CfP: "Homecomings" and Internal Migrations in the History and Present of Central and Southeastern Europe
International conference at the University of Primorska in Koper (Slovenia), June 11–12, 2026. The conference will examine return migration, internal migration movements, and their impact on sending societies. Deadline: December 31, 2025.
The regions of Central and Southeastern Europe have traditionally been regarded as areas of outmigration. This is hardly surprising, given the magnitude and continuity of population outflows since the late nineteenth century, which continue to shape many places in the region today. As a result, long-distance emigration – much like the forcible population transfers following the world wars – profoundly influenced nation-building processes across the region and steered migration scholarship toward the movements of ethnic kin abroad.
Yet migration has often been circular, non-linear, and multidirectional. Migrants not only travelled abroad to improve their circumstances at home; many also sought opportunities within their own states. Their absence and return, the connections they maintained, and the remittances they sent have all left a lasting imprint on the societies of origin. This conference explores how this plurality of movements influenced sending societies, highlighting valuable yet still insufficiently examined aspects of mobility in the region’s history and present.
“Returnees” have frequently brought with them new ideas, skills, knowledge, and distinct demeanour and attire, eliciting surprise or even resentment – but also emulation – among fellow villagers. Many invested in houses, repaid debts, bought new land, and sometimes established small businesses even before their “homecoming”. Were such investments merely consumerist gestures that perpetuated the dependency of local economies, or did they foster economic development? How did contemporary observers evaluate the effects of return and of remittances, and how did governments and other authorities try to steer the return flows of money, ideas, and people? Often, “homecomings” were temporary, involving short-term stays, study exchanges, or organised visits in the context of burgeoning ‘roots’ tourism.
While migration studies in and a about the region paid most attention to international migration, internal migrations were equally salient for social and economic development since the 19th century. They changed settlement patterns, offered new opportunities of social mobility, but could also lead migrants into exploitative labour. A particular tension arises from the repeated redrawing of borders in the region, which undercut established domestic mobility systems and turned mobile workers into international migrants. The connections between domestic mobility and international migration are hardly studied, even though the migration trajectory of many workers in the region suggest a link.
Our conference invites contributions that address multiple scales — global networks, international law, and the state (macro), networks, sub-national authorities, and organizations (meso), as well as communities, households, and individuals (micro). We particularly invite integrative approaches that intersect different scales.
While focusing on Central and Southeastern Europe, the conference adopts a transregional and comparative lens, tracing influences and connections across Europe, the Atlantic, and beyond. It also seeks to foster dialogue among scholars from various disciplines across the humanities and social sciences.
We invite proposals addressing the following thematic clusters (among others):
Internal migrations:
In what ways have internal migrations transformed not societies? How have they been framed within state-building discourses, and what has been their impact on local realities? How are they connected to international migration?
Remittances:
In what ways have emigrant remittances shaped sending societies, not only economically but also socially? How have state-supported developmental discourses regarding emigrant investments diverged from realities on the ground? Do internal migrations produce similar effects?
Return migrations:
What have been the conditions and motivations facilitating return? What has been the impact of returnees on sending societies at both macro and micro levels? What was the voyage like, and how have they adapted to their old–new surroundings? How have the state and the emigrants’ home areas perceived and responded to return migrants?
Student exchange:
Emigrant organisations at “home” have sought to attract members of the diaspora to study in their homelands. Who has participated in these exchanges, how long did their stays last, and what has been their impact on receiving communities and the state? How did these outcomes differ from programmes that countries such as Yugoslavia directed at students from the Non-Aligned Movement?
Tourism:
What roles have the state and emigrant organisations played in fostering ancestral tourism? How have visiting kin been perceived in their “home” communities? Who participated in organised visits, and have these visits helped to strengthen transnational connections? What was the role of migrant entrepreneurship in the development of tourism?
Submission details
Please send a short biographical statement and an abstract of up to 250 words to miha.zobec@zrc-sazu.si by the end of the year. Decisions regarding the conference programme will be communicated within four weeks of the deadline.
The conference is the concluding event of the projects Migration and Development in Central and Southeastern Europe since the Nineteenth Century (Slovene–German mobility project, agreement BI-DE/25-27-004) and Between the “Tenth Banovina” and the “Seventh Republic”: The States and Diasporas in the First and Second Yugoslavia (funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency, grant agreement J6-50191).
Organisers: Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenian Migration Institute, Ljubljana, Leibniz Institute of East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities, Koper, Science and Research Centre Koper
With support by: Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS), German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)