Books by Sara Bernard
Harrassowitz , 2019
The temporary employment of Yugoslav citizens in Western countries was one of the most important ... more The temporary employment of Yugoslav citizens in Western countries was one of the most important migration phenomena in socialist Yugoslavia. In the early 1970s, one in every four Yugoslavs employed outside of agriculture and craft work was a Gastarbeiter. Yet, while the study of the Yugoslav Gastarbeiter emigration has received much scholarly attention, the overall numbers and dynamics of Gastarbeiter return migration have remained under-researched.
This book offers a major contribution to fill this gap. It draws on fresh political documents from the archives, the press, statistical data, contemporary sociological research, audio-visual materials, novels, and oral history interviews. It shows that the impact of the Gastarbeiter return migration on development policies, social change, and narratives of identity was much more extensive than what has been recognised so far. In particular, analysing changes in migration patterns and policies in the period 1965-1991, this book argues that the return and reintegration of Gastarbeiter generated political divisions and social tensions on a much larger scale than had their employment abroad. It maintains that, during the crisis period of the 1980s, the increase of return migration put strains on the domestic labour market, contributing to the crisis of the federal system, and the ‘ethnicisation’ of migration policies
Journal Articles by Sara Bernard
Labor History, 2023
For a long time, research on international migration during the Cold War maintained that a rigid ... more For a long time, research on international migration during the Cold War maintained that a rigid distinction existed between political emigration, generated by the ideological conflict between liberalism and communism, and labour migration, which was determined by transformations in the capitalist world economy. This article challenges that assumption on several grounds. It starts from the premise that the Cold War was primarily a competition between the capitalist and communist projects of development. It ascribes to this rivalry the establishment of the international system regulating migration as a terrain of ideological confrontation in the early postwar period, and its evolution into one of convergence over development strategies since the 1970s. It reviews both the literature on labour migration to/in Western Europe and the recent studies exploring how socialist Europe also relied on foreign labour recruitment to achieve development. It brings these findings in conversation with research that examines the expansion of economic cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe during the long 1970s. It shows that, in this context, the distinction between economic migrant and political refugee continued to justify the erection of wired walls, this time between an enlarging European Union and the Global South.
Migration Letters, 2022
While the search for (better) employment and the uneven distribution of wealth are among the prin... more While the search for (better) employment and the uneven distribution of wealth are among the principal triggers of migration worldwide, migration is often discussed as a humanitarian emergency, a social and a security problem, but rarely as a labour issue. This paper aims to foster debate on the interconnectedness of migration and labour history. Re-reading migration and labour history by exploring their interconnectedness is crucial to overcoming Eurocentric and nation-state centric approaches to labour and migration history. This paper discusses the findings of papers presented at two events organised by the ELHN Working Group Labour Migration History in 2021. The first part suggests new lines of inquiry which critically reassess Western-centric understandings and experiences of labour migration during the Cold War. The second part argues in favour of cross-disciplinary study of relations between migration, workers, and the state firmly contextualised as part of global processes of change.
National Identities, 2019
The extensive Yugoslav economic migration and presence of Yugoslav ethnic minorities in Western E... more The extensive Yugoslav economic migration and presence of Yugoslav ethnic minorities in Western Europe, as well as the interaction of this migration with the Yugoslav crisis of the 1980s, remain under-researched. This article sets out to offer a modest contribution on this neglected topic. It argues that short-distance transnational communities and short-term migration were already at the centre of grievances articulated on ethno-nationalist grounds in the early 1980s. It links these grievances to the different impact of the two oil shocks and the process of European integration on each Yugoslav republic, differences which contributed to the crisis of federal unity.
This article analyses the (ab)uses of the category of emergency in Italian migration policies in ... more This article analyses the (ab)uses of the category of emergency in Italian migration policies in dealing with the increasing presence of foreign labour migrants in Italian economy and society, focusing on the period of the early 2000s. It explores its causes from a historical perspective by showing how despite Italian institutional actors have encountered migrant workers since the 1960s, it was only in the second half of the 1980s that a legal definition of “migrant” was introduced, substituting the only juridical definition of “foreigner” which existed in the Italian legal system and which was inherited from the Fascist laws of 1931. The article compares continuities and changes in the evolution of Italian migration law and policies toward migrants legally and illegally residing in Italy since the 1990s, by critically assessing approaches of the Italian Left and Right, the role of the EU laws on free movement of foreign citizens and the growing engagement of regional institutional bodies and local administrations. It then presents one of the several emergencies concerning the presence of migrant population in Italian cities in the 2000s by focusing on the city of Bologna and more in particular the Scalo Internazionale Migranti. Scalo Internationale Migranti was born in October 2002 and it defined the heterogeneous group composed by migrants of Romanian nationality, local activists in different political organisations and charity organisations’ members, which squatted an abandoned building owned by the Italian national Railways. The articles shortly narrates the activities which the Scalo Internazionale Migranti carried out and the reaction of the local authorities and press from its establishment to its end in March 2005, when the building was evacuated.
Book Chapters by Sara Bernard
[Publication in Italian] Questo capitolo esamina la migrazione dei lavoratori jugoslavi in Italia... more [Publication in Italian] Questo capitolo esamina la migrazione dei lavoratori jugoslavi in Italia conuna speciale attenzione alla questione di genere. Ne analizza gli sviluppi principali durante la Guerra fredda e ne tratteggia alcune delle continuità e discontinuità durante e dopo le guerre degli anni Novanta. Lo scopo è quello di proporre una analisi preliminare di un fenomeno che rimane poco conosciuto e poco studiato. Questa lacuna non fa giustizia all’importanza che la presenza di lavoratori jugoslavi – e più in generale la questione del lavoro – ha svolto nelle relazioni tra Italia e Jugoslavia nel secondo dopoguerra. La migrazione dei lavoratori jugoslavi in Italia è stata un fenomeno complesso in cui si sono intrecciati molteplici fattori economici e politici, i quali hanno svolto un ruolo diverso nelle realtà locali, regionali e nazionali, e hanno coinvolto una varietà di attori, istituzionali e non.
Remittances as Social Practices and Agents of Change. The Future of Transnational Society, Palgrave, open access ebook, 2023
Labor migration and the remittances it produces have long been an essential aspect of socioeconom... more Labor migration and the remittances it produces have long been an essential aspect of socioeconomic and political change in the region of former Yugoslavia. During socialism, guest worker migration affected a significant proportion of the population. Along with the inbound tourism to the Yugoslav seaside, the migration of guest workers generated the most significant inflow of hard currency to socialist Yugoslavia. Migrants' remittances, however, went far and beyond foreign currency deposits in Yugoslav bank accounts. Migrant workers often visited their home villages with savings, consumer goods, tools, and ideas acquired abroad; they built houses,
Routledge, 2022
After the split with Stalin (1948), Yugoslavia took a turn in its internal and external policies ... more After the split with Stalin (1948), Yugoslavia took a turn in its internal and external policies which meant developing its own road to socialism. In foreign relations, Belgrade adopted a policy of neutrality in the competition between the West and the East. Within this context, alliances in the Global South became vital to make Yugoslav socialism a viable alternative to bloc politics. As one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement, Yugoslavia gained leverage in international negotiations and created opportunities to bolster economic cooperation which could reduce its dependence on the superpower blocs.
This contribution offers insight into Yugoslav attempts to establish cooperation in South America in the 1950s and 1960s, a topic which remains largely under-researched. Drawing mainly from archival sources, from the economic press and from technical reports, this contribution will investigate (the effectiveness of) Yugoslav policies towards old and new diasporas in the country’s pursuit of cooperation in the Southern Cone. Old diasporas were often constituted by economic migrants who arrived in the New Continent in search of economic opportunities, mostly at the turn of the century, while new diasporas included many political emigres who arrived after the Second World War and developed a strong oppositional activity from abroad to Yugoslav Communist authorities. Besides these, the contribution will also identify contemporary migration patterns that arose directly out of the forms of cooperation that Yugoslavia did manage to establish in the Southern Cone in the early Cold War.
Caroline Hornstein Tomic, Robert Pichler, Sarah Scholl-Schneider (eds.):Remigration to post-socialist Europe: Hopes and Realities of Return, LIT Verlag, 2018
This book chapter elaborates on the legacies of migration experiences in socialism Yugoslavia in ... more This book chapter elaborates on the legacies of migration experiences in socialism Yugoslavia in the post-Yugoslav era. The case under analysis is Serbia and the main sources are the narratives of six returnees who left socialist Yugoslavia for temporary employment abroad and returned before and after the country’s collapse.
Papers by Sara Bernard
This paper provides a succinct and critical overview of the history of the car factory Zastava an... more This paper provides a succinct and critical overview of the history of the car factory Zastava and its cooperation with the Italian car factory Fiat since the 1950s up to the long-lasting negotiation for the acquisition of Zastava by Fiat in the 2000s.
Book Reviews by Sara Bernard
H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. , 2024
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60415
Human mobilities are complex and adaptable to change, but the categories used by state institutio... more Human mobilities are complex and adaptable to change, but the categories used by state institutions to regulate and control migration patterns largely ignore the changing and fluid nature of migration patterns. Although many studies on migration in the last few decades have critically addressed these discrepancies, very few of them have had as their primary goal the thorough analysis of the multiple ways in which different types of mobility are interconnected. In this far reaching analysis, Annemarie S t e i d l does just that. Focusing on the case study of the Habsburg Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, St. provides an innovative and meticulous study which convincingly shows that human mobility should be studied, and is best understood when different migration patterns (long-term and short-term, seasonal and permanent, domestic and international) are explored not as separate and independent from one another, but rather as integrated migration systems. In particular, St. shows that despite the spread of transoceanic migration in the Dual Monarchy in the 1880s, which has received great attention from migration historians, it still occurred less frequently than migrations within the empire and the European continent. These latter migrations have, however, been under-researched. Moreover, transoceanic migration did not simply replace preexisting migration patterns, but rather accompanied and transformed them. This web of interconnectedness was evident at the regional level, which, St. duly asserts, was and remains the best level at which to analyze human mobility and appreciate the dynamics which shape systems of migration at the macro, meso and micro levels. To pursue her argument, St. provides a meticulous and critical analysis of a wide array of administrative sources: from Austrian and Hungarian statistics on internal migration and international population movement (1869 to 1918), census data from neighboring states to ship passenger records from Bremen and Hamburg to New York and local surveys. She explains the choice of the sources, the methodological problems they posed and the ways in which she has tried to extrapolate from these sources information regarding movements which were not recorded. The result is a nuanced picture which details not only the very different migration systems and policies which characterized the two entities of the Dual Monarchy but also regional and local communities within each of them. The rich empirical findings are brought into conversation with the relevant secondary literature on migration in the Dual Monarchy and, most importantly, in other European countries. The book includes visual representations of the mobilities it analyzes in the form of graphs and cartographic maps. St. correctly argues that "there are some questions that can only answered by numbers" (p. 16). Indeed, numbers are very much present and are a key component of the narrative, without making it just enumerative. Statistics shows that social status of migrants mattered for the Habsburg empire. St. also shows them as defined by gender, age cohort, ethnicity, and social and economic statuses, are all present here. Above all, the author devotes great attention to women in migration by showing that they were much more present in international and long distance migration than is recognized in the scholarship, challenging a well-established stereotype according to which women are predominantly present in domestic and short-term migration. The book is organized in four thematic chapters. The first three chapters analyze internal, continental and transoceanic migration respectively. The fourth chapter explores ways in which these migration systems are interconnected. In Chapter 1, St. analyzes patterns of internal migration in Imperial Austria and in the Kingdom of Hungary. The chapter makes a convincing case for the importance which internal mobility had before and during the spread of transoceanic migration. Moreover, St. provides compelling examples of the varieties of internal migration, which challenge the urban-centric approach (p. 54) of migration research by showing that the importance of
Europe-Asia Studies 71(2019)3
Südosteuropa, 65 (2017), 1
sehepunkte, 17 (2017), 08-09
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Books by Sara Bernard
This book offers a major contribution to fill this gap. It draws on fresh political documents from the archives, the press, statistical data, contemporary sociological research, audio-visual materials, novels, and oral history interviews. It shows that the impact of the Gastarbeiter return migration on development policies, social change, and narratives of identity was much more extensive than what has been recognised so far. In particular, analysing changes in migration patterns and policies in the period 1965-1991, this book argues that the return and reintegration of Gastarbeiter generated political divisions and social tensions on a much larger scale than had their employment abroad. It maintains that, during the crisis period of the 1980s, the increase of return migration put strains on the domestic labour market, contributing to the crisis of the federal system, and the ‘ethnicisation’ of migration policies
Journal Articles by Sara Bernard
Book Chapters by Sara Bernard
This contribution offers insight into Yugoslav attempts to establish cooperation in South America in the 1950s and 1960s, a topic which remains largely under-researched. Drawing mainly from archival sources, from the economic press and from technical reports, this contribution will investigate (the effectiveness of) Yugoslav policies towards old and new diasporas in the country’s pursuit of cooperation in the Southern Cone. Old diasporas were often constituted by economic migrants who arrived in the New Continent in search of economic opportunities, mostly at the turn of the century, while new diasporas included many political emigres who arrived after the Second World War and developed a strong oppositional activity from abroad to Yugoslav Communist authorities. Besides these, the contribution will also identify contemporary migration patterns that arose directly out of the forms of cooperation that Yugoslavia did manage to establish in the Southern Cone in the early Cold War.
Papers by Sara Bernard
Book Reviews by Sara Bernard
This book offers a major contribution to fill this gap. It draws on fresh political documents from the archives, the press, statistical data, contemporary sociological research, audio-visual materials, novels, and oral history interviews. It shows that the impact of the Gastarbeiter return migration on development policies, social change, and narratives of identity was much more extensive than what has been recognised so far. In particular, analysing changes in migration patterns and policies in the period 1965-1991, this book argues that the return and reintegration of Gastarbeiter generated political divisions and social tensions on a much larger scale than had their employment abroad. It maintains that, during the crisis period of the 1980s, the increase of return migration put strains on the domestic labour market, contributing to the crisis of the federal system, and the ‘ethnicisation’ of migration policies
This contribution offers insight into Yugoslav attempts to establish cooperation in South America in the 1950s and 1960s, a topic which remains largely under-researched. Drawing mainly from archival sources, from the economic press and from technical reports, this contribution will investigate (the effectiveness of) Yugoslav policies towards old and new diasporas in the country’s pursuit of cooperation in the Southern Cone. Old diasporas were often constituted by economic migrants who arrived in the New Continent in search of economic opportunities, mostly at the turn of the century, while new diasporas included many political emigres who arrived after the Second World War and developed a strong oppositional activity from abroad to Yugoslav Communist authorities. Besides these, the contribution will also identify contemporary migration patterns that arose directly out of the forms of cooperation that Yugoslavia did manage to establish in the Southern Cone in the early Cold War.
You may be interested in in the European Labour History Network working group Migration History which has been established recently (January 2020).
The group aims to build an interdisciplinary network of scholars studying labour migration from a historical perspective. Its objective is to advance knowledge exchange and cooperation through meetings, workshops and conference sessions and to serve as an open space to discuss research projects and potential collaborative publications. The WG will promote collaboration between researchers working in different countries and support projects on labour migration produced in different languages and in less privileged (non)institutional settings. For more information see: https://socialhistoryportal.org/elhn/wg-migration. To join the group’s mailing list please email one of the group’s coordinators listed beliw and provide your name, institution (if any), email address and thematic focus/interest.
Best,
Rory Archer University of Konstanz/University of Graz ([email protected], [email protected])
Sara Bernard, University of Glasgow ([email protected])
Yannis G.S. Papadopoulos, University of Brasília ([email protected], [email protected])
Contributions can offer a long-term view or cover any period from the middle of the 19th century to the 2000s; and adopt a micro, meso or macro perspective. Proposals can focus on individual migrants, social groups or other subgroups. Proposals can offer comparisons between, or analysis of, economic migrants, political migrants, refugees, diasporas, exiles. Proposals can analyse or compare domestic and/or international migrants.
Please send an abstract of 300/500 words, a title and short bio by 15 July to [email protected]
You will receive a notification of acceptance by 31 August.