Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:45:48.794Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From the Balkans to Baghdad (via Baltimore): Labor Migration and the Routes of Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Keith Brown
Keith Brown*
Affiliation:
Watson Institute at Brown University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While scholars of the Balkans have frequently emphasized the importance of nationalism in the region, labor migration has long been a critical component of economic, social, and cultural life. In this article, Keith Brown examines the connections between two well-documented cases of the risks faced by long-distance migrants from the territory of the modern Republic of Macedonia, separated by a hundred years. Putting each case into its larger context—U.S. industrial expansion in the early 1900s, and U.S. military occupation in the early 2000s—Brown argues that the study of contemporary Macedonia demands attending to imperial and colonial histories that make clear the larger systems of power in which the country and its people have long been suspended.

Type
Challenging Crossroads: Macedonia in Global Perspective
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , Winter 2010 , pp. 816 - 834
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

The primary research on which this paper is based was conducted with the support of a fellowship from the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Earlier versions were presented at the Institute and at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. I am grateful to audiences at these venues and to the participants at the conference "Re-Thinking Crossroads: Macedonia in Global Context" organized by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies at the University of Chicago for their feedback, especially Victor Friedman and Susan L. Woodward. I would also like to thank Catherine Lutz, Jane Cowan, and Ann Laura Stoler for their close readings and encouragement.

1. The letter is in the employment record of John Grgurevich at the Civilian Personnel Records in St. Louis, Ohio: File number 53000/599, Drawer 124.

2. Associated Press, “Iraq: ‘Missing Men Are Dead,'” 22 October 2004, at www.news 24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0?2-10-1460_1609433,00.html (last accessed 1 September 2010).

3. Stoler, Ann Laura, “Intimidations of Empire: Predicaments of the Tactile and the Unseen,” in Stoler, Ann Laura, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham, 2006), 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. For the Macedonian question in northern Greece, see Agelopoulos, Giorgos, “Mothers of the Nation: Gender and Ethnicity in Rural Greek Macedonia,” Anthropology of Ethnicity: A Critical Review 4 (1994): 1–14;Google Scholar Karakasidou, Anastasia, “Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 11, no. 1 (March 1993): 1–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karakasidou, Anastasia, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990 (Chicago, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paschalina Sistani, “Native Dilemmas: Histories, Memories and Identities in ‘Macedonia'” (D.Phil thesis, University of Bristol, 2004); and a number of contributions in Mackridge, Peter and Yannakakis, Eleni, eds., Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

For studies based in the Republic of Macedonia, see Gaelyn Aguilar, “Image (a) nation: Dance and the Parapolitics of Being in the Republic of Macedonia” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2005); Brown, Keith, The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation (Princeton, 2003)Google Scholar; Ellis, Burcu Akan, Shadow Genealogies: Memory and Identity among Urban Muslims in Macedonia (Boulder, Colo., 2003)Google Scholar; Miladina Monova, “Parcours d'exil, récits de non-retour: Les Egeens en République de Macédoine” (PhD diss., L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 2002); Vasiliki Neofotistos, “Resisting Violence: Hegemonic Negotiations of Ethnicity in the Republic of Macedonia” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2003).

5. On diaspora communities, see Danforth, Loring, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar; Hill, Peter, The Macedonians in Australia (Carlisle, Australia, 1989)Google Scholar; Gregory Michaelidis, “Salvation Abroad: Macedonian Migration to North America and the Making of Modern Macedonia, 1870-1970” (PhD diss., American University, 2005); Schierup, Carl-Ulrik and Alund, Alexandra, Will They Still Be Dancing'? Integration and Ethnic Transformation among Yugoslav Immigrants in Scandinavia (Umea, Sweden, 1987)Google Scholar; Vasiliadis, Peter, Whose Are You? Identity and Ethnicity among the Toronto Macedonians (New York, 1989)Google Scholar. On interdisciplinary and cross-boundary work on Macedonia, see Roudometof, Victor, ed., The Macedonian Question: Culture, Historiography, Politics (Boulder, Colo., 2000)Google Scholar; Cowan, Jane, ed., Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference (London, 2000)Google Scholar.

6. Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

7. Appadurai, Arjun, “Theory in Anthropology: Center and Periphery,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 28, no. 2 (April 1986): 356–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Ibid., 357. As evidence of the historical specificity of this focus, it is noticeable that earlier work in Greek Macedonia by authors cited earlier, and in the Republic of Macedonia, treated identity issues only in passing. See, for example, Cowan, Jane, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece (Princeton, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Danforth, Loring, Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement (Princeton, 1989)Google Scholar; George Ford, “Networks, Ritual, and ‘Vrski': A Study of Urban Adjustment in Macedonia“ (PhD diss., Arizona State University, Tempe, 1982).

9. Verdery, ﹛Catherine, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton, 2006)Google Scholar.

10. See, for example, Creed, Gerald, Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian Village (University Park, 1997)Google Scholar; Humphreys, Caroline, The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism (Ithaca, 2002)Google Scholar; Verdery, Katherine, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (Ithaca, 2003)Google Scholar; Dunn, Elizabeth, Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Ithaca, 2004)Google Scholar; see also Wolfe, Thomas, “Cultures and Communities in the Anthropology of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union,” Annual Reviexv of Anthropology 29 (2000): 195–216 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Sampson, Steven, “The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania,“ in Hann, C. M. and Dunn, E., eds., Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Creed, Gerald and Wedel, Janine, “Second Thoughts from the Second World: Interpreting Aid in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” Human Organisation 56, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 253–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see Wedel, alsojanine, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (New York, 2001)Google Scholar; Verdery, Katherine, “Transnationalism, Nationalism, Citizenship and Property: Eastern Europe since 1989,” American Ethnologist 25, no. 2 (May 1998): 291–306 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coles, Kimberley, Democratic Designs: International Intervention and Electoral Practices in Poshoar Bosnia-Herzegovina (Ann Arbor, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Tioentieth Century (Cambridge Mass., 1997)Google Scholar; see also Schiller, Nina Glick, Basch, Linda G., and Blanc-Szanton, Cristian, eds., Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

13. Hozic, Aida, “The Paradox of Sovereignty in the Balkans,” in Howland, Douglas and White, Luise, eds., The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations (Bloomington, 2009), 243–60.Google Scholar

14. Perry, Duncan, The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Revolutionary Movements, 1893-1903 (Durham, 1988)Google Scholar.

15. Stoianovich, Trajan, “The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,” Journal of Economic History 20, no. 2 (June 1960): 234–313 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nestorova, Tatyana, American Missionaries among the Bulgarians, 1858-1912 (Boulder, Colo., 1987)Google Scholar.

16. Handler, Richard, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison, 1988)Google Scholar.

17. Inda, Jonathan Xavier and Rosaldo, Renato, “Tracking Global Flows,” in Inda, Jonathan Xavier and Rosaldo, Renato, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader (Maiden, Mass., 2008), 6 Google Scholar.

18. Ibid., 29.

19. Tsing, Anna, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton, 2005)Google Scholar.

20. Lutz, Catherine, “Empire Is in the Details,” American Ethnologist 33, no. 4 (November 2006): 598 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Lutz, , “Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and the Current Crisis,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (September 2002): 723–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Stoler, Ann Laura, “On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty,” Public Culture 18, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 138–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Stoler, Haunted by Empire, xii.

23. Konstantinov, Duško, Pečalbarstvo (Bitola, 1964)Google Scholar; Basil C., Gounaris, “Emigration from Macedonia in the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7, no. 1 (May 1989): 133–53Google Scholar; Palairet, Michael, “The ‘New’ Immigration and the Newest: Slavic Migrations from the Balkans to American and Industrial Europe since the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Smout, T. C., ed., The Search for Wealth and Stability: Essays in Economic and Social History Presented to M. W. Flinn (London, 1979), 43–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schienip and Alund, Will They Still Be Dancing? Jovan Cvijic, Balliansko Poluostrvo (1922; reprint, Belgrade, 1966).

24. Petroff, Lillian, Sojourners and Settlers: The Macedonian Community in Toronto to 1940 (Toronto, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vasiliadis, Whose Are You1?; Michaelidis, “Salvation Abroad“; see also Brown, Keith, “Archive-Work: Genealogies of Loyalty in a Macedono-Bulgarian Colony,” History and Memory 20, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2008): 60–83 Google Scholar.

25. Harney, Robert, “A Note on Sources in Urban and Immigrant History,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 9, no. 1 (1977): 69 Google Scholar (emphasis added).

26. Mintz, Sidney, “The Localization of Anthropological Practice: From Area Studies to Transnationalism,” Critique of Anthropology 18, no. 2 (June 1998): 117–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. For further discussion of these materials, see Keith Brown, “Friction in the Archives: Nations and Negotiations on Ellis Island (NY), 1904-10” (paper presented at the Tenth Annual Conference of the Council for European Studies, Chicago, March 1996).

28. Fox, Stephen, Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunei, and the Great Atlantic Steamships (London, 2003), 367–85.Google Scholar

29. Ross, Edward Alsworth, The Old World in the Nexu: The Significance of Past and Present Immigration to the American People (New York, 1913), 310.Google Scholar

30. Brandenburg, Broughton, Imported Americans: The Story of the Experiences of a Disguised American and His Wife Studying the Immigration Question (New York, 1904)Google Scholar.

31. Record Group (RG) 85, M1259, Roll 5.

32. Letter from Holman to Powderly, 3 February 1908. Copy in RG 85, Entry 9, Box 79, File 52066/3, Part II.

33. Harzig, Christine, “Gender, Transatlantic Space and the Presence of German- Speaking People in North America,” in Adam, Thomas and Gross, Roth, eds., Traveling between Worlds: German-American Encounters (College Station, 2006), 158.Google Scholar

34. Ibid.; Brandenburg, Imported Americans, 275-76.

35. The opening of this route coincided with a parallel effort launched by the secretary of immigration and labor in Louisiana to break the stranglehold of railroad and steamship interests in the northeast, which controlled immigration, and to promote New Orleans as a route for immigrants. See Stolarik, Mark, Forgotten Doors: The Other Ports of Entry to the United States (Philadelphia, 1988), 110 Google Scholar.

36. Report no. 1, Relating to “Induced Emigration,” submitted to Daniel J. Keefe, Commissioner-General of Immigration, by Inspector John Gruenburg, 18 December 1908. RG 85, Entry 9, Box 79, File 52066/1, Folder 2.

37. Ibid.

38. New York Times, 21 August 1910, cited in Marinbach, Bernard, Galveston: Ellis Island of the West (Albany, 1983), 106 Google Scholar.

39. The federal government required that a destination address be recorded on the manifest for each passenger. Immigrants and steamship companies conspired to steer between the Alien Contract Labor Law, which demanded the exclusion of any immigrant who had a guarantee of work from any U.S. business, and the designation “Liable to Become a Public Charge” that would be affixed to any immigrant whom the inspector suspected was unlikely to find work at all, by providing the name and address of a relative or friend. These were often false or mass-produced by steamship companies: their authenticity was nevertheless the fiction on which the whole system depended. On the dilemmas of LPC and ACL designation, see Safford, Victor, Immigration Problems: Personal Experiences of an Official (New York, 1925), 36, 110, 213–21.Google Scholar

40. In a letter to his Monastir (Bitola) branch on 2 September 1907, included as part of Gruenburg's report, F. Missler reported that a substantial number of “our Bulgarians“ had secured railroad work at Beaumont, at $1.75 per day.

41. Gilroy, Paul, Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 16–17 Google Scholar.

42. Panunzio, Constantine, Immigration Crossroads (New York, 1927), 45 Google Scholar.

43. John M. Broder and James Risen, “Contractor Deaths in Iraq Soar to Record,“ New York Times, 19 May 2007, at www.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/world/middleeast/19 contractors.html?_r=l January 2010 (last accessed 1 September 2010).

44. Individuals from South Korea and Britain were also kidnapped and killed in this period.

45. Scahill, Jeremy, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York, 2008)Google Scholar; Singer, Peter, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, 2007)Google Scholar.

46. Stewart, Rory, Prince of the Marshes, and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq (Orlando, Fla., 2006), 109 Google Scholar.

47. Hastings, Michael, I Lost My Love in Baghdad (New York, 2008), 20, 95, 156 Google Scholar.

48. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 138; Kaplan, Robert, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (New York, 2005), 197 Google Scholar.

49. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 146.

50. Deborah Haynes, “Baghdad's Forgotten Migrants Who Pay for Jobs End Up Lost in Hangar ‘Hotel,'” The Times, 3 December 2008, at www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ news/world/iraq/article5276154.ece (last accessed 1 September 2010); Lourdes Garcia- Navarro, “Trafficking of Foreign Workers Flourishes in Iraq,” National Public Radio, 6 April 2009, atwww.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=102705618 (last accessed 1 September 2010).

51. John F. Burns, “Video Appears to Show Insurgents Kill a Downed Pilot,” New York Times 23 April 2005, at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E0D61431F930Al5757C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all (last accessed 1 September 2010).

52. Christopher Deliso, “Tanguma Wanted Us to Come Back to Iraq, Macedonian Contractor Says,” 7 March 2005, athttp://www.balkanalysis.com/2005/03/07/tanguma-wantedus-to-come-back-to-iraq-macedonian-contractor-says (last accessed 1 September 2010).

53. Ibid.