This is an interesting, well-researched and well-documented volume dealing with overseas 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 contrast to the prevailing tendency in migration studies, the book pays less attention to what happened to immigrants in their new homes and focuses instead on the impact of mass emigration on the sending countries. Moving well beyond the scope of traditional push and pull factors, migration is treated as a multidimensional social and political phenomenon in which, apart from the economy, we need to take into account the role of village and regional networks, local traditions, individual agency, state policies, and the transnational operations of intermediaries.
Drawing on a wealth of archival sources as well as unexplored secondary sources, the author weaves together three different levels of analyses. At the micro level, personal stories highlight the individual experience of emigration, the level of agency, but also the constraints and disappointments. Such personal documents are retrieved from archives or from oral histories, such as the story of an unnamed Greek peddler recorded as early as 1906 (95). Some of the most harassing stories describe the plight of Croatian emigrants to Brazil who were cheated by emigration agents. Instead of receiving land and tax relief, they had to work like slaves on plantations and were repatriated without a penny at state expense (185–90). Such narratives are a powerful corrective for the many “success stories” emigrants sent home.
The macro level describes the migratory movements both within the region and overseas and the global consequences of emigration on the societies of southeastern Europe. More importantly, it analyzes in detail the role of the state in elaborating emigration policies that served best the purpose of nation building. The comparative approach of the politics of emigration in individual countries reveals underlying conceptualizations of the nation and how these changed over time (for example from a territorial notion to a deterritorialized transnational one). It also reveals how closely emigration policies are connected with nationalism and ethnic homogenization strategies. Especially the Yugoslav archives clearly show how states could achieve such homogenization by facilitating the emigration of undesirable ethnic or religious groups, while restricting the emigration of the desirable ones. Finally, the macro level also shows the role of the state in creating a loyal diaspora through emigrant newspapers and associations abroad.
Between the macro-level of state policies and the micro-level of personal experience lies a vast transnational social space populated by shipping companies, emigration agents, local officials, and state bureaucrats mediating between the top and the bottom of the migration process. This is the meso-level of analysis and the author illustrates the multiple ways in which this intermediate social space affects both those who migrate and those who stay (7). The volume contains valuable information about the often illegal practices used by shipping companies and their thousands of agents across the region to help prospective migrants to circumvent legal restrictions or simply to exploit them. A showcase was the notorious Greek “padrone” system, whereby Greek emigration agents exploited clientelist relations to recruit under-aged boys for Greek-controlled businesses in the U.S. (shoe-shining and fruit peddling), extorting money from their parents. When the American authorities found out about these illegal practices, the Greek agents simply hired fake fathers in America to meet the boys at their arrival (102–3). The examples from the myriads of intermediaries involved in the migration business since the late 19th century provide strong arguments to show that human trafficking, illegal trade in passports, and exploitation of would-be migrants are not recent phenomena. In fact, as the author argues, illegal practices are a direct consequence of legal restrictions imposed by the state: “It is the state that creates illegal migrants.”
The advantage of the historical approach that structures the book—moving from the first period of mass migration to America until 1914 (Chapters 2–4), to the interwar period (Chapter 5), and then to the specific case of postwar communist Yugoslavia (Chapter 6)—lies in its power to challenge received ideas about the “unprecedented” nature of contemporary migration, as well as the public fears often associated with it.
