This open access book collects ten essays that look at intra-regional migration in the Southern Balkans from the late Ottoman period to the present. It examines forced as well as voluntary migrations and places these movements within their historical context, including ethnic cleansing, population exchanges, and demographic engineering in the service of nation-building as well as more recent labor migration due to globalization. Inside, readers will find the work of international experts that cuts across national and disciplinary lines. This cross-cultural, comparative approach fully captures the complexity of this highly fractured, yet interconnected, region. Coverage explores the role of population exchanges in the process of nation-building and irredentist policies in interwar Bulgaria, the story of Thracian refugees and their organizations in Bulgaria, the changing waves of migration from the Balkans to Turkey, Albanian immigrants in Greece, and the diminished importance of ethnic migration after the 1990s. In addition, the collection looks at such under-researched aspects of migration as memory, gender, and religion. The field of migration studies in the Southern Balkans is still fragmented along national and disciplinary lines. Moreover, the study of forced and voluntary migrations is often separate with few interconnections. The essays collected in this book bring these different traditions together. This complete portrait will help readers gain deep insight and better understanding into the diverse migration flows and intercultural exchanges that have occurred in the Southern Balkans in the last two centuries.

The transition zone between Africa, Asia and Europe was the most important intersection of human mobility in the medieval period. The present volume for the first time systematically covers migration histories of the regions between the Mediterranean and Central Asia and between Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean in the centuries from Late Antiquity up to the early modern era. Within this framework, specialists from Byzantine, Islamic, Medieval and African history provide detailed analyses of specific regions and groups of migrants, both elites and non-elites as well as voluntary and involuntary. Thereby, also current debates of migration studies are enriched with a new dimension of deep historical time. Contributors are: Alexander Beihammer, Lutz Berger, Florin Curta, Charalampos Gasparis, George Hatke, Dirk Hoerder, Johannes Koder, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt, Youval Rotman, Yannis Stouraitis, Panayiotis Theodoropoulos, and Myriam Wissa.

The collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire offers insights into the Carolingian southeastern frontier-zone from historical, art-historical and archaeological perspectives. Chapters in this volume discuss the significance of the early medieval period for scholarly and public discourses in the Western Balkans and Central Europe, and the transfer of knowledge between local scholarship and macro-narratives of Mediterranean and Western history. Other essays explore the ways local communities around the Adriatic (Istria, Dalmatia, Dalmatian hinterland, southern Pannonia) established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus. Contributors are Mladen Ančić, Ivan Basić, Goran Bilogrivić, Neven Budak, Florin Curta, Danijel Dzino, Krešimir Filipec, Richard Hodges, Nikola Jakšić, Miljenko Jurković, Ante Milošević, Marko Petrak, Peter Štih, Trpimir Vedriš.

This atlas provides a macro-regional overview of the areas that surround the European Union, from the Sahara to the Middle East, Western Balkans to European Russia, Turkey to the Arctic. Detailing key socio-economic data as well as developmental trends, the maps provide a comprehensive territorial analysis at a local scale and explore the potential for regional integration and cooperation.These pioneering maps examine challenges that threaten this wide, yet inter-connected, region, including environmental concerns in the North, political unrest in the East, social factors in the Western Balkans, and the upheaval in the Mediterranean since the Arab spring. Coverage investigates such key countries and areas as Libya, Israel, Palestine, Syria, and the Ukraine as well as explores such essential issues as Europe’s energy procurement. In addition, it also presents a comparison with other world regions such as East Asia and North America.In the end, readers discover that territorial integration faces many shortcomings, but that deep regional cooperation would be a key driver for the EU’s sustainable future. This atlas features the main results of the “Integrated Territorial Analysis of the Neighbourhoods” research project undertaken by ESPON (The European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion). It provides scholars; local authorities and NGOs involved in cross-border cooperation; companies interested in energy, agriculture, water, transportation and communication; and interested readers with key insights into this important region.

With the end of apartheid rule in South Africa and the ongoing economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the border between these Southern African countries has become one of the busiest inland ports of entry in the world. As border crossers wait for clearance, crime, violence, and illegal entries have become rampant. Francis Musoni observes that border jumping has become a way of life for many of those who live on both sides of the Limpopo River and he explores the reasons for this, including searches for better paying jobs and access to food and clothing at affordable prices. Musoni sets these actions into a framework of illegality. He considers how countries have failed to secure their borders, why passports are denied to travelers, and how border jumping has become a phenomenon with a long history, especially in Africa. Musoni emphasizes cross-border travelers' active participation in the making of this history and how clandestine mobility has presented opportunity and creative possibilities for those who are willing to take the risk.

The objective of The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises is to deconstruct, question, and redefine through a critical lens what is commonly understood as "migration crises." The volume covers a wide range of historical, economic, social, political, and environmental conditions that generate migration crises around the globe. At the same time, it illuminates how the media and public officials play a major role in framing migratory flows as crises. The volume brings together an exceptional group of scholars from around the world to critically examine migration crises and to revisit the notion of crisis through the context in which permanent and non-permanent migration flows occur. The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises offers an understanding of individuals in societies, socio-economic structures, and group processes. Focusing on migrants' departures and arrivals in all continents, this comprehensive handbook explores the social dynamics of migration crises, with an emphasis on factors that propel these flows as well as the actors that play a role in classifying them and in addressing them. The volume is organized into nine sections. The first section provides a historical overview of the link between migration and crises. The second looks at how migration crises are constructed, while the third section contextualizes the causes and effects of protracted conflicts in producing crises. The fourth focuses on the role of climate and the environment in generating migration crises, while the fifth section examines these migratory flows in migration corridors and transit countries. The sixth section looks at policy responses to migratory flows, The last three sections look at the role media and visual culture, gender, and immigrant incorporation play in migration crises.

In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place travelled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive − traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory definitions of the West as modern, progressive and rational. However, the Balkans have also long been travelled from. The region’s writers have given accounts of their travels in the West and elsewhere, saying something in the process about themselves and their place in the world. The analyses presented here, ranging from those of 16th-century Greek humanists to 19th-century Romanian reformers to 20th-century writers, socialists and ‘men-of-the-world’, suggest that travellers from the region have also created their own identities through their encounters with Europe. Consequently, this book challenges assumptions of Western discursive hegemony, while at the same time exploring Balkan ‘Occidentalisms’.

The historical upheavals in Southeast Europe since the early 20th century brought about deep transformations of people’s life courses. The concept of 'life course' enables the understanding of human lives within their socio-cultural and political contexts, stressing people’s everyday experiences and agency. The papers in this volume discuss problems such as the impact of migration and mobility on families, such as economic migration transforming traditional structures into individualistic strategies. Other papers give examples of ruptures of life worlds caused by the impact of dramatic historical events. Demonstrating the agency of actors instead of presenting them as passive victims, some authors present approaches that are innovative for the region. Apart from various forms of migration and their impact on life courses, the volume also includes contributions on the role of religion and social memory in the family.

How do migrants express and imagine themselves through musical practice? How does music help them to construct social imaginaries and to cope with longings and belongings? In this study of migration music in postsocialist Albania, Eckehard Pistrick identifies links between sound, space, emotionality and mobility in performance, provides new insights into the controversial relationship between sound and migration, and sheds light on the cultural effects of migration processes. Central to Pistrick’s approach is the essential role of emotionality for musical creativity which is highlighted throughout the volume.

As Europe struggles to control immigration, the EU's southern flank is perceived as the weak flank of 'Fortress Europe'. This book examines the many facets of Southern Europe's new immigration: the diverse roles played by immigrants in the labour market, issues of social exclusion and wider strategic concerns of security and geopolitics.