Theory and process of socialist migration: local enmities and international friendships in the Vietnam-Bulgaria relations (1975-1985)

ABSTRACT The essay explores the labor-exchange programs between postcolonial and socialist states as a form of moral economy that attempted to reconcile the notions of socialist internationalism and ‘mutually beneficial’ migration. Focusing on the relationship between Vietnam and Bulgaria, the article traces key logics of socialist migration and internationalism that informed, broke, and reshaped the relationships between different units of solidarity. These include links between the Party, mass organizations, and economic enterprises; between economic units, political organizations, and foreign workers; and essentially between the two countries, Vietnam and Bulgaria. The essay contends that the constant renegotiation of the meaning of internationalism between economic enterprises and ministries, on the one side, and the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and foreign workers, on the other, produced two competing logics on whether labor-import from postcolonial states was politically valuable. To explore the clash, I concentrate on the years between 1975–1985, when some voices required the halt of labor exchange programs. This notwithstanding, in this period, the number of Vietnamese workers to arrive in Bulgaria more than tripled. The essay enters the spaces where socialist internationalist theory and the social practice of migration interacted, to make internationalism an open-ended domain.