Globalizing Southeastern Europe

At the end of the nineteenth century, Southeastern Europe became a prime sending region of emigrants to overseas countries, in particular the United States. This massive movement of people ended in 1914 but remained consequential long thereafter, as emigration had created networks, memories, and attitudes that shaped social and political practices in Southeastern Europe long after the emigrants had left. This book’s main concern is to reconstruct the political and socioeconomic impact of emigration on Southeastern Europe. In contrast to migration studies’ traditional focus on immigration, this book concentrates on the sending countries. The author provides a comparative analysis of the socioeconomic causes and consequences of emigration and argues that migrant networks and emulation effects were crucial for the persistence of migration inclinations. It also brings the state back in the emigration story and discusses political responses towards emigration by governments in the region before 1914. Emigration policy became closely aligned with nation-building and social engineering. These stances continued even after emigration had subsided: interwar Yugoslavia, which is studied in detail, tried to create a Yugoslav “diaspora” in America by turning emigrants from its territory into expatriate citizens. Hence, a nationalizing state exploited transnational linkages. The book closes with the emigration policies of communist Yugoslavia until the early 1960s,when experiments and experiences of the government were crucial for its eventual decision to liberalize labor migration to the West (the only communist government to do so). A paramount reason for this was the fact that emigrants, both as a place of memory and a source of remittances, continued to be significant. This book therefore presents emigration as a complex social phenomenon that requires a multifaceted historical approach in order to reveal the effects of migration on different temporal and spatial scales.

Brunnbauer offers a history of emigration from Southeastern Europe that provides insightful connections between Balkan diasporas in North America, nationalist movements, and state policies. He argues convincingly that emigration from Southeastern Europe was an essential part of socioeconomic development for the region and a justification for a raft of government policies. The impact of the state policies stressed in this work often had great continuity among imperial, national, and communist governments. Further, the transnational character of Southeastern European emigration is shown by the large-scale movements out of the region and the frequent return of migrants. This counters the notion of Southeastern Europe as isolated and provincial. Using archival material of the successor states of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria along with a wide variety of secondary literature, Brunnbauer firmly supports his ideas. Several maps, tables, and illustrations further buttress the work. Principally focused on the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, the author also incorporates examples from Greece, Albania, and Romania, although he draws these principally from secondary sources. This work shows that emigration and return become essential in understanding the development of modern Southeastern Europe. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above., This is an interesting, well-researched and well-documented volume dealing withoverseas out-migration from southeastern Europe from about 1860 to the early 1960s. There are many reasons why this work should be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of scholars interested in migration and in southeast Europe., In this stimulating new book, Regensburg history professor Ulf Brunnbauer has managed to cover the issues of migrants, sending regions, receiving countries, intervening agents and agencies, as well as bureaucrats and policy-makers, each of which have often been treated separately in previous studies on immigration. . . . Brunnbauer references an enormous volume of literature, including less known writings and never before seen archival materials. He pays special attention to factual information and valuable statistics, but also puts a human face on the many actors involved in migration besides the migrants themselves., Appearing with almost uncanny prescience at this critical and alarming moment of migration crisis, Globalizing Southeastern Europe is a pioneering work. It overturns the widely held assumption that international mass migration is a post-1945 phenomenon by painting a broad picture of overseas migration from the Balkans over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It upends the usual conventions privileging immigration over emigration, and focuses instead on the impact of emigration on Southeastern European societies. By demonstrating that structurally the region was and has remained defined as an emigration area, it questions the usual stereotype of the static and isolated Balkans. One of the author’s bold conclusions is that no other part of Europe has displayed such a high level of migration activity. Deftly moving between aggregate numbers and personal stories, as well as between different levels of analysis from economy to culture, the book problematizes the relationship between migration, state-building, and nationalism. While it focuses mostly on Yugoslavia, it lays out a sophisticated methodological foundation that charts important directions and will serve as an inspiration for future creative research., This book is about migration from the Balkans, but it is as important and interesting for historians of Europe or world historians. The focus on the countries of departure is well-founded and enhances the most recent trends in migration history. The book also combines various levels of analysis, from micro to macro, individual stories and structural changes, in the very best way.

Ulf Brunnbauer is director of the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies and chair of Southeast and East European History at the University of Regensburg.