Oana-Ramona ILOVAN1, Claudia-Florentina DOBRE2, Vasile ZOTIC*3, Adinel-Ciprian DINCĂ4
* Corresponding author
1 Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Department of Regional Geography and Territorial Planning, Territorial Identities and Development Research Centre, Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA
2 Romanian Academy, “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History, Bucharest, ROMANIA
3 Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Department of Human Geography and Tourism, Centre for Research on Settlements and Urbanism, Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA
4 Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Centre for Diplomatic and Medieval Documentary Palaeography, Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA
E-mail: oana.ilovan@ubbcluj.ro; ORCID: 0000-0003-2075-1808
E-mail: cfdobre@iini.ro; ORCID: 0000-0001-6778-3466
E-mail: vasile.zotic@ubbcluj.ro; ORCID: 0000-0002-4489-0637
E-mail: adinel.dinca@ubbcluj.ro; ORCID: 0000-0001-5817-815X
Pages: 49-66. DOI: 10.24193/JSSP.2025.1.04
Received: 03 June 2025
Received in revised form: 26 June 2025
Accepted for publication: 30 June 2025
Available online: 5 July 2025
Cite: Ilovan O.-R., Dobre C.-F., Zotic V., Dincă A.-C. (2025), Storytelling and Agency: Place Attachment Bridging Past, Present and Future in Romanian Deportees’ Memories. Journal of Settlements and Spatial Planning, 16(1), 49-66. DOI: 10.24193/JSSP.2025.1.04
Abstract. Political deportation is one instance that defines the memory of violence and trauma in post-socialist Romania. Building on experiences of the deportees to the Soviet Gulag (from Northern Bukovina, in 1941) and to Bărăgan region of Romania (from Banat and Western Oltenia, in 1951), our paper explores the connections between exposure to traumatic events (i.e., deportations) and place attachment (re)construction. Despite a shared sense of their vulnerability during deportation, some deportees survived its horrors and were able to narrate their experiences. Based on deportees’ narratives of fear and survival, we investigate, through a qualitative methodology, the impact of exposure to structural violence and deportees’ positive, negative and mixed emotions about places. The impact of the extreme and dramatic political events of deportations on people’s cognitive and emotional bonds to places includes both the loss of place of residence and the construction of new people-place connections in deportation spaces. Findings show a strong relation between people and several values, together with related activities that are frequently mentioned in deportees’ life histories: faith in God, family, socialising and leisure, freedom, patriotism, and political views. We concluded that valuing all this gives and maintains deportees’ hope, which is a positive emotion that contributed to the (re)construction of people-place bonds during deportation and afterwards.
K e y w o r d s: people-place bonds, life histories, spatial memory, Romania, Bărăgan, Siberia, faith, family, nation