Paper short abstract:

My contribution to this topic will be focussed on Czech remigrants, who returned after 1989 from the western countries they had lived in during their exile. Based on interviews, I will concentrate on their role as ‘transferral agents’ of ideas, knowledge, political and social ‘technology’.

Paper long abstract:

In his novel Ignorance Milan Kundera likens the 'Great Return' of two Czech emigrants after 1989 to that of Odysseus: His sojourn away from Ithaca had lasted twenty years. "But in Ithaca he was not a stranger, he was one of their own, so it never occurred to anyone to say, 'Tell us!'." In my perception, Kundera draws a justified comparison - and perhaps this might be the reason why he who had emigrated to France in 1975 never returned to his homeland. Those who returned experienced the same as Odysseus: Nobody ever asked them to tell their stories.

Based on qualitative biographical research I will explicitly analyse the emigrants' return. Although being part of the new, post-socialist Czech elite, the remigrants I talked to are, at least on a private level, part of a marginalized group who had to find ways and strategies to deal with their past. However, on the professional level, they have been able to initiate important cultural transfers from the Western countries into their democratizing homeland. In order to find an explanation for the ambivalence of Czech remigration and transfer processes, it is imperative that the migration processes of both the returning migrants and their transferal worth are being considered simultaneously in the context of the Czech Republic after 1989. Only a differentiated approach of both allows typically negative biographical experiences of Czech remigrants to become reconciled with the 'success stories' of their transfers.