CfP: Migrant Work beyond Categorization: Migrants and Refugees at Work in the 20th-Century East Central Europe

The workshop is organized by the project “Migration and Us: Mobility, Refugeedom and Border from the Humanities Perspective (MyGRACE)“, registration number CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008741, supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic within the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme (OP JAK), and co-financed by the European Union.

The separation of refugees from other migrants into a distinct legal category manifested in the institutional and administrative practice of refugee protection and its narrative framing. Accomplished by the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and reasserted in the following decades by the growing number of signatories, thus featuring in international and national refugee law, our understanding of who refugees are has endowed them with a set of civil, social, and political rights. However, conditioning refugee protection on the grounds of persecution “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” the contemporary definition of refugees also bears implications for conceptualizing other migrations, including economic migration.

This workshop seeks to extend the scholarly debates on work in various migrant and refugee contexts. It focuses on the 20th-century East Central Europe as both a region of substantial emigration and immigration, yet, until recently, evading the academic spotlight. The workshop strives to explore the various motivations of people on the move, including social and economic reasons, reflecting their more and less voluntary choices. Conceptually, it thus advocates for bringing refugee and migration studies closer together and encourages a more inclusive analysis of migrant and refugee situations. First, it recognizes the impracticability of separating economic reasons for migration from political ones. Second, it highlights the essential role of labor integration and social welfare in refugeedom, both as an initial motive and a solution to the refugee situation.

A thriving concept in economic, legal, and social sciences as well as humanities, labor migration in historical research across periods (partial research notwithstanding) has not yet been appreciated in all its meanings, particularly relating to East Central Europe. Traditionally perceived as economically underdeveloped and subject to political upheaval, the region has rarely been depicted as offering new beginnings and attractive opportunities. Still, East Central Europe has not only produced migrants and refugees, but also provided space for their settlement and integration under various conditions, less or more equal with regard to citizens and other inhabitants.

Considering diverse local, national, and transnational situations, political settings, and migration and refugee regimes, the workshop aims to investigate the meanings and value of work – economic, political, social, and ideological – in the individual and group experiences of migrants and refugees and the receiving societies. Furthermore, it strives to uncover how these were permeated with their formal and informal status, citizenship agendas, existing hierarchies of ethnicity, class, and political persuasion, and personal and collective identities, and, finally, how they were translated into political, social, and civil rights in everyday practice.
We invite papers by historians, social and political scientists, and from other disciplines, discussing their research relating to the 20th-century East Central Europe that is focused on, but not limited to, the following facets of work in the context of migration and refugeedom:

- What role did labor play in the 20th-century experiences of migration and refugeedom in this region?
- How can different sources (archives, literature, press, egodocuments, etc) and various levels of analysis (including the emphasis on personal agency) influence our perception of such labor-related migrant and refugee situations?
- What theoretical and methodological implications does the categorization of migrants and various refugee definitions bring up in historical research?
- Historically, how did such categorization influence the status and rights of migrating groups and individuals?
- Can a more integrative history of labor migration in East Central Europe challenge the Western-oriented perspective?

Paper proposals (max. 250 words) and short bios (200 words), as well as any questions, should be directed to Nikola Tohma (tohma@mua.cas.cz).

Submission deadline: 31 July 2025

The decision on acceptance will be communicated by the end of August. The organizers will offer financial support for travel and accommodation.