Beyond outmigration: Im/mobilities and futures in peripheral postindustrial cities

This paper explores negotiations of futures within and beyond Germany’s formerly fastest shrinking city, the East German city of Hoyerswerda. Originally built for the German Democratic Republic’s miners and energy workers, its model socialist New City attracted tens of thousands of people in the latter half of the 20th century. In the wake of German reunification, this direction of mobility reversed. Economic transformations resulted in widespread unemployment and subsequent outmigration. Mostly the young and well-educated left the city, as reunified Germany saw millions of East Germans move ‘to the West’. Beyond outmigration, those staying behind continued to face their city’s presumed loss of the future. However, widespread expectations of better futures elsewhere did not necessarily result in ever more people leaving. Futures elsewhere were contrasted to futures elsewhen: hopeful local futures different to the one of continuous decline so commonly predicted. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I explore these entangled practices of place- and future-making and map the different expectations of im/mobility that make up a surprisingly complex local regime of im/mobility. I do so in order to ascertain what keeps peripheral postindustrial cities like Hoyerswerda going amidst accelerated urban decline and ubiquitous outmigration.