The course is divided into four units and organized as follows:

Unit One (Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4)

An introduction to the History of Migration in Europe and the Balkans (Konstantinos Tsivos)

An introduction of the course and its terminology. This lecture highlights important aspects of European and Balkan’s transition from a continent or region of emigration and forced migration situations, to one region of immigration and migratory waves triggered by the end of Cold War and the fall of the communist regimes in Balkans. These visions or fears of the “migration pressure” determined migration policies in the EU, whose integration and openness went hand in hand with the isolation of “Fortress Europe” against undesirable immigrants from outside European borders.

Reading:

Klaus J. Bade: Migration in European History (chapter 4 and 5), Blackwell Publishing, 2003

Greek Emigration in Central and Eastern European Countries – The case of Greek immigrants in Czechoslovakia (Konstantinos Tsivos)

After the end of the Greek Civil War approximately 100 000 Greek citizens found a new home in the Soviet Union and its people’s democratic satellites, including post-February Czechoslovakia. Thus, new Greek communities are still considered an integral part of the large Greek Diaspora. The lecture deals with the fates of thousands of Greek immigrants in Central and Eastern European countries with an emphasis on the routes they followed to reach their countries of exile and on their settlement strategies. It also analyses efforts to bring together immigrant families, their legal status and their later repatriation to Greece.

Reading:

Konstantinos Tsivos: The Greek Immigration in Czechoslovakia (1948-1989): Arrival, Process of Settlement, Legal Status, Repatriation, in. Zlatica Zudová – Lešková et allii: Resettlement and Extermination of the Populations – A Syndrome of Modern History, Institute of History, Prague 2015

Forced Migration and Return of Jews in 1940s Balkans (Kateřina Králová)

Once World War II had started, Jews from all around Europe had to face the imminent threat of losing their civil liberties and, subsequently, their lives. While most were murdered in Nazi camps, many made the decision to avoid the unpredictable danger through internal or external displacement once Germans arrived and the local rulers applied anti-Jewish policies. At the beginning, Balkan countries seemed to be a passage to safe havens beyond rule of Germans and their henchmen. Soon, local Jewish populations were to encounter the same risks as their co-believers in most parts of Europe. Both in Western Europe and in the Balkans, only a fraction survived. The frustration of those who did, however, was multiplied by the postwar experience of return. In our class, we will focus on different strategies of survival, compare the conditions under diverse political settings, and scrutinize the decision-making process of Jewish displaced persons from their prewar homeland as well as their attitude once they made the choice to return home.

Reading:

Leon Saltiel (2017): Voices from the ghetto of Thessaloniki: mother–son correspondence as a source of Jewish everyday life under persecution, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14683857.2017.1324278

The Cypriot tragedy: past, present, future (Bubulina Spanosová)

The past: A brief introduction to the events that led to the violent invasion and occupation of the Northern part of the island by the Turks in 1974. A closer look at the situation the former residents of the North found themselves in: the steps the government followed to aid the refugees, the adversities they encountered, the psychological and financial stress of displacement.

The present: The current situation in Cyprus: the illegal construction boom in the North and related court cases, the possibility of giving up properties in the North for a financial sum.

The future: is such a situation reversible? Do the descendants of the refugees want to return back or is the bond with the ancestral land lost?

Unit Two (Weeks 5, 6, 7)

The impact of the ongoing migration crisis on the Greek political landscape (Nikola Karasová)

Greece has been facing increased levels of illegal immigration for more than a decade. In recent years the situation has developed into a humanitarian crisis where the Greek state – seriously weakened by the economic crisis and left without adequate support of other EU members – failed to address the issues of reception and integration of immigrants. The migration crisis had a great impact on the political debate in Greece, it brought to the front a different political agenda and eventually it influenced the behaviour of Greek voters leading to the strenghtening of xenophobic political parties.

The circumstances and results of the EU-Turkey migration deal (Nikola Karasová)

In an attempt to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants to Europe via the so-called Western Balkan route the EU signed the 2016 controversial deal with Turkey. What effects did the deal have in practice? Was it a success or a failure? How was it accepted by EU member states (especially those suffering the most from the immigration inflow)? How did the unsuccessful coup in Turkey influence country's cooperation with the EU?

Volunteering in Greece: the case of Idomeni refugee camp (Veronika Pleskotová)

Idomeni is a small Greek village situated at the border with the Former Yougoslav Republic of Macedonia where Doctors without Borders built a transit camp with the capacity to accommodate thousands of refugees passing by the area every day. In March 2016, after several Balkan states decided t