Essentializing Ethnicity : Expellees and Ethno-National Categorizations in the European Postwar Moment, 1943-1948

Abstract

This article introduces an ongoing project that examines a key aspect of the transition from war to uneasy peace in the aftermath of WWII in Europe: the ethno-national categorizations of the expellees forcibly transported across inter-state borders as national minorities. It argues that the level of ethno-national homogeneity between incoming expellees and more established population groups in the ‘postwar moment’ has been exaggerated. In fact, this period witnessed a complex process of redefining and renegotiating the bounds of the postwar national community in which ethno-national categories were contested and whose consequences were far-ranging, both immediately and in the longer term.