The next day we started working at 800 meters depth. In the elevator, we all went down hugging each other… We said to have courage, because our common goal was to stay a few years, gather money, and return to Deskati… Being abroad was like blood to us… No parent should part from their child…

A study on migration from Deskati and the life of migrants in Belgium during the 1950s and 1960s. Eighty-nine people left the mountains of Deskati for the coal mines of Belgium. Through the narratives of the migrants themselves or their family members, their personal stories unfold, the living conditions in Deskati at that time, the new world they encountered in Belgium, the challenges of a better life, but also the cost of being abroad and the hard work in the coal mines.

The narratives, unmediated, vivid, and true, document, reveal, and interpret the phenomenon of migration, preserving collective memory and complementing the chapter of the migratory history of Deskati.