Foggy Diaspora: Romanian Women in Eastern Serbia

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic and anthropological research on the Romanian communities in Eastern Serbia, this article seeks to contribute to the global scholarship on diaspora and migration. It reveals interesting differences between the well defined and intensely studied notion of “diaspora” on the one hand, and the understudied, but useful concept of “near diaspora” on the other. First, the presence of Romanians in Eastern Serbia is looked at from a gender perspective, in the wider context of feminization of international migration. Second, the paper argues that the Romanian women in Eastern Serbia adopt the strategy of living in the “social fog”, thus becoming what can be termed “foggy diaspora”.