Volume 1 / Athens 1999 Migration in interdisciplinary & international context (Vienna, June 1997) by Katerina Papakonstantinou & Ioanna Laliotou Scholarly discussions over issues related to migration have acquired a particular importance in the contemporary political context. The contemporary phenomenon of migrations in the Balkans has created political and social conditions that force us to re-consider the history of the area as multiple histories of migration. This perspective formed the interests and themes that were discussed in the international conference on "Migration im Interdisziplinären und Internationlen Kontext" that took place in Vienna in June, 1997. The conference was co-organised by professor Michael Mitterauer, University of Vienna and professor Karl Kazer, University of Graz. Participants were invited from different countries in the Balkans, but also from Western Europe and the United States. The theme of migration was approached from an interdisciplinary perspective with emphasis on history, sociology, ethnography, and anthropology. The participants' commitment to interdisciplinarity and the broad range of cases that were presented resulted in the formation of an interesting and challenging forum of scholarly exchange. Presentation covered a broad chronological as well as geographical range, as participants discussed cases of migration from the Balkans and Italy to Central Europe, Germany, and the United States. Other presentations discussed the cases of asylum seekers and different types of temporary migration such as the migration of students from the Balkans towards Vienna. Provocative discussion developed around methodological issues that concerned the difficulties that arise from the great variety of types of migration and migrants (i.e. asylum seekers, labor migrants, students, entrepreneurs) and the critique of particular concepts that have haunted migration studies and become problematic in contemporary approaches (i.e. the concepts of acculturation, integration, assimilation). Discussions over sources and the use of testimonies and autobiographies in historical research indicated an active interest in the issues of subjectivity and experience in the study of migration. One of the main objectives of this conference was related to historical research on migration with the contemporary political and social dimensions of the phenomenon. Thus the last day accommodated an encounter among the participants and social workers that work with Turkish migrants in Vienna. This encounter led to fruitful exchanges of experience and knowledge and approaches between social scientists and social workers. The exchange however also revealed the fact that although social research and analysis has made decisive steps towards the study of national histories of the Balkans as histories of multiple migration, social policy and politics in the countries that receive migrants are still trapped in notions which view both migration as a social problem imposed by the migrants onto the recipient society and migrant life as a pathological form of social existence. Historical and interdisciplinary study of migration in international perspective has the potential to illustrate the ways in which processes of nation-building have always been accompanied by phenomena of movement of populations. National cultures have been historically formed through processes of migration of people, ideas, technology, and knowledge. This conference indicated that social policy in the recipient countries could still benefit from the adoption of such historical perspective. This benefit would consist in the realisation of the ways in which migrants do not constitute a problem for the recipient countries, although in certain cases migration creates the conditions for pre-existent elements of xenophobia, racism and exclusionism to become culturally prominent. This conference provided a valuable forum that allowed the urgent need for closer exchange between social scientists and social workers on the one hand, and social science and social policy on the other, to emerge. Return to top