Transnacionalizacija odozdo: povratnici i useljenici hrvatskoga podrijetla između performativnosti pripadanja i društvenoga djelovanja
Authors:   Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, Zagreb, Čapo Jasna , Blagaić Marina ,   Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, Zagreb
Published: February 2025

Over the past fifteen years, return migration has become a fertile research area in migration studies, in particular in sociology and cultural anthropology. Via transnational optics, the concept of return has been redefined as a fluid, multidirectional and reversible movement between the social space of the country of origin and the country of immigration (or a third country). Return has also been expanded by the idea of virtual, short-term, temporary and circular return, while research has expanded to both migrant and postmigrant (so-called second and later) generations. These heterogeneous meanings of return as a phase of complex migration patterns cannot be covered by the rubric of “return”as defined by the Croatian national-state political discourse and the measures that arise from it. Leaning on methodological nationalism, the legal definition starts out from the definitiveness of return migrations and assumes a break with the transnational social spaces in which emigrants/returnees move. It does not include the fluidity and reversibility of return migrations, transmigration and circular forms of contemporary mobilities, nor the complex nuances of the temporality of contemporary return mobilities. Therefore, it is inadequate in designing return policies and in assisting returnees with easier (re)integration.
Our insights are extremely important at a time when state politics seems to have decided to address the population deficit caused by continuous emigration and negative natural growth more seriously. We conclude that Croatian returnees and immigrants do not represent solely demographic potential for Croatia. With their motivation to foster some form of return and social engagement, with their emotion for their country and society of origin, which does not even fade in postmigrant generations, and with their desire to “give back” (Čiubrinskas, 2018; Hornstein Tomić, 2023), to contribute to Croatian society in some way, returnees and immigrants of Croatian origin, as well as emigrants in general, carry enormous sociocultural capital, in addition to population and economic ones.
The first significant period of return of migrants belonging to different migration cohorts and generations to Croatia occurred in the 1990s (Čapo and Jurčević, 2014). Emigrants came for different motives, which, in that first phase of return, could largely be placed under the broad denominator of patriotism and participation in the social project of state building (Čapo and Jurčević, 2014). Some came on their own initiative to actively join the Croatian armed forces; others came in response to direct appeals from political structures. For some emigrants, the creation of an independent democratic state was a long awaited moment for the relocation of entire families and/or family reunification in one place. For their adult descendants, however, it was a moment when they consciously decided to come and, beyond institutions, contribute to the construction of a new state and society and/or to establish an economic venture in the homeland of their ancestors. In this century, those motives for return and immigration were joined by motives such as partnerships/love relationships, the desire for a slower/easier pace of life and a certain lifestyle (so-called lifestyle migrants). Push factors can also include the security aspects of life in the diaspora or, most recently, strict measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 in some countries (Jurčević, 2014; Čapo, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2020; Sopta, 2015; Salaj, 2015; Babić, 2015; Čapo and Jurčević, 2014; Hornstein Tomić, Kurilić and Bagić 2023; personal data).
Relying on the concepts of social remittances (P. Levitt), reverse transnationalism (R. King), transnationalism from below (L. E. Guarnizo and M. P. Smith) and transnational cultural capital (T. Reynolds, M. Nowicka), we investigate the transmission of transnational social and cultural capital (networks, knowledge, ideas, skills and practices) by returnees and immigrants of Croatian origin (postmigration generations) into their communities of settlement and into society at large. By comparing the concepts above to our own multi-year ethnographic research (conducting around 40 in-depth interviews) about returnee and coethnic settler migrations in Croatia, we develop a typology of returnees and settlers’ agency in their new environments. It includes performative acts of belonging, innovative entrepreneurship and civic (social and political) engagement. We analyse these as instances of returnees’ aspirations for social engagement and contribution to Croatian society, both locally and nationally.
Performative acts of belonging are various forms of agency by which emigrants/returnees express their belonging to the place of origin of their parents and ancestors. They contribute to the improvement of some aspects of life in their community or, as in our example, to the maintenance of emigrants’ key symbolic places (cemeteries) and practices (religious life). However, returnees’ expressions of belonging can also have a transnational character, indicating their complex migratory identities. Such most common performative act is the display of the national flags of both Croatia and the country of immigration. Performative acts of belonging are also found among occasional and permanent returnees belonging to the migrant and postmigrant generations. They do not exclude economic and sociopolitical engagement, especially among those returnees who have decided to settle in Croatia more per manently; they can be a key mode of agency of seasonal, occasional and temporary returnees, i.e. those persons who are visiting Croatia.
We have considered the economic and sociopolitical types of agency as instances of dissemination of the transnational cultural capital acquired in the diaspora. Resting on the concept of social remittances, we understand emigrant cultural capital as a wide range of formally and informally acquired professional, organisational, managerial, linguistic and other knowledge and skills, as well as attitudes and ideas about the functioning of the democratic system and about civic participation. The analysis shows that returnees’ transnational cultural capital is more important than the financial capital that they may have at their return. That capital enables returnees to recognise opportunities for innovative entrepreneurship, take business risks, expand their business and adapt to changes in the market, even when the returnees do not know much about the functioning of the Croatian economy and society or when they encounter obstacles. It also turns out that the timing of return is important for successful economic innovation; this was the case with numerous investments in the tourism industry in the early 2000s.
The third type of returnees’ agency leans on their strong motivation and civic responsibility to change the deficient structural circumstances of life and institutional functioning perceived in their communities of settlement and society at large. On the one hand, returnees engage in establishing returnee associations and connecting with emigrants living outside Croatia; on the other, they engage in activism for the general betterment of the communities in which they live, either through civic or direct political action. Some of them successfully combine individual economic projects and civic aspirations into a whole (Sinatti, 2022). Some, on the other hand, are less successful in their efforts to improve democratic processes and the rule of law in their country.
Each Croatian returnee and immigrant is a potential agent of social change (cf. Grabowska et al., 2017: 219) as long as Croatia, with all its shortcomings and unfulfilled romanticised images that they had of it in the diaspora, still means enough to them and offers and provides a desirable context for personal social fulfilment that makes sense in their homeland, but did not make sense in the diaspora. We see the observed motivation, resilience and effectiveness of returnees’ initiatives that have survived legal, bureaucratic and social challenges as a potential capital for the benefit of Croatian society, which smoulders beyond the poor statistical indicators on return.
Whether this potential will be realised depends on a number of factors that we have not addressed in this paper. On the one hand, these are state policies and measures aimed at motivating emigrants to return. To be successful, they need to be appropriate for the targeted emigrant cohorts and generations and the described types of emigrants’ and returnees’ activities in their homeland. After a number of limited and relatively unsuccessful measures, new ones are currently being developed (within the framework of the recently established Ministry of Demography and Immigration of the Republic of Croatia). A large number of returnees settling in a compact manner in a short period of time (Bovenkerk, 1974) is a conditio sine qua non for a significant tangible and intangible transfer to the homeland. On the other hand, the transferability of emigrant capital is not self-evident. There are a number of factors that will encourage or hinder it at the local and broader social levels that are yet to be thoroughly investigated in the Croatian context. A recent study of the acceptance of lems in their implementation in the complexity of the local postsocialist economic and societal context (Hornstein Tomić, 2023).
This research and the presented material prompted us to reflect on the two-way unwillingness, not only of the domicile communities and societies that resist the ideas and activities of returnees, but also of returnees' resistance to understanding the context and values of the communities into which they have come. The patronising attitudes of emigrants/returnees towards local communities and the overt expression of opinions, attitudes and patterns of action learned in the diaspora are counterproductive, as is the resistance of the domicile population, non-emigrants, to any change, a resistance that often rests on the defence of the existing status quo and acquired positions of power. Understanding the processes that occur in the interaction between the domicile and returnee/immigrant population of Croatian origin is therefore the next important research task.