Wrong to Leave – Wrong to Return? The Image of the Slovak Emigrant Returning from The West After 1989
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In communist Czechoslovakia, the regime has worked hard on making the word “Emigrant” sound dirty. A traitor, a criminal, an adventurer lured by the gilded west. It is estimated that around 300 000 people have been given this label in one way or another, as they decided to leave the Czechoslovak Republic between the years 1948-1989. Many have thought they will never see their motherland again. But after November 1989 there was suddenly a possibility to return. Would their return be celebrated or frowned upon? Or could it possibly be both? The presentation documented ongoing research on the image of emigrants in the Slovak media after November 1989. It attempted to look closer at the newspaper coverage of Czechoslovak emigrants. How prevalent was the narrative of the “emigrant who has made it in the west”? Was being a “success story” the only way to land an article in the newspaper? And how did the people, who have been reading emigrant stories in the papers almost exclusively with negative connotations for over 40 years react to this narrative shift? |
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