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The post-war migration of Roma from Slovakia to the Czech Lands as a legacy of the genocide

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2018

Abstract

Post-war migration of Roma from Slovakia to the Czech Lands represents a decisive moment in the development of Romani minority in Czechoslovakia. It can be viewed as representing the legacy of the war-time history, being interconnected with (forced) population transfers and the reconstruction of infrastructure and industry in post-war Czech lands, as well as with legacies of the war-time persecution of "Gypsies".

The paper focuses on the post-war migration movement as the basis of post-war negotiations of state central as well as local authorities with Romani migrants and the Romani population as a whole, paying attention to (dis)continuities in social practices in dealing with the Roma in both the Czech and Slovak post-war contexts as well as to the topic of spontaneous participation by the Romani migrants in the new possibilities of social mobility. The paper also underlines the obvious discrepancy between the way in which the local post-war situation is captured in the archival documents, revealing different degrees of hostility, and the way in which migration and the arrival to the Czech lands is portrayed in migration narratives.