Communicating Migration History : The House of Emigrants, Gothenburg

In this article, I present The House of Emigrants in Gothenburg, how it deals with migration history and tries to connect the present with the past. Examples of how migrated Swedes were exposed to xenophobia in the USA are mentioned, and how Swedish Americans used their old historical connections to America to achieve a higher position in an ethnical hierarchy. The Americanization of the Swedes during World War I is also presented, as is an example of fruitful comparison between Fords’ English School for Immigrants and Swedish for Immigrants in Sweden. Finally, the latest exhibition, the emigrant ship “The Green Parrot”, is described as an example of connecting migration history to migrants’ experiences of today