Women and Migrations in Croatia
Women and Migrations in Croatia

From Marginal Subjects – “White Widows” – to Contemporary Migrants into the EU

Summary/Abstract: The paper is based on the results of the ethnographic research conducted by the author in the period between 2005 and 2013. The multi-sited research started in the mountainous region of Lika with a tradition of emigration. In the first half of the 20th century, young men migrated as part of temporary economic migrations (to the USA and Canada). Women would remain at home and live in extended families. Some of the men would not return for decades. The local community called these wives “white widows”. In the middle of the 20th century people migrated from rural areas into cities. The author focusses her research on several families who moved to one city and its surrounding area. In the socialist period, there were migrant workers or “gastarbeiter”, mostly men, from nearly every family that moved to Germany. Since the women were living their lives in nuclear families, they took over the paternal role, as well. After the 1990s, in post-war Croatia, many companies went out of business and unemployment was on the rise due to social and economic changes. Due to the feminisation of labour and the feminisation of migration into the EU, as well as due to the current economic crisis, unemployed women from these families would leave their families for several months to work in the EU. Narrations on their individual experiences and daily lives through all types of migrations uncover, among other things, the creation and maintenance of transnational social networks and (temporary?) changes in established family life patterns. The paper also uses demographic statistical data and media discourse analysis.

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