A Decade of Studying Guest Workers Through the Projects of the Serbian Ethnological and Anthropological Society

Abstract

This review paper provides an overview of the ten-year long anthropological research on the cultural identity of guest workers and their descendants as part of the projects implemented by the associates of the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade and the SASA Institute of Ethnography. The projects were supported by the Serbian Ethnological and Anthropological Society and the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. The phenomenon of “temporary workers abroad”, or the so-called guest workers (Gastarbeiter), which emerged in the early 1960s and continued in the decades to come, has long remained beyond the interest of Serbian anthropological and ethnological science. This is why, after having noticed a scientific research gap related to this phenomenon, in 2010 we initiated the anthropological research of the cultural identity of guest workers. Our intention was to take into account different factors of guest-worker identity construction and to look at the processes, discourses and concepts related to this socio-cultural group from different angles. Over time, as we delved deeper into the problem of migrant workers and migration in general, our interests, and consequently our research, expanded to other topics in addition to cultural identity. In that context, this review paper intends to inform the scientific and professional public about the findings of research on migrants working temporarily abroad and their descendants, and to highlight some of the most important topics that we focused on in this research, while being aware that the phenomenon of migrants and migration is so diverse that it is impossible to include or investigate all its elements that make it so complex.