An examination of the relationship between constructs of individual and collective memory and the realities of exile cannot be fully possible without an exploration of the exile media coverage of the various groups of refugees in the different countries where they pursued integration into the majority society. This paper explores the migratory experiences of refugees from Czechoslovakia in the second half of the twentieth century. It reflects on the issue of migration and memory by means of research into media coverage of the large-scale migration wave of refugees from the communist dictatorship between 1948 and 1989. The text develops the theory of an alternative or surrogate public sphere, in a wider conceptualisation, which was created by refugees in the West. The paper works with the concept of ‘will to memory’, in the narrower theoretical framework, which is applied to the exile situation and which reveals the more general principles and narratives shaping the exile collective memory.
