Hopes and Realities of Return
Returning migrants have been involved in post-socialist transformation processes all across Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Engaged in politics, the economy, science and education, arts and civil society, return migrants have often exerted crucial influence on state and nation-building processes and on social and cultural transformations. However, remigration not only comprises stories of achievements, but equally those of failed integration, marginalization, non-participation and lost potential – these are mostly stories untold. The contributions to this volume shed light on processes of return migration to various Eastern and South-Eastern European countries from multidisciplinary perspectives. Particular attention is paid to anthropological approaches that aim to understand the complexities of return migration from individual perspectives.
- Caroline Hornstein-Tomić is Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar in Zagreb.
- Robert Pichler is Senior Researcher at the research unit Balkan studies of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Historical Research (INZ) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
- Sarah Scholl-Schneider is Assistant Professor for Cultural Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.
Cover picture: A returnees’ house boat (Fieri, Albania, 2008). Photo: © Robert Pichler.
