About 25 people attended the event. There were, on the one hand, scientists from social sciences and humanities and, on the other hand, people who had to leave their farms located in the former Soviet occupation zone or the later German Democratic Republic (GDR) after the World War Two and returned to East Germany after 1990.
Joyce Bromley, Madison WI, USA, presented her research on farm managers who were expelled or fled after 1945, and who (or their children) resumed agricultural production in their homeland after 1989. Robert Nadler, Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development in Dortmund, Germany, provided information on his research project on return migration patterns in East Germany and other Central and Eastern European countries over the last two decades, which he coordinated at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig (IFL). Alina Tofan, University of Leipzig, Germany, analysed the impact of labour migration on the remaining population in the Republic of Moldova, a country that is extremely affected by labour migration to other European countries.
All three presentations were discussed very lively. Controversy was caused especially by the issues of different treatment of expropriated landowners, the motivation of returnees and the impact of return remittances of migrants on the economic development of a country. This workshop illustrates the possibilities of a more intensive exchange between neighboring Leibniz institutes, which result among others from the Leibniz ScienceCampus “Eastern Europe - Global Area” (EEGA).
Workshop on return and labour migration in Central and Eastern Europe
On 7 March 2018, IAMO organized in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) a workshop on “Return and Labor Migration in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989” in Leipzig. The event focused on the economic, social and political motivations of emigrants and returnees.
