Close, yet Distant War.

Everyday Practices of (Post-)Yugoslav Migrants in Vienna in the 1990s* (Working title)

When war, mass violence, forced migration and the seizure and destruction of property ensued in the wake of the Yugoslav disintegration in the 1990s, this also had an effect on (Post-)Yugoslav diasporas around the world. In my dissertation project, I am investigating these effects on (Post-)Yugoslav migrants and their ethnically-inclusive communities in Vienna, based on narrative interviews, as well as written and visual records preserved in private collections and the archives of (Post-)Yugoslav migrant organizations.

I argue, that migrants from former Yugoslavia in Vienna experienced the “distant” wars as quite “close” due to their strong everyday transnational ties to their places of origin and contacts with other migrants from the then war-torn region. Since the 1960s Yugoslav migrants living in Vienna had engaged in various transregional practices, among them investing in businesses and real-estate in Yugoslavia, communicating with and visiting friends and relatives, vacationing, recruiting Yugoslav workers for their Austrian employers, as well as forming Yugoslav clubs and businesses in Austria. While these ties to the (Post-)Yugoslav space, as well as the connections with other (Post-)Yugoslav migrants were surely disrupted by the wars in the 1990s, I presume they were rather transformed then cut off completely.

I want to better understand migrants “lived transregionalities” and the different ways Yugoslavia’s violent collapse effected their everyday transregional practices and identifications, thus posing the following questions: How did migrants’ connections to their places of origin change in the context of geographic and mental borders being redrawn? How did the wars in former Yugoslavia effect the manifold ties and forms of organizing between migrants in Vienna? With my dissertation, I aim to contribute to (Post-)Yugoslav Austrian migration history, and in a broader sense to a differentiated understanding of transregionality within migration research.

*Working title inspired by Christoph Baumgarten, „Wie ein ferner naher Krieg ins Wohnzimmer kam.“ In: Balkan Stories, 20.06.2016, online unter: balkanstories.net/2016/06/20/wie-ein-ferner-naher-krieg-ins-wohnzimmer-kam/ [14.01.2022].

 

 

Image Credit: Gastarbeiterroute“ bei Niklasdorf, 80er Jahre. Foto-Archiv Kleine Zeitung. Credit: A.M. Begsteiger. Aus der Ausstellung "Gastarbajteri - 40 Jahre Arbeitsmigration"
Initiative Minderheiten und Wien Museum, 2004.