engleski

An easy game? Experiences of return in the post-socialist context of Croatia and the Czech Republic.

The article is dealing with processes of remigration from West to East, which began in the early 1990ies and are still ongoing until today. Prior to country- specific case studies it first provides an overview of two specific return migration contexts: Croatia after independence and the Czech Republic after 1989. It also gives a brief theoretical introduction that refers to the post-socialist context in general. The country- specific case studies are based on empirical research in both contexts, and primarily on narrative interviews (life histories) conducted with a broad spectrum of re-migrants, who belong to the first and also the second migrant generation – those in fact not re-migrants in the actual sense - and who may be considered representatives or members of the (knowledge) elite. The interview analysis is touching upon different dimensions of re- integration and identification processes re-migrants are passing through. Special attention is devoted to understanding whether and how far the adaptation to the current “rules of the game” and unknown practices which shape daily life in the transformation environments tackled here, prove to be a challenge for returning migrants or their foreign-raised offspring. Which are the spaces and actions taken to influence or even change such rules and practices? The comparative look on both the Czech and the Croatian context deepens the insights into the multiple layers and various dimensions of return experiences: as different as the respective migration backgrounds and eventual groups of re-migrants are – returning labour migrants, representatives of different (re-) migrant generations, returning political émigrés, re-migrating members of economic and knowledge elites – the experiences of return to both countries however prove to be a similar difficult game.

remigration, Croatia, Czech Republic, identification

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