After the fall of the Iron Curtain, political and social transformation in Eastern Europe was characterized by extensive geographic mobility and migration. The emergence of new nation-states in the post-Soviet space after the dissolution of the USSR led to large migratory movements between the former union republics. The wars in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s turned millions of people into war refugees. In many countries, structural change in rural areas led to massive migration of workers to the cities. At the same time, since the 1990s there has been large-scale transnational labor migration from Eastern to Western Europe, with massive consequences for both the countries of origin and the receiving countries. After being primarily affected as transit countries for refugees from the Middle East and Central Asia during the so-called "refugee crisis" in 2015, Eastern European countries received the majority of Ukrainian war refugees in 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, the war in Ukraine is also present in Western European states, not least in the form of several million war refugees.
This international conference, jointly organized by the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe (GCE) at the University of St. Gallen, the academic initiative Ukrainian Research in Switzerland (URIS) at the University of Basel and the Center for Eastern European Studies (CEEC) at the University of Zurich, is devoted to the causes, forms and social and political consequences of geographic mobility and migration in Eastern Europe. Our focus is on the states and societies of the post-socialist and post-Soviet space and the years 1989/1991 to the present, although questions of a broader historical scope will also be considered. The conference brings together scholars from different academic disciplines (political science, sociology, history, anthropology, cultural studies) and from Eastern and Western Europe. Established scholars as well as graduate students and postdocs will participate. The aim is to engage in a truly interdisciplinary and international dialogue on geographic mobility and migration as part of social and political transformation in the eastern part of the European continent.
Roundtable discussion with Simone Zurschmitten, Head of the Resettlement Section SEM, and Babak Fargahi, Dr. iur. Attorney-at-Law RISE, we discuss the current situation and practical examples related to the Temporary Protection Status S in Switzerland. Moderated by Dr. Sandra King-Savic.