Issue 1, Vol. 109 (2022)

Musical revival-based band The Turnarounds can be considered one of the significant examples of music and dance activities of the contemporary Czech Vienna field. This study is a music anthropology contribution to the questions of identity of the third and fourth generation of migrants‘ descendants. The study responds to questions if and how do The Turnarounds’ members refer to their Czech identity and their own, even partial Czech roots, migration experience of their ancestors and their (in)activity in minority’s associations? Drawing from The Turnarounds‘ musical activities analysis, the study demonstrates relationship of the Viennese Czechs‘ of third and fourth generation subjective concept of homeland and sense of belonging, and their aim to target Viennese majority audience and to situate themselves on the Austrian musical interculture scene.

The text deals with a cosmopolitan Anglophone institution of youth theatre in Anglophone migration in the Czech Republic. While Anglophone migration is privileged due to language and its position in the globalized world, children and young people with migrant parents are associated with establishing one's position among peers where it is essential to be included. In the Czech context of a homogeneous society, Anglophone teenagers are often considered different, and their position in a peer group may be questioned. While the teenagers enjoy the safe environment of the youth theatre where their outside otherness is normality, they strengthen their cosmopolitanism. The Czech homogeneous society is pushing them into more privileged social landscapes.

The paper focuses on identities construction of the second generation of Muslims in the Czech Republic. It consists mainly of young Muslims, descendants of parents of migrants who came to Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1990s as part of student and labour migration. Their socialization took place in the context of a Muslim family, but they were primarily socialized in the context of the Czech environment. Thus, second-generation Muslims move between several cultural frameworks, transnational fields, located in the space in-between (Levitt 2009). They negotiate their identity situationally and must cope with their parents' country of origin, ethnicity and national identity. In the interviews of second-generation Muslims, I would therefore like to show how these young people with a migratory experience treat ethnicity when reporting on their otherness, what strategies they apply when negotiating key social identities. These are data that I created based on semi-structured interviews.

Young Vietnamese migrants, often raised by Czech nannies and who thus spend most of their time in a Czech environment, often end up feeling more Czech than Vietnamese. “Confessions of the Vietnamese” is a Facebook community that creates a space for young Vietnamese migrants to get acquainted with each other and to discuss their daily life experience as, what they term, a “banana kid”—“yellow on the outside, white on the inside”—or alternatively, as their parents’ generation calls them, mất gốc, one who has lost one’s roots. Based on a qualitative analysis of the posts from “Confessions of the Vietnamese”, we have determined the conflict zones as well as uncovered the intergenerational problems between parents (first-generation migrants) and their children (1.5 and second-generation migrants), who are often seen as the “model” minority.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019/2020 has undoubtedly influenced international migration trends of young people. Notably, in Ireland there has been a distinct influx of returning migrants, representing the highest number of returning Irish nationals since 2007 (CSO, 2020). While Ireland has a significant history of mass emigration and well-documented periods of return, the recent experience of returning during the COVID-19 pandemic represents a novel phenomenon worthy of investigation. This paper draws upon 20 semi-structured interviews of returning migrants from across the Republic of Ireland, with the aim of better understanding their experiences, motivations and intentions for returning ‘home’ during a global health crisis, and to assess the potential effect this may have on the future livelihoods and reflexive mobility strategies of Ireland’s young people. To conclude this paper highlights the relevance and imperative for policymakers, as well as the necessity for future res

The area of return migration is attracting considerable interest, not least because of the surge in returns due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The characteristics of recent returnees and their motivations are not yet established. This work examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on return migration to Czechia and it offers one of the first investigations into the realities of return in this particular case. The present study is expected to contribute to our understanding of the role of transnationalism and migration networks in return migration. We also want to highlight the uneasiness between the voluntary-forced migration dichotomy when it comes to discussing the recent events. Using a mixed research design, data were collected during the first half of 2021 and the responses were gathered using a survey and interviews. The results broaden our understanding of return migration in this specific case and highlight the importance of drafting policies that take the returnees into account.