This publication is a result of the confluence between three institutional and intellectual impulses: the research project “Disappeared/Desapariciones. A Transnational Study of a Category for Managing, Inhabiting, and Analyzing Social Catastrophe and Loss”, directed by Gabriel Gatti at the University of the Basque Country, Estela Schindel’s own research and academic activities at the Viadrina Institute for European Studies (IFES) in Frankfurt (Oder) and IFES’ agenda of including transregional and global entanglements into the field of European studies, as well as the Explorative Workshop “Social Disappearance: Explorations Around a Travelling Concept from Latin America to Eastern Europe” that was held at the Forum, February 7th and 8th, 2019.
The contributions gathered in the second part of this volume are based on the impulse papers discussed during the meeting and present a diverse array of case studies across Latin America and Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe. The essays included in the first part of the book offer a conceptual framing for the conversation.