Remigration to Post-socialist Europe ― Hopes and Realities of Return

Returning migrants have been involved in post-socialist transformation processes all across Eastern and Southeastern 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 Southeastern 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 Tomic is Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar in Zagreb. Robert Pichler is Senior Researcher at the Department for Balkan Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Sarah Scholl-Schneider is Assistant Professor for Cultural Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.