“I am not willing to return at this time...” - Transmigration of Eastern European Women as Transformation Strategy

Hess, Sabine (2006) “I am not willing to return at this time...” - Transmigration of Eastern European Women as Transformation Strategy. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 51 (1-2). pp. 31-42. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

For centuries social and cultural science studies have conceptualized migration as a one-directional move leaving the country of origin behind. This article which is based on a two years ethnographical research project on migration strategies of young Slovakian women to Germany can-not only show that the new migration patters after the so-called fall of the Iron Curtain are much more of a mobile, temporary culture producing new transnational social figurations stretching at least over two different countries. The article shows as well how these women are positioning their migration strategies in the context of the transformation processes of their post-socialist country. Their practice of mobility and their reasoning of the transformation processes challenge not only the classical conceptualizations of migration but as well the hegemonic reading of the Eastern European transformation in social and cultural sciences. Their practices call for a gender sensible transnational anthropological perspective connecting both processes that of migration and the European transformations.

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