„Mi lesz akkor, ha meggyökerezek?”. A vándorlás és a visszavándorlás megéléstörténetei munkásnők életútelbeszéléseiben
„What happen’s When I Take Root?” Experiences of Migration and Remigration in the Stories of Woman Labourers’ Cours of Life

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines course of life interviews conducted with members of an unskilled woman labourer brigade (and their families) that received the State Prize in 1970. The focus is on how interviewees as young girls experienced leaving their homes for Budapest. After taking a look at the relevant international literature on the subject, the paper presents the motivations behind migration. Reasons were not only of financial nature, since interviews reveal individual and group-oriented strategies behind migrational processes as well. Furthermore, the paper presents the interviewees’ ways of keeping contact with their homes and the representation of these relationships. One can conclude that in spite of the great attraction the metropolis radiates, migrants appropriate their local identities not only to their new environments but also to their birthplaces. Finally, the study examines a relatively neglected area of migration, namely the question of remigration. As the basis for this serve course of life interviews conducted with those brothers and sisters of labourer brigade members, who had periodic jobs in Budapest but re-migrated to their homes and continued to live there. The study shows that in their course of life stories, remigrants present themselves as persons who, when back home, can profit from their knowledge gained in Budapest.

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