By investigating three heritage categories, a set of parameters for analysing migrant heritage in literature was developed. Through the use of multilingualism and intertextuality, including references to folk tales and proverbs, music and pop culture, migrant authors were demonstrating various strategies to negotiate and perform their (trans)national migrant identities in the German-language context. All three categories revealed significant gender implications
Linguistic heritage: By utilising an innovative interdisciplinary and multilingual approach (drawing on sources in German, Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian (BKS), and English), which included not only literary texts but also translations, roundtable discussions, interviews and critical reception in both heritage and host countries, the project demonstrated the crucial role that language (both written and oral) played in the shaping of migrant identity. This included identifying and interpreting the role of linguistic pluralism and linguistic hybridity (such as through foreign language use in German texts, references to literary and journalistic sources in BKS, code-switching between German, BKS and English etc.) in literary texts, which provided an important component of (trans)national identity. The project found that linguistic hybridity and code-switching was particularly constitutive of migrant heritage in Austrian migrant writing, while migrant literature from Germany depicted only occasional linguistic overlaps and mixing. The project also identified circulation patterns of migrant writing in both the host and heritage countries and examined to which extent they were influenced by the description of certain heritage practices.
Religious heritage: The project showed the unique role that interfaith dialogue and the multi-confessional and syncretistic religious history on the territory of the former Yugoslavia (in which Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Christian influences overlap) plays for the shaping of migrant heritage in literary texts. Religious practices, holidays and beliefs were prominently placed in German-language migrant writing, often to challenge religious dogma and intolerance, and to challenge Western narratives of endemic inter-religious hatred in Southeastern Europe. Migrant authors were found to refer to 20th century Jewish writings from both the German-language sphere and the former Yugoslavia to reflect on contemporary issues of injustice, exclusion and discrimination, as well to claim (post-)Yugoslav Muslim writers as part of their multicultural heritage in order to counter Western European narratives of Islamophobia.
Political heritage: The texts examined in the project demonstrated to which extent the heritage of totalitarian political violence in Southeastern Europe (in particular the heritage of fascism and communism) elucidated differences in European memory culture between eastern and western parts of the continent. Most authors examined adopted a critical approach to the collective memory and commemoration of the Second World War and fascism which arose in West Germany since the late 1960s and in Austria since the 1990s.
The project produced a number of different academic outputs: The publication and submission of several academic articles, papers given at international conferences, academic and arts-based research workshops organised at different institutions, the organisation of an international conference, and the first draft of a monograph. The dissemination of the project activities and results to the wider public was assured through a website, a podcast interview, a co-curated exhibition and workshops that were open to the public.
The project introduced a more holistic and interdisciplinary understanding of migrant heritage in literature, and helped expand the discourse around migrant writing and migrant heritage to include more diversified and egalitarian views on migration and heritage, both within academia and the wider public.
