A sophisticated study of transnational migration from the Balkans to Western Australia

Harnessing concepts and theories from sociology, anthropology, and political science, this interdisciplinary study compares the vastly different experiences of two Croatian immigrant cohorts who have settled in the city of Perth in Western Australia. The populations explored represent an earlier group of working-class migrants arriving from communist Yugoslavia from the 1950s to 1970s and a later group of urban professionals arriving in the 1980s and 1990s as 'independent' or skills-based migrants. This latter group integrated into professional ranks but also used their Australian experience as a stepping stone in becoming part of a highly mobile global professional middle class.

Employing a refined theoretical analysis, this rich ethnography challenges the domination of the ethnic perspective in migration studies and the idea of ethnic community itself. It emphasizes the importance of class, focusing on the intersection of class, ethnicity, and gender in the process of migration, migrant incorporation and transnationalism. In theorizing the connection of the two migrant cohorts with their native Croatia the study introduces concepts of "ethnic" and "cosmopolitan" transnationalism as two distinctive experiences mediated by class.

"Val Colic-Peisker has done much to illuminate this important element in Australian society and to question some long-held beliefs about the maintenance of cultures in diasporic communities. Her comparisons with the Croatian elements in American society are of considerable interest. Those who seek to understand the human processes arising from global movement and resettlement should welcome this important study."--James Jupp, Director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Australian National University

"A comprehensive and vibrant account of Croatian migration to Australia, which is as attendant to conceptual detail as it is heartfelt. Readers are treated to an erudite discussion of key concepts in migration studies that are embedded in rich ethnographic accounts of lived experience. The result is an important critique of ethnicity and a reevaluation of the place of class analysis in the migration process."--Loretta Baldassar, author of Visits Home: Migration Experiences Between Italy and Australia

Val Colic-Peisker is a Senior Research Fellow in the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, in Melbourne, Australia, and the author of Split Lives: Croatian Australian Stories.

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Series:
Studies of World Migrations

Subjects:
History, Immigration / History, European

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