Paper short abstract:

The paper will explore the narratives by which labour migrants claim to have appropriated the places in which they settled thirty or more years ago as ‘their own’. The interpretation will try to understand this repositioning in the context of individual, family and historical time.

Paper long abstract:

The paper will explore how first generation economic migrants re-make their sense of belonging in transnational and translocal space which spans their land of origin – Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and the land of their residence – Germany. Three or more decades after ‘temporarily’ settling in Germany, these so called Gastarbeiter, appear to have re-positioned themselves with respect to their once abandonded (yet constantly visited, nurtured, renovated,...) homes in different places in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. One aspect of this is the longing for their places of residence when away from them, even when spending vacation in the places of origin. The paper will explore the narratives by which labour migrants claim to have appropriated the places of settlement as ‘their own’. In order to understand this re-positioning the paper will examine it in the context of individual and family biography, stage in (family) migration history and macro-political events that have been structuring migrants’ lives in the past twenty years.