CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 11, 2017 MIGRATION AND SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE A REVIEW ESSAY by Antonia Young University of Bradford And Colgate University Ulf Brunnbauer, Globalizing Southeastern Europe: Emigrants, America, and the State Since the late Nineteenth Century, Lexington Books, New York, London, 2016 and Gayle Munro, Transnationalism, Diaspora and Migrants from the Former Yugoslavia in Britain, Routledge, London and New York, 2017 ISSN 1752–7503 10.1515/caeer-2018-0008 © 2017 CEER First publication 116 Central and Eastern European Review MIGRATION AND SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE A REVIEW ESSAY by Antonia Young University of Bradford And Colgate University Ulf Brunnbauer, Globalizing Southeastern Europe: Emigrants, America, and the State Since the late Nineteenth Century, Lexington Books, New York, London, 2016 and Gayle Munro, Transnationalism, Diaspora and Migrants from the Former Yugoslavia in Britain, Routledge, London and New York, 2017 Brunnbauer’s experience of working for a year with immigrants (in lieu of military service), gave him insight into migrant agency and the enormous significance of migrant networks and middlemen as well as the paranoia of the state concerning the policing of migration. The stated aim of his book is to highlight the problematic relationship between migrations, state-building and nationalism in Southeastern Europe, with a core theme being the relationship between territory, human movement and political intervention. This concern relates to emigration policy, which has been completely overshadowed by concern for immigration policy. Brunnbauer starts his book by using the example from Fiume (Rijeka) in 1865, then in the Austrian Empire, when it issued 438 passports, almost all to enable men to join the international workforce on the construction of the Suez Canal. Thereafter the overwhelming majority of emigration was to the US. Brunnbauer gives examples of several large groups of emigrants within the Balkan countries for various kinds of work, throughout the 19th century. After the First World War, receiving countries placed immigration restrictions, thus affecting the countries of emigration. A 1921 Law on emigration attempted to extract taxes from those who left the country. A later wave of 117 Central and Eastern European Review emigration, a revival of the nineteenth century migrations, was of Gastarbeiter migrants, mostly to Germany, which was encouraged by socialist Yugoslavia from the 1960s. Brunnbauer finds that internal emigration was a common feature of Balkan life, but that the overseas emigration from the Balkans was mainly a phenomenon of the last three decades before First World War, with the US being the main destination. Several factors contributed to this exodus: an intensifying agricultural crisis, and lack of industrialization, increasing population growth and the lowering of costs of transAtlantic journeys. Between 1876 and 1910, 1.5 million people emigrated from Austria-Hungary to the US. These were mostly illiterate emigrants, unlike earlier ones from Germany, Britain and Scandinavia. The destinations were Ohio, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Early immigrants encouraged later ones to join them. Most of the Balkan emigrants were young men without wives and children. With the rapidly increasing number of travellers, steamship companies boomed. A line from Bremen transported 60,000 to 80,000 passengers a year on journeys of only 7–8 days to New York. The companies started recruiting in Europe. For Munro’s emigrant subjects, most were forced due to the hostilities, and often terrible suffering, in the republics of former-Yugoslavia during the 1990s, particularly those from Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo (though theses get little mention) and Serbia. She found that many from Serbia expected a welcome in Britain due to the historic ties from as far back as the First World War; but found instead that they were stigmatized as ‘the baddies’ of the wars of the 1990s, several feeling it necessary to hide their origin and claim to be Yugoslav. This was also the choice of those who opposed the Serbian policies under Milošević. Serbs already settled in the UK worked hard to dispel the bad name that Serbs earned through the 1990s. Statistics in the UK were not strictly kept concerning which former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia these new emigrants came from, although the Slovenian Embassy required by law that its diaspora members register there; thus Munro is able to state that at the time of writing there were 530 permanent Slovenian residents and approximately 3,000 less permanent, many students. Of her respondent group, which she states were ‘on the whole’ highly educated, 20% claimed to be Yugoslav, 24% Serb, 22% Croatian and only 7% Kosovar (but in noting where she advertised to attract participants in the study, although she lists churches, she does not list mosques. Kosovars were 90% Muslim) Where numbers of Serbs are given, these could be from any of the former 118 Central and Eastern European Review Federal Republics, as well as many second or even third generation Serbs, whereas most of the Bosnians and Kosovars interviewed had come to Britain directly as a result of the 1990s conflicts. Serbs are found to have come in three waves, first fleeing Communism following the Second World War, secondly as economic migrants, during the 1970s and ‘80s, the third wave fleeing either the draft of the conflicts of the 1990s. This last wave, as all others from former-Yugoslavia at the time faced multiple worries, the trauma of their leaving, the worries for those left behind and the uncertainty of their status in the UK, and even for dependents who might be excluded from entry to the UK. Munro found the Serb community in the UK is much more strongly established, with cohesive cultural, political and even religious associations, than the other ethnicities. She notes also that Crown Prince Alexander II (by virtue of being a descendant of Queen Victoria) was baptized at Westminster Abbey, with King George VI and then Princess Elizabeth as godparents Brunnbauer devotes a chapter to ‘Making a Living in America’. He notes that in the years 1899-1910, 116,255 migrants were barred from entry to the US, most usually as ‘paupers’ (having less than the common $20 or so, that was the average that South East Europeans brought with them). Others barred were those found to have dangerous contagious diseases or were contract labourers. The US Dillingham Commission compiled a report in 41 volumes, each of several hundreds, even over a thousand pages resulting from numerous research projects on the subject of the sending countries of South Eastern Europe and their adaptation to life in the US. Other source materials for the study of the lives of these migrants are the multitude of newspapers in their native languages, and social and religious associations. Greek departures back to Europe just before the First World War, were the highest, at 57%, whereas Nordic countries registered only about l0 % returns. Brunnbauer finds that while migrants arriving before the First World War came with the intention of returning home (though many in fact returned to the US with wives and children), those who arrived between 1920–24 intended to remain permanently. An Act of 1917 introduced a literacy test for all newcomers over 16 years old, and the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 set limits on acceptable numbers according to country of origin. In the period 1921–40 the migration flow lessened with a total of about 60,000 from Greece and 2,000 from Albania. Munro’s book takes up from where Brunnbauers ends, concerning herself specifically with emigrants from the former-Yugoslavia following its disintegration in 119 Central and Eastern European Review the l990s. Her study is based on her Ph.D work in London, where she interviewed 179 migrants from the former Yugoslavia, seeking to find what could be considered as the articulation of transnational practices and activities (or their absence) and transnationalism as expressed through transnational identities, affiliations and other expressions of transnationality. The author found a lack of literature on the migrants’ nuanced experiences, though one stands out: she refers several times to Vesna Goldsworthy’s Chernobyl Strawberries (2005). Munro admits that in her call for participants in her project, she had (inadvertently?) framed it in such a way that in fact it would not be of interest to Kosovar Albanians, and thus she has very little input from this quite large population in the UK. This author gives her explanation for the use of the word transnationalism, claiming that it was introduced into main lexicons of migration scholarship in the 1990s, as a concept broadly referring to a social process in which migrants establish social fields that cross geographic, cultural and political borders, though she admits that most of her respondents did not use the term. Munro also discusses the various attitudes of those left at home to the emigres: some are impressed by their wealth and contributions to the families in the place of origin, while others feel disdain or even animosity that the emigres didn’t take their part in the conflicts from which they fled. Munro also found that those who claimed Yugoslav nationality were more easily accepted in the UK than if they claimed to be Serb, Croatian, Bosnian, etc., on the grounds that Yugoslavia no longer existed. Bosnians, as the most divided of the Federal Republics, have the hardest time to mix with former-Yugoslavs; as one interviewee said: ‘they can’t all have been army cooks!’ But all emigrant interviewees expressed guilt to some degree, towards their children, for forcing them away from their homes, families and friends and uprooting their lives; and towards their parents whom they left behind. Some found the terms ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ to be disparaging. A further chapter in Brunnbauer’s book is devoted to ‘The Politics of Emigration’, an issue which the author notes to be a relatively new field of research. He starts by telling of the letter written by the Foreign Minister of Montenegro in November, 1913 highlighting the need to address the high rate of emigration. Several European countries introduced laws concerning emigration at the turn of the twentieth century, with particular concern about losing potential conscripts. On the other hand, advantage was seen in terms of finance that emigrants would send home. A hostel for 120 Central and Eastern European Review emigrants was built to accommodate up to 2,000, in Fiume in 1906, since this was the port from which a large proportion of Balkan emigrants sailed. Brunnbauer analyses the situation for Austria—whose Central Office for the Monitoring of Emigration was the first centralized state organ in the country dealing with emigration. With a population of only 300,000 recorded in Serbia in 1818, the country encouraged emigration from other Balkan countries. The year 1907 was the year of record emigration to the US, among them were 17,000 Bulgarians. The business for emigration agents grew and became very competitive, with provision of rail transfers for those coming from far afield. Most Macedonians left from Thessalonika, many of whom emigrated to Australia. A further chapter analyses emigration in the interwar period, and the part of nationalism and the state, showing Croatia to be the most interactive with their diaspora citizens. They created an Emigration Museum in Zagreb (in 1933 as noted on p. 209, but in 1936 on p.234), and another in Split in 1937, with the aim of entrenching Croatian and Yugoslav identity on the public consciousness. By 1939 it was estimated that there were about a million Croatian emigrants. With shifting borders during this period, emphasis was placed on common culture. Returnees were received with varying degrees of welcome or acceptance, while political considerations were in flux. For example Hungary did not welcome the return of Slovak migrants. About one tenth of the Hungarian population living in Yugoslavia after the First World War, left and did not return. Between 64,000 and 78,000 Muslims left ‘Southern Serbia’ (mainly Kosovo) for Turkey with exemption from an emigration fee (the author does not indicate any greater pressure on these emigrants, other than to mention that they were not permitted to return—the usual explanation describes much greater force placed on these Muslims). These emigrants were replaced by 22,000 Serbian families settled (half of them in Kosovo). In 1925 the captain of the district of Bitola in Macedonia stopped issuing passports to local Slavs since, he argued, they were using them to travel to Bulgaria and joining anti-Yugoslav organizations. Between 1918 and 1930, emigrants sent to Yugoslavia between $13 and $20 million annually, but after 1930 this declined due to the economic depression. It was during this period also that ethno-national associations developed and grew. A chapter is devoted to Emigration during the Communist era. In 1958 the Council for Emigration Questions was set up. It identified 1.5 million (plus 3 million family members) living abroad (140,000 Muslims had moved to Turkey in the 1950s: 121 Central and Eastern European Review again Brunnbauer makes no mention of this being by force). The author points out that there has not yet been a comprehensive study of the Yugoslav gastarbeiter experience during the 1960s and 1970s. At the end of the Second World War, 2,000 penniless emigrant families returned from Australia and were supported by the Yugoslav state, though many were housed in barracks. The Australian and Canadian governments attempted to impede these returns, by restricting the amount of money they could take with them. By 1965 there were about 50,000 Macedonians in Australia, mostly in Melbourne. The return of pro-Yugoslav emigrants from the US, left such support bereft of leaders there; thus the nationalist organizations thrived without pro-Yugoslav reaction in the country. However the Yugoslav Secret Police carried out murders of such anti-communists—in Germany as many as 60 such murders were recorded. Croatia and Slovenia established special sections for emigration returnees, nearly 12,000 to Croatia by 1952, though nearly half of these returned to their places of emigration by 1960, 1,250 Croatian Catholic clergymen lived abroad. The government had failed to attract back to Yugoslavia the skilled workers it hoped for, the repatriates tended to be the older poorer people. During the 1950s and 1960s Matica associations developed in the diasporas, each Republic of Yugoslavia was represented. At the same time the numbers of Yugoslavs visiting foreign countries doubled. Tito encouraged the return of Yugoslavs who wished to be in their homeland before they died. This chapter concludes: ‘Migration was thus one of the forces that changed the state-society nexus of Yugoslav socialism’. In the 1980s and 1990s, while Kosovars had no diplomatic representation in the UK, the Albanian Koha café in London served as a centre for their community, and remains a lively hub. The British-Croatian Society in London organized a festival celebrating accession to the EU in 2013 with exhibitions, theatre, conferences, etc. Munro found that religious affiliation was of less importance to migrants from the former Yugoslav republics, than it is in their homelands. In his concluding chapter, Brunnbauer notes that whereas the great migration from the regions of former Yugoslavia went to the US and Australia, in the 1970s the mass emigration went to work in other parts of Europe, with about 5% of their population abroad, returning to build new homes. From Bulgaria, about 350,000 Muslims avoided forced assimilation by fleeing to Turkey. Brunnbauer also claims that by 2009, 45% of the population of Albania lived abroad (this is supported by the fact that Albania’s population fluctuated only by about half a million of its three to 122 Central and Eastern European Review three and a half million between 1991 and 2011. However a high proportion of recently emigrated Kosovar Albanians live in the many diasporas). An aspect of emigrant life which Brunnbauer gives less focus to, is the place of dreams/visions for the future; Munro devotes a chapter to ‘intangible transnationalisms—the allegory of dreams’, as motivators for their moves, or the bad dreams resulting from trauma of forced migration. Here she finds that women are more open than men, to request counselling; and that older emigrants were more likely to be ‘trapped in a state of extreme transnationalism’ (or post-nationalism) less able to adapt to the new environment than younger emigrants. Brunnbauer’s book is very fully referenced and uses numerous tables to clarify the text. Three particularly relevant authors’ works are not mentioned however: John Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, Hurst, 2000; April Carter, Democratic Reform in Yugoslavia: The Changing Role of the Party, 1982; Howard Clark, Civil Resistance in Kosovo, 2000. Munro gives her references at the end of each chapter, with very little overlap of references—but it would be much more useful for the reader to have these all together at the end of the book. About the reviewer Antonia Young is Honorary Research Fellow in the Division of Peace and International Development, University of Bradford, UK. She is also Research Associate at Colgate University, New York. Her email address is a.t.i.young@bradford 123