Migration and Memory: The Difficult Historical Legacies of Eastern Europe

When assessing the political discourse since 2015, it seems that the
refugee crisis has triggered an anti-migration consensus in almost all of
the Eastern EU-member states. Against this backdrop, most references to
historical legacies - if such were made at all - drew parallels to the
series of forced migrations that the populations of this region experienced
in the first half of the 20th century, of to development and settlement
polities that unfolded during the Cold War under Soviet domination. Many of
these parallels, however, lack a deeper historical understanding and are
based on a profound misunderstanding of the relationship between migration
and culture in the post-communist and post-transformation era.

This presentation has therefore two aims: First it will reflect on the
theme of recent migration in the political discourse of Eastern member
states. By this it will have a special focus on the historical
justification of government policies versus migrants and politics of
memory. Here the examples will be drawn mainly from debates in Poland,
Hungary, and Slovakia. Second, it will look at current theories of
multiculturalism and intersectionality and the way they help us to
understand the political as well as cultural aspect of discourses over
migration, and the repercussion with European politics and the memory
agenda of European networks and institutions