Co-ethnic Migrations Compared : Central and Eastern European Contexts

This book deals with the displacement of the populations that have so far been studied mainly under the headings of "(co-)ethnic migration" and "ethnically privileged migration". As the main adjective found in these syntagmata indicates, these are migrations in which ethnicity figures as a prominent factor, both at the point of origin and at the point of the migrants'' destination. These migrations have been engendered by the reconfiguration of the political landscape after major European 20th-century wars and/or the more or less peaceful demise of the communist regime in Europe at the end of the last century. The recent most prominent examples of both of these processes are the former Soviet Union and the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Methodologically and epistemologically, this volume is an exercise in the comparative treatment of co-ethnic migrations, in particular with regard to the question as to what happened to these co-ethnic groups after their resettlement in their putative ethnic homeland.