Overview

Border Heritage opens new insights in migration studies through analysis of the same emblematic eastern-central European borderland in Trieste, crossed by four refugee migrations over 70 years of history (1945–2022). Born from a dual personal and professional perspective, the book’s original structure starts from the Ukrainian displacement, going back to the asylum seekers arriving via the Balkans, then to refugees from the former Yugoslavia, and the exodus from Istria after the Second World War; the second part focuses on places, objects, and displaced memories. Each chapter begins with a particularly significant account by a refugee, which anchors the argument in everyday life and gives a human dimension to the following conceptual developments. All but scattered, the narrative plot offers a cohesive thread through the various chapters, analyzing how the various migrations have stratified, overlapped, and contaminated each other. Critically rethinking the heritage of a borderland means rethinking cognitive categories and being able to perceive the different nuances of those on the margins, without necessarily wanting to merge them into a generic “social inclusion” and instead giving them the right to a different voice. This book reverses the monochrome historical perspective to instead adopt the migrants’ perspective and make them the subject of study in a set of historical migrations.

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9781666949490

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Reviews

Border Heritage is a masterful book that engages in a debate with methodological nationalism. It takes the city of Trieste as an entry point to think in grounded and at the same time comparative terms about migration, border regimes and memories of displacement. It compellingly brings together first-hand empirical research, historical inquiry and intellectual critique. --Alessandro Monsutti, author of War and Migration (Routledge, 2005) and Homo Itinerans (Berghahn, 2020)

"This study embodies state-of-the art thinking on forced migration, refugees, and borderlands. In her timely and poignant ethnography, Altin traces out the multiple displacements and migrations that have shaped the port city of Trieste and its surrounding region in the modern era. Altin powerfully demonstrates the value and, indeed, the necessity of historicizing Europe's contemporary migration ""crises."" In doing so, she demonstrates how today's migrants travel paths and inhabit spaces traversed by previous generations on the move. Drawing upon her own childhood experiences in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Trieste, Altin courageously rejects a predominant narrative that disavows identification with today's migrants and that casts them as different and ""undeserving"" from the European displaced persons generated by the conflicts of the 20th century. With a bold new vision for conceiving of a ""border heritage"" comprised by migrations and crossings, this study provides a way forward for scholars, policymakers and humanitarian organizations alike. Avoiding the impasses of an abstract humanitarianism that rests on compassion but ultimately denies its recipients both dignity and agency, Altin's proposal for ""memory-as-process"" in this quintessential European borderland offers indispensable and broader lessons for establishing common ground. --Pamela Ballinger, University of Michigan Border Heritage is a masterful book that engages in a debate with methodological nationalism. It takes the city of Trieste as an entry point to think in grounded and at the same time comparative terms about migration, border regimes and memories of displacement. It compellingly brings together first-hand empirical research, historical inquiry and intellectual critique. --Alessandro Monsutti, author of War and Migration (Routledge, 2005) and Homo Itinerans (Berghahn, 2020)"

Author Information

Roberta Altin is associate professor of cultural anthropology in the Department of Humanities, University of Trieste.

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