Labour Migration and Transnationalism in Europe. Contemporary and historical perspectives
University of Regensburg, Chair of Southeast and East European History
10.12.2010-11.12.2010, Regensburg
This international workshop "Labour Migration and Transnationalism in Europe. Contemporary and historical perspectives", held at the Südost-Institut (Institut for Southeast European Studies) in Regensburg, was organised as part of the research project "Bavaria-Croatia transnational" (University of Regensburg) within the Bavarian Research Network "Migration and Knowledge" (FORMIG). The workshop discussed transnational social links of labour migrants in post-Second World War Europe with a focus on migrants from Southeastern and Southern Europe. The discussions revolved around the question of the salience of transnational links of migrants and the viability of the concept of transnationalism for different spatial and temporal contexts. The presentations covered both contemporary and historical perspectives, and came from different disciplines: anthropology, sociology, history, and economics.
Keynote speeches were delivered by ULF BRUNNBAUER (Regensburg) and JANINE DAHINDEN (Neuchâtel). In his talk Ulf Brunnbauer highlighted the usefulness of the specific epistemology of transnationalism for Balkan history for overcoming the predominance of the national perspective, which is still salient in the Southeast European historiographies. He argued that the evidence of the Balkans also shows that migrant transnationalism is not a new phenomenon, as it can already be detected in the 19th century. Brunnbauer discussed how governments in Southeastern Europe responded to the emergence of transnational social practices by designing policies which aimed at extending sovereignty across borders, so that the social and political spaces of the nation would coincide. He emphasized the importance of the politics of emigration in shaping of transnational social networks. As for the conceptual problems of transnationalism, Brunnbauer stressed that in a region such as the Balkans, where state and nation are not conterminous and the boundaries of the nation are not predicated upon state borders, "transnational" can subsume national but at the same time cross-border links. The implicit assumption that “transnationality” transcends the nation needs qualification because transnational – in the sense of cross-border – links can be a resource for the pursuit of a nationalist agenda. Brunnbauer suggested thinking about alternative terms, such as "transterritorial", "trans-state", or "trans-local".