U okviru 12. SIEF kongresa u Zagrebu, Jasna Čapo održala je 22. 6. 2015. godine plenarno izlaganje pod naslovom ‘Returnee’ and ‘expatriate bubbles’: alternative modes of the search for community? (Povratnici i ekspatrijski kružoci – alternativni načini traganja za zajednicom).

Abstract: The paper compares practices of Croatian return migrants, both of the migrants who return and of their descendants who were born in the countries of settlement and decide to settle in the country of their forebears. I will evaluate their images of Croatia prior to return and settlement against their narratives about ‘real’ life and their practices in Croatia. Both groups engage in frequent transnational activities, linking them to the people who live in the former countries of settlement. However, there are differences in their ways of community-building locally. Returnee migrants tend to create ‘returnee bubbles’ and might flirt with an idea of spatially fencing themselves off from the surrounding society. The ‘returnee bubbles’ will be compared to ‘ethnic bubbles’ which they created while living abroad. Both practices will be contrasted to those of their children and grandchildren, the transnational generations, who settled in Croatia. Via internet fora, they tend to join ‘expatriate bubbles’, locally and nationally, whereby they socialize with the people of the same ‘international outlook’ as themselves, no matter whether these people have Croatian ‘roots’ or not, or whether they come from the same or another country. This empirical case study will serve as a vehicle for posing general questions relevant to diaspora and return migration theory: ‘the teleology of return’, ‘ontological return’, ‘homeland’, etc. as well as probing some conceptual and terminological issues (returnees, expatriates, migrants, etc.).

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