In this empirically rich and beautifully written book, Le Normand explores how the Yugoslav state engaged with its citizens employed in western Europe in the 1960s and 70s. Focusing primarily on Croatian migrants, Le Normand shows that migrants were not passive recipients of Yugoslav propaganda but rather actively participated in communications with the Yugoslav state. The book also shows that homeland was differently defined and promoted by diverse actors at the federal, national, and local state levels. Accordingly, Le Normand shows that the transnational relation between Yugoslav migrants and the homeland was not a coherent whole. To do so, Le Normand offers an in-depth analysis of a broad range of primary sources, each of which explores one transnational tie, making it a methodologically innovative book.
The book is divided in two parts. The first part, entitled “Seeing Migrants,” is comprised of Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 explains that the Yugoslav authorities perceived migrants as an integral part of the Yugoslav community. The migrants were temporarily absent and needed to be constantly measured and monitored through collection and analysis of statistical data and surveys. This chapter also examines the Croatian Spring in some detail to show how labor emigration was seen as a Croat national problem by the Croat national movement and Croatian reformists at the turn of the 1970s. Chapter 3 is concerned with representations of labor migrants in both feature and documentary films. It shows how filmmakers were deeply engaged with the reasons for labor migration and its negative impact on families and communities. While both state authorities and filmmakers tended to deny agency to migrants, filmmakers also victimized them to denounce the failure of Yugoslav modernity.
Entitled “Building Ties,” the second part of the book is comprised of six chapters that provide examples of the multiple ways in which migrants engaged with different understandings of homeland promoted at different Yugoslav administrative levels. Chapter 4 shows that the radio program To Our Citizens of the World, broadcast by Radio Zagreb, promoted a Yugoslav sense of belonging from below through readings of migrants’ letters, broadcasting popular songs, and delivering practical information that connected the everyday life of Yugoslavs abroad and at home. Chapter 5 contraposes the “apolitical pan-Yugoslav concept of homeland” (135) promoted by the radio program To Our Citizens of the World with the local newspaper Imotska Krajina, which linked the promotion of local identity to support for the idea of homeland advocated by the Croat national movement. Chapter 7 also deals with the impact of the Croatian Spring on Croat migrants’ relations with the Yugoslav political project. It analyzes the results of a survey conducted among Yugoslav labor migrants during the Croatian Spring to demonstrate how migrants re-elaborated arguments made by pro-Yugoslav and Croat nationalist forces, through their own experiences of employment abroad. Chapter 6 focuses on club associations as places that served the state to control Yugoslav migrants but also empowered migrants’ self-initiative in building Yugoslav communities abroad. Chapters 8 and 9 shed light on the Yugoslav identity of the second generation by analyzing the conception and implementation of education programs as well as their achievements. It pays particular attention to the multitasking of teachers and to Yugoslav identity as it was promoted in the common schoolbook Moja Domovina SFRJ.
The short conclusion briefly summarizes findings by chapter and offers a one-page list of questions for further research. Perhaps more reference to the big questions that the book tackled could have been usefully reiterated here.
Overall, this book has many merits. It offers a vivid and nuanced picture of the difficult choices faced by a state seeking to govern its citizens abroad and of the mixed feelings about the homeland that its citizens abroad developed. A range of original primary sources is used, which is to be commended, and the study sheds light on female migrants, who remain poorly studied. Given the centrality of (workers’) self-management to Yugoslav socialism, it is surprising that it received little attention in a book about migrant workers. In spite of this, the book is an important contribution to the scholarship on socialist Yugoslavia and its migration. It will be of great interest and inspiration well beyond Yugoslav studies, in a world in which international labor migration continues to be an important phenomenon.
