A chronology of nostalgia: memories of former Angolan and Mozambican worker trainees to East Germany

Abstract

This article discusses the chronology of nostalgia expressed by former Angolan and Mozambican worker trainees in East Germany. By shedding light on the different forms in which nostalgia was expressed in interviews with migrants who returned to their country of origin, the article examines the migrants’ longing for working abroad prior to leaving and for their home countries while living abroad. The focus lies on the returnees’ nostalgia for aspects of their lived experiences in East Germany, a phenomenon I call Eastalgia. Struggling economically, socially, and emotionally after their return to Angola and Mozambique, many former worker trainees longed for the consumption opportunities, mobility, organization, and modernity of their East German experience. I argue that labor migrants who returned to Mozambique employ both Eastalgia and a glorification of Samora Machel’s socialist Mozambique to criticize the current government for its failure to develop the country according to the expectations shaped by their experiences in East Germany. Finally, I compare and contrast different forms of Eastalgia in Mozambique and Angola with regard to temporality, locality, individual and/or collective, public and/or private, and restorative and/or reflective longing. The former worker trainees’ voices provide new insight into the emotional dimensions of migration and teach us that memories of migrations actively continue to shape the lives of many of the former migrants.