BOOK PRESENTATION: Remigration to Post-Socialist Europe

Hopes and Realities of Return

11/04/19

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.

The publication was funded by ERSTE Foundation (Volume 3 of the ERSTE Foundation Series) and published by LIT Verlag.

11. April 2019, ERSTE Foundation, Am Belvedere 1, 1100 Vienna, 18:00

  • Opening: Franz-Karl Prüller, ERSTE Foundation
  • Introduction: Vedran Dzihić, Institute of Political Science, University of Vienna
  • Presentation: Caroline Hornstein Tomić, Robert Pichler, Sarah Scholl-Schneider (Editors)
  • Perspective IOM: Andrea Götzelmann-Rosado, International Organization for Migration (IOM, Vienna)
  • Podium: Caroline Hornstein Tomic (Pilar Institute, Zagreb), Robert Pichler (ÖAW, Vienna), Sarah Scholl-Schneider (JGU, Mainz), Remus Anghel (RIRNM, Cluj-Napoca), Klaus Roth (EKWEE, Munich), Andrea Götzelmann-Rosado (IOM, Vienna)

Partner:

IOM (Vienna), Ivo Pilar Institute (Zagreb), ÖAW (Vienna), JGU (Mainz), RIRNM (Cluj-Napoca), EKWEE (Munich), LIT-Verlag (Vienna)

The Event will be held in German

Cover picture: A returnees’ house boat (Fieri, Albania, 2008). Photo: © Robert Pichler

Florian Bauer

Director Social Finance, Sustainability and Innovation
Since 2023, Florian Bauer has been responsible for social finance, sustainability and social innovation at ERSTE Foundation. Prior to this role, Florian worked in the NGO & Social Entrepreneurship sector for more than 13 years. He led the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), an international multilateral NGO that works to accelerate market-based deployment of renewable energy and energy efficient systems in developing countries, and was Managing Director & COO of the Impact Hub Vienna. From 2020-2023, Florian established strategic alliances with key partners and helped to create innovative semantic technology solutions at Semantic Web Company (SWC), a leading IT company in semantic AI solutions.