Nostalgia for Yugoslavia is a social phenomenon which prevails in present-day Mostar as well as elsewhere in the Yugoslav successor states. Even if attempts are made by the elites of local politics to erase traces of the Yugoslav past (especially in Croat dominated West Mostar), a good part of Mostar's population still nostalgically remembers that period. Until recently, nostalgia has been neglected as a subject of research in the social sciences and has been acknowledged - if at all - only as a phenomenon oriented towards the past. Recent studies, however, have emphasized a utopian character of nostalgia. It is particularly interesting to further investigate this aspect in the context of post-socialism. This paper discusses the selected narratives of two women whom I encountered during my fieldwork conducted between 2005 and 2008, and their relationship to Yugoslavia. It is shown that differences in their narratives can be related to their nationality and family backgrounds, but to the same degree - if not more so - to their age and the stage in life they are in. At the end of the paper I shall tackle the question whether nostalgia for Yugoslavia can hold as a potential vision for a better future and, if so, under which conditions

This paper focuses on older Turkish labour migrants and their spouses, who mostly came to Vienna as young adults in the 1960s and thereafter. They are now entering retirement age and constitute a significant part of Vienna’s older population. I analyse their understandings of transnational ageing, their social ties and feelings of social embeddedness. For those still mobile, active participation in one of Vienna’s Turkish cultural/religious/political associations is identified as a particular source of social embeddedness. I argue that these voluntary associations provide an important place for older migrants to strengthen social ties and are relatively easy to access, including in old age. Nevertheless, I demonstrate that older Turkish labour migrants are exposed to several forms of discrimination, some of which are felt especially strongly in old age, including a lack of adequate institutionalised late life care. In the discussion of the paper, I critically revisit the debate on ethnicity as a resource versus ethnicity as a vulnerability factor in old age. I argue that this debate is misleading since it camouflages other central social categories and relations. I conclude by suggesting closer attention be paid to the specific but multiple generational experiences of older labour migrants and their spouses.

Many of Vienna’s labor migrants who entered Austria as so-called “guest workers” together with their spouses long nurtured the dream of returning to their country of origin, at the latest when they retired. By then, however, returning became less than straightforward leading to ambivalence regarding questions of belonging/return and transnational mobility and late-life care. Based on rich qualitative data, in this article, I show that ambivalences are found in the complexity of migrants’ narratives, particularly in the way they (1) reassess past choices, (2) negotiate feelings of belonging, and (3) assess future options for late life and care. I argue that the social dimension of ambivalence, which I term “relational ambivalence,” is crucial to understanding the labor migrants’ experiences, reflections, and choices. The analysis shows that ambivalence must be understood as a product of relationships rather than solely an individual experience. The concept of relational ambivalence captures these social and discursive dimensions of ambivalence. The article ultimately carves out the particularity of ambivalence in the general context of migration and in the specific context of Vienna’s labor migrants, while accepting feelings of ambivalence or the simultaneity of different, opposing positions in one and the same person as a core human experience.

Aims of the SeriesOver the past decade, the concept of 'diversity' has gained a leading place in academic thought, business practice, politics and public policy across the world. However, local conditions and meanings of 'diversity' are highly dissimilar and changing. For these reasons, deeper and more comparative understandings of pertinent concepts, processes and phenomena are in great demand. Th is series will examine multiple forms and confi gurations of diversity, how these have been conceived, imagined, and represented, how they have been or could be regulated or governed, how diff erent processes of inter-ethnic or inter-religious encounter unfold, how confl icts arise and how political solutions are negotiated and practised, and what truly convivial societies might actually look like. By comparatively examining a range of conditions, processes and cases revealing the contemporary meanings and dynamics of 'diversity', this series will be a key resource for students and professional social scientists. It will represent a landmark within a fi eld that has become, and will continue to be, one of the foremost topics of global concern throughout the twenty-fi rst century. Refl ecting this multi-disciplinary fi eld, the series will include works from Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, Law, Geography and Religious Studies. While drawing on an international fi eld of scholarship, the series will include works by current and former staff members, by visiting fellows and from events of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Relevant manuscripts submitted from outside the Max Planck Institute network will also be considered. More information about this series at

Our reasoning is always guided by comparison, whether we intend it to be or not (Strauss and Quinn, 1997). Thus, scientific research is penetrated by comparison, even if in an implicit manner. Comparing is an elementary cognitive activity. It occurs in simple and routinized ways in everyday lives by comparing aspects between phenomena, and it regularly occurs in more complex ways as a set of standard practices focusing on the relations between phenomena (Schriewer, 1992). MAIN DIMENSIONS By its basic cognitive foundations as well as by it its central academic dimensions, comparison always enables us to identify similarities and differences: Depending on the theme or experience under scrutiny, one of comparison's main two component elements [similarities and differences] at times may become much more significant than the other. Yet essentially, comparison always entails at least some elements of both: it thus can be defined as the mental activity of simultaneously identifying similarities as well as differences.

No abstract

The clear aim of this special issue is to move beyond ethno-national divisions and to show how Mostarlike other 'divided' citiesis more than its conflict, nationalism and ultimately its division. However, this confronts us with a paradox: how do we push research beyond ethno-national divisions while simultaneously acknowledging that those same divisions are the starting point for the contributors' analysis? In this intervention piece I offer one possible way to address this paradox by focusing on practices of place-making and drawing on the repositioning of memories in the city. This allows me to elaborate on a specific focus offered by the papers in this special issue encountered in practices of place-making, sense-making and memory-making. By taking this angle I wish to explore the particularities of the Mostar case but at the same time to go beyond it and tackle issues that are likely to affect other cities sharing a similar fate. In order to do so, I will build on the articles' findings as well as on my own findings from my fieldwork in Mostar from 2005 until 2008, followed by several revisits. Memory, place-making and the specific role of nostalgiaMost scholarly and media discussions on memory in the Yugoslav successor states centre on what we may call 'public memory', as is actively propagated by politicians, historians and journalists, among others. However, this debate has offered little insight into the ways in which individualsin our case, Mostariansposition themselves relative to the past. Moreover, it too easily paints a picture of memory politics as a top-down process whereby citizens are depicted as empty containers that passively accept these politics wholesale.One central insight I gained during my fieldwork in Mostar was that Mostarians are not only exposed to changing political contexts but are also confronted with their personal past experiences; therefore their reconstructions of the past remain more flexible and situational than those of people professionally involved in writing official national histories. While the latter present a goal-oriented narrative, the reconstructions of the former can be better described as target-seeking (Palmberger, 2016

In this article, I bring together literature from the fields of memory and reconciliation to investigate practices of 'border crossing' in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. While national divisions prevail, subtle attempts at border crossing can be witnessed even in those areas most impacted by the war's partition, such as in Mostar, a city that has been left divided into Croat and Bosniak sides. Borders are physically crossed to reintegrate the 'other side' into one's everyday life, but also in a more metonymical sense through the questioning of absolute national identities. Such acts of border crossing heavily rely on memories of positive pre-war cross-national relations, which are brought forward to re-establish these relations in post-war times. The research findings suggest that re-enacting a shared common ground -most often found in the past rather than in the present -bears an integrative potential that deserves more attention in post-conflict settings.