Petar Grubišić (Ghent University)
Abstract
The end of the Second World War was a catalyst for massive population transfers, which resulted in an unmixing of people on an unprecedented scale. This activity primarily targeted the numerous German populations that had settled in the border regions of Central and Eastern Europe. They were replaced with appropriate ethnic groups who were supposed to bring stability and the necessary workforce for regional development. Postwar population shifts thus combined ethnopolitical and socio-economic motives. The precise policies, practices and responses to the multiple population shifts taking place in post-war Europe, however, differed from case to case.
This talk will situate internal migration in Socialist Yugoslavia within the broader context of population transfers in Europe after the Second World War. It will particularly draw parallels with the cases of Poland (Recovered Territories) and Czechoslovakia (Former Sudetenland). The talk will discuss a number of Yugoslav particularities. It will address the interconnection of internal migration with agrarian reform, its primarily voluntary character, and how government classification of people on the move paid attention to previous political and migration processes.
Biografie
Petar Grubišić is a Ph.D. Researcher at Ghent University (Department of Languages and Cultures) since September 2021. He earned an MA in History (2013-2017) as well as an MA in Archaeology (2013-2018) at the University of Zagreb. His Ph.D. project is tentatively titled: “Internal Migration and Regional Development in Socialist Yugoslavia: Settlement from Dalmatia to Slavonia and Vojvodina Compared”. This research focuses on the state-guided colonisation from the region of Dalmatia to similarly multicultural regions of Slavonia and Vojvodina. It particularly looks into the policies of internal migration and its impact on the communities involved through a micro-historical comparative analysis of colonist settlements in Vojvodina and Slavonia.