INTERVIEW - A new village, but not a new home: "The social fabric has been torn apart by the resettlement"

The Swiss village of Blatten lies buried under rock after a massive landslide. It has become uninhabitable. The people there have lost everything. What will happen to them? Discussions are underway about rebuilding Blatten, possibly at a different location.

It's actually quite common for entire villages to be rebuilt elsewhere. Take Germany, for example. Since the end of World War II, several hundred villages have been relocated there to make way for open-cast lignite mining. In many cases, they were rebuilt just a few kilometers from their original location. The changes were nevertheless significant. A look there can provide clues as to what might change for the residents of Blatten if they rebuild their village elsewhere.

Andrea Kaifie-Pechmann, a professor at the Institute and Polyclinic for Occupational, Social, and Environmental Medicine at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, conducted a study examining how those affected in Germany are coping with the relocation. The study was conducted while Kaifie-Pechmann was working at the University of Aachen – a city very close to the open-cast lignite mine.

Ms. Kaifie-Pechmann, with your study you wanted to gain initial insights into the state of mind of people in Germany whose homeland has undergone significant changes, who have had to relocate, or who are still facing this. How are these people doing?

We don't know how all those affected are doing because participation in the survey was voluntary. But we did see correlations between relocation, or simply the change in environment, and psychological problems. This refers to depressive moods, anxiety, and psychosomatic complaints such as back pain or headaches. Those who were yet to be relocated felt the most stressed. Those who had already been relocated reported fewer psychological problems—although their levels were also higher compared to the general German population.

What was particularly stressful for the people who had to leave their homes?

For example, some people kept livestock, and before the resettlement, they were greatly distressed by the fact that they didn't know whether they would be able to keep them as well in their new location. Furthermore, the social fabric in which they had previously lived had more or less collapsed as a result of the resettlement.

How can this be when an entire village is moving?

It wasn't an entire village that moved to the new location. Not everyone came along. Some moved somewhere else entirely. Some people who didn't even live in the original village moved to the new location. And of course, neighbors didn't necessarily stay close together. A lot changes during a relocation. This creates entirely new social structures.

Their study also found that people who resettled, in some cases years ago, feel less connected to their new place of residence than people who have not yet had to leave their villages of origin.

In old villages, people live in village structures that have developed over a long period of time. Perhaps their grandparents already knew each other from their neighborhood, they went to school together, there's a traditional shooting club and other sports facilities where people meet and get to know each other. The new villages, on the other hand, appear almost instantly; people are placed in houses and neighborhoods and next to neighbors with whom they have no natural relationships.

In your study, you mention the term "solastalgia." The word originated in Australia, where people experienced extreme environmental changes due to open-pit mining. Solastalgia differs in meaning from nostalgia. The latter refers to distant temporal or spatial dimensions. Solastalgia is about the pain caused by concrete changes in the here and now.

This refers to feelings of loss that accompany environmental changes in one's homeland. And which cause a kind of homesickness, namely for the surroundings as they were before. This doesn't just mean that a newly rebuilt village looks slightly different. In open-cast lignite mining, for example, a large hole in the landscape eats ever closer to the village. Elsewhere, it can happen that a huge forest disappears. Or that, as in Blatten, the homeland changes enormously due to a landslide and becomes uninhabitable. Solastalgia, however, is not a disease; rather, it is a description of a condition.

Are there feelings that typically accompany solastalgia?

The feeling of powerlessness was often described. The people didn't want to relocate. They were forced to accept that they had to leave. And with that, there was also grief.

In your study, people who were still facing relocation were particularly affected by psychological stress. Some of them lived in houses that their families had occupied for generations.

The loss of their home was truly difficult for some. We received long letters in which people described how they still lived in their grandparents' house, how their own parents had grown up there, and how they themselves had grown up there. It wasn't just the loss of their surroundings that hurt them, but the loss of their home, and with it a part of their family history and their identity. These were heartbreaking letters. The people wrote that they now had to leave everything behind, go somewhere else—and that it was very difficult for them.

On the other hand, the respondents in your study who had already been resettled showed the lowest levels of psychological distress. Although they didn't feel particularly connected to their new place of residence and also felt less responsible for their fellow citizens, they were in better psychological health than those in places that hadn't yet been resettled.

The question, of course, is what happens if the severely stressed individuals are relocated. Would each of them be able to accept the new situation? This varies greatly from individual to individual. We don't know in individual cases. Because we only interviewed the people once and didn't follow them over a longer period of time.

Were there any positive comments on the subject of relocation?

There were actually people who were excited about the new beginning. And also about coming to a place with modern facilities. Everything there is well-maintained and freshly renovated. So relocation isn't viewed only negatively.