Forced Migration, Staying Minorities, and New Societies: Evidence from Post-war Czechoslovakia

Jakub Grossmann, Stepan Jurajda and Felix Roesel

CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague

Abstract: Forced migration traumatizes millions displaced from their homes, but little is known about the few who manage to stay and become a minority in a new society. We study the case of German stayers in Sudetenland, a region from which Czechoslovakia expelled ethnic Germans after World War Two. The unexpected presence of the US Army in parts of 1945 Czechoslovakia resulted in more anti-fascist Germans avoiding displacement compared to regions liberated by the Red Army. We study the long-run impacts of this local variation in the presence of left-leaning stayers and find that Communist party support and local party cell frequencies, as well as far-left values and social policies are more pronounced today where anti-fascist Germans stayed in larger numbers. Our findings also suggest that political identity supplanted German ethnic identity among anti-fascist stayers. The German staying minority shaped the political identity of newly formed local societies after ethnic cleansing by providing the ‘small seed’ of political development.

Keywords: forced migration; displacement; ethnic cleansing; stayers; minorities; identity; Communist party; Czechoslovakia; Sudetenland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 F22 J15 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Forced Migration, Staying Minorities, and New Societies: Evidence from Post-War Czechoslovakia (2021)
Working Paper: Forced Migration, Staying Minorities, and New Societies: Evidence from Post-War Czechoslovakia (2021)
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