The research on Social Integration adopts a Social Science approach intersecting with the scientific disciplines of Cultural Studies, Philology, and Intellectual History. It is motivated by the enlightenment promise of inclusion and its failure in the reality of the 19th and 20th century, articulated by authors who thematize their own marginalisation.
The object of research are texts from the beginning (1918-1938) and the middle of the 20th century (in the 1960s), that are written by philosophers who had to escape from Germany in 1933 like Constantin Brunner, Margarete Susman, and Hannah Arendt. These authors reflect about agency in the margins, about social disintegration, religious and cultural differences, on discrimination and disrespect, proposing to reframe and decenter the social majority of mainstream society. Their texts are interpreted to allow us a better understanding of societal problems of the 21st century and to delineate processes that might reduce exclusion. At the same time the interpretations of these texts reflect on and contribute to a cultural memory of the past.