Suchergebnisse

This book analyzes the causes and long-term social and economic effects of overseas emigration from Southeastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author argues that such emigration has repeatedly attracted the attention of policymakers who exploit it for state development goals.

Abstract
What happens if historical daydreams derail the vector of European integration? The latest round in the dispute between Bulgaria and North Macedonia provides an insight. This analysis discusses Bulgaria's veto on European Union (EU) accession talks with North Macedonia, first declared in 2019, and its manifold consequences. Bulgaria tied its consent to North Macedonia's accession to the EU with the country first capitulating to Bulgarian demands concerning its history and identity. This revived arguments from the 1960s and 1970s. Bulgaria's demands led to a nationalist counter-reaction in North Macedonia, while at the same time complicating the work of a joint expert commission on shared history established in 2017. The author highlights the unenviable nature of the position of the Macedonian members in the commission, caught as they are between their academic ethos and the diplomatic priorities of their country. The analysis concludes with remarks on the implications for the EU of Bulgaria's "phantom pains" over Macedonia.

Neither migrants nor minorities always behave the way their governments want them to. This reality is a lesson that Yugoslavia, in both its embodiments, frequently made—amplified by the fact that both the interwar kingdom and the post-war communist regime pursued ambitious nation-building projects. These projects addressed not only the domestic population but also emigrants coming from its territory. In a region where minority issues and migration intersected in complex ways, such projects could go only wrong, one might have predicted. And they often did when policymakers and local bureaucrats struggled with inherently contradictory agendas.

Neither migrants nor minorities always behave the way their governments want them to. This reality is a lesson that Yugoslavia, in both its embodiments, frequently made—amplified by the fact that both the interwar kingdom and the post-war communist regime pursued ambitious nation-building projects. These projects addressed not only the domestic population but also emigrants coming from its territory. In a region where minority issues and migration intersected in complex ways, such projects could go only wrong, one might have predicted. And they often did when policymakers and local bureaucrats struggled with inherently contradictory agendas.