Welcome to ‚In Global Transit‘, the international standing working group of academic researchers exploring spatial and temporal dimensions in global migration. Developed out of the research focus of the German Historical Institute Washington on flight and forced migration, the network has organized several in-person and digital events since 2018. In 2025, the project was re-launched based at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, with contributors from Europe, North America and beyond. While the new look is now active, we are still working to improve this space’s design and contents.

The concept of transit highlights migrants’ experiences on the move between different cultural, political, and geographical spaces; the moment beginning with people leaving the place they called home to the point when they end up somewhere they can settle. Since migration is rarely a goal-oriented, linear process, it is often shaped by these phases of ‘being in between’, phases of uncertainties, dependencies and coincidences. Understanding the temporalities and of this process, the power relations and knowledge accumulation involved enables new perspectives on the history of migration and global mobility.