s post-war Parisian literary community and, in a second step, this community of writers will be compared to today’s American expatriates in Berlin. The research aims at illustrating how those two periods have influenced the emigrants’ decision of leaving the country and what social circumstances of the respective time period in European centers have shaped the generation’s lifestyle. The United States of America, once a country conquered, and then a nation founded, by various European nationalities, is the starting point of this paper. The century-long waves of immigration into this country give the historical justification of the U.S. as an immigrant nation. From this point of view, the movements of emigration away from this country over the last decades show a counterstream back to Europe. In this process of migration a tendency of being attracted to European urban centers characterizes American emigration.