Spaces of Movement and of Control: Migrants and the State in 20th-century Southeastern Europe
Ulf Brunnbauer (U Regensburg)
Abstract
“Spatialization is a central dimension of social actions. Spaces are being made by people.” – So reads the programmatic statement of the SFB 1199 “Processes of Spatialization” in Leipzig. But what happens if spaces of social and political action are not congruent? In my talk I will discuss the responses of 20th-century Southeastern European governments to the fact that the societies, over which they claimed sovereignty, were characterized by transnational social interactions, i.e. relations that reached beyond their sovereign purview. Political regimes with different ideological outlooks attempted to make identity and decision space congruent, even though some of those whom they claimed as citizens lived abroad. Such strategies included long-distance nation-building – not by the “diaspora” but by the state – as well as attempts to control migration. These practices of trans-territorial politics were motivated not only by ideational concerns but also by more mundane, material ones: emigrants were (and still are) a vital source of income for Southeastern European economies, so governments felt that they should keep them loyal. But who actually were “our” emigrants? These questions will be discussed mainly in relation to the example of Yugoslavia in its different incarnations.
Biographical Note
Prof. Dr. Ulf Brunnbauer (University of Regensburg, Germany)
Ulf Brunnbauer is the managing director of the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (U Regensburg, Germany) and holds a chair for Southeast and East European History at the University of Regensburg. He is also the co-speaker of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies (U Regensburg and LMU Munich, Germany). His research deals with the anthropology and social history of Southeastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of migration in the Balkans, Muslim minorities in the Balkans, as well as historical family research (especially in Bulgaria).