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The Osteuropa-Institut and the Berliner Kolleg für vergleichende Geschichte Europas (BKVGE) organize the Conference [.pdf; .html] (Post-)Yugoslav Migrations. State of Research, New Approaches and Comparative Perspectives (08-10 December 2006, BKVGE, Koserstr. 20, D-14195 Berlin):

Migration from and within the territory of the former Yugoslavia has played and continues to play a salient role for the social, economic, political and cultural developments of both the domestic societies of the former Yugoslavia and its successor states as well as the destination countries. From seasonal migration patterns under Ottoman rule and overseas emigration in the late 19th and early 20th century to labor migration ("Gastarbeiter") during the socialist era – this area constituted a dense and multifaceted social and geographic space of migration activity. Recent emigration to Western Europe and Northern America as a result of the wars of the 1990s and the economic crises after the breakdown of socialism added new practical and discursive dimensions to the migration from this area as a European and transatlantic migration process.

However, despite the paradigmatic position of (pre- and post) Yugoslavia within European migration, there are considerable gaps in the research on this subject. Our conference, therefore, intends to locate, and begin to fill these gaps by pursuing the following aims:

1. to explore how theories and concepts of recent migration research can be employed usefully for the investigation of (post-)Yugoslav migrations.
2. to determine the status of social and historical research on migration from (and within) the former Yugoslavia and its successor states.
3. to relate the results of empirical research to theoretical and methodological approaches in the contemporary migration debates.
4. to identify existing research lacunae and, accordingly, to stimulate new, international research efforts with an interdisciplinary perspective.
5. to put the (post) Yugoslav emigration experience into a broader comparative framework.

Contact:

Ulf Brunnbauer
Osteuropa-Institut
Garystr. 55, D-14195 Berlin
Tel.: 0049-30/838-52028
Fax: 0049-30/838-54036