Albanian labor migration, the Yugoslav private sector and its Cold War context

Abstract

ABSTRACT This contribution explores the case of Yugoslav Albanians working in the private sector in late socialist Croatia and the ways in which their involvement in tourism and private business on the Adriatic coast was shaped by Yugoslavia’s position in the Cold War context as well as domestic political dynamics. Such dynamics include the securitization of Albanians across the country following the violently quelled 1981 student demonstrations in Kosovo and the perennial suspicion held by the authorities towards private business in general, and Albanian owned private businesses in particular. The key argument advanced is that Albanian involvement in tourism and private business on the Adriatic coast, as well connections to diaspora communities in Western Europe, facilitated (micro)economic activity and mobility between nonaligned Yugoslavia, capitalist liberal democracies of Western Europe and, increasingly, by the 1980s, neighboring Warsaw Pact states. Methodologically, the research is based on the triangulation of archival documents, regional printed press and oral history interviews to demonstrate how Yugoslavia’s liminal non-aligned position and market socialist economy offered opportunity (as well as notable constraints) to Albanian private business owners and their workforces in the Cold War era and its immediate aftermath.