Presentation in Boston, January 2011

»On Identity Politics and Marriage in two Migrant Communities. The Cases of South Slavs in Pittsburgh and the Iron Range«

Panel ›Understanding the Transatlantic Migration Experience: Diverse and Similar Migration Patterns of People from Austria-Hungary‹, at the  American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Boston/NJ, January 6–9, 2011.

Abstract: I will present two areas of my research on South-Slavic migrants from Austria-Hungary who migrated, in the decades before World War I, to Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Ohio and to Iron Range mining towns in northern Minnesota. As both destinations were picked due to their diversity, I will concentrate on working class and middle class cultural practices, on urban public culture versus highly regulated, often clandestine, practices under corporate control, pre- and post-1900 migrants, national organizations versus class organizations, Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox migrants etc. Following the historical actors, I will investigate links that transcended ethnic/national boundaries as well as secluding moves.

Based on discourse analysis of migrant newspapers, I will describe, how migrant elites were trying to nationalize the everyday lives of migrants and what kinds of ›worlds‹ they created thereby. This will be rounded up with a description of the actual role of ethnicity and nationality in the lives and struggles of migrants, both in Allegheny and on the Iron Range, based on archival material. I will especially investigate marriage, both as a topic in discourses of migrant organizations and as actual marriages can be retraced in memoirs, letters, church records and other documents.