Band 64, Heft 1

Large scale war-displacement during the 1990s in Bosnia and Herzegovina greatly altered the demography of that country and caused severe damage to its social fabric. However, until now few studies have addressed the nexus of social capital and reintegration there in areas with high rates of return. This study is focused on relational practices relevant to the social environment and people in Prijedor, Zvornik, and Novo Goražde, three well-known returnee municipalities. This author’s findings suggest that reintegration is critically linked to mobilisation of various forms of social capital during all phases of the return process, and point to overlooked grass-roots activism which goes on despite the unfavourable political and socio-economic situation in the country. Positive development takes place when there is little political interference at local community level in a strong civil society. It requires strong leaders and social initiative takers among formal and informal returnee associations as well as resourceful individual returnees, all of which working together shape and lead reintegration activities.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), a country that relies on a significant amount of remittance inflows, has experienced a drop in these inflows as a consequence of the global economic crisis. This paper aims to analyse whether and how this decrease is related to a change in motives for sending remittances. The change in motives will be analysed by exploring the interaction between social transfers and remittances using two household datasets, from 2007 (before the crisis) and 2011 (during the crisis), respectively. The analysis is based on the estimation of two model specifications, one that controls for the motives’ non-monotonicity and another that does not. Compared to previous studies, this paper estimates the non-monotonic ‘crowding-out’ effect via an innovative empirical model specification. Its findings suggest that the predominant motive for sending remittances to BiH before the crisis was exchange, while during the crisis the senders of remittances were more altruistic. In addition, the results from the model on non-monotonicity of motives support the hypothesis that as a consequence of the economic crisis, transfer motives are changing in ways that are different for poor and non-poor recipients of remittances.

This paper offers an analysis of remitt ances sent by Ukrainian emigrants to their country of origin. It explores how far the expenditure on remitt ances by individual Ukrainians and the total amount of all remitt ances received from abroad has been dependent on the political situation of the Orange Revolution and Presidential Elections in Ukraine in 2004. The author then investigated what effect the political instability in Ukraine had on how households there used such remittances. She used the results of a nationally representative survey of households in Ukraine to compare individual decisions to invest money received from remittances, and how those decisions depended on individual political views and future expectations. Changes in emigrants’ expectations might increase emigrants’ willingness to offer financial support to relatives remaining in Ukraine.

This paper draws on a larger oral history project entitled ‘Gendered Histories of Resilience and Resistance: East European Women’s Narratives of Mobility and Survival’, a narrative ethnography of Albanian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Polish immigrant women living in Greece. The paper explores intergenerational cultural knowledge transfer and adaptation in a context of crisis with an analysis contextualised within the current crisis in Greece. We consider here the degree of uncertainty and the emotional challenges and constraints, but consider also the creativity and agency that participants display. Following on from that we aim to unravel the impact of ‘family and cultural values’ on migrants’ everyday lives in the diaspora.

This article is based on a study of migrant professionals from Macedonia who are now in Germany. It aims to assess how migrants who practise professions relate to their identities as experts who can sustain (or at least have the opportunity to sustain) relationships linking their places and societies of origin and the places where they have settled, and who can use these links to assist their careers. The results show a particular pattern: simultaneously, these migrant professionals promote their expertise as ‘transnational’, but aim to have careers that are rooted in one place.

In the wake of the discussions in the European Union about how to cope with Greek indebtedness, Greece has insisted on German repayment of the ‘Forced Loan’ (Zwangsanleihe) transacted during the Second World War. As yet, the legal and economic status of this financial transaction has not been clearly determined. Clarification in this regard would represent an important prerequisite for assessing the lawfulness of Greek claims. Instead, the lack of definition of the ‘Forced Loan’ has led to fierce arguments in the media; even in academic discourse, interpretation of the historical documents has been characterised by emotional opinions and rhetorical attacks. The author contributes to the discussion by offering in-depth insights into the historical context by considering sources that until now have received little to no attention.