Will they still be dancing? (1982)

However, when we examine the migratory processes among the two groups
more closely, we recognize that they are based on fundamentally different
historical experiences, contextual situations and strategic options which put
the two groups on opposite ends of a continuum of Yugoslav immigrants in
Scandinavia. The vast majoriy of the Wallachian immigrants came from peasant
or peasant-worker background with a mental horizon centered around the
village as a socio-cultural microcosmos. Many Macedonians were of a working
class or petty bourgeois background. However, whether of peasant, working
class or petty bourgeois background most Macedonian migrants aspired
modern middle class status for themselves or their children.
Before Wallachians started to migrate to West European industrial centers
(about 1968), their dominant source of livelihood was small-scale peasant
agriculture with a stress on subsistence farming. Wallachian patterns of
migrancy still follow a course directed by a social universe and a mental horizon
centered around the village. Over the past two decades, three generations of
migrants have oscillated back and forth between the rural villages of origin in
Yugoslavia and local immigrant settlements in eastern Denmark and southern
Sweden. Wallachians were previously involved in various forms of labour
migration within Yugoslavia, but they never developed patterns of urbanization
or permanent emigration from their rural home communities.
The purpose of sojourn abroad remains exclusively instrumental: to earn as
much as possible for raising one's material standard and status in the village of
origin. The input of migrants' remittances creates tremendous inflation in
ceremonial prestations (dowry, patterns of gift giving, etc.); "investments" in
traditional items of prestige (e.g., houses) run high. The ultimate rationale of
labour migration is to return to the village in order to reestablish oneself as a
peasant-worker with a well-paid job in a nearby town. Wallachians' basic
identity remains circumscribed by the "little tradition" (Redfield 1960) of a
peasant society. This is closely connected with the specific character of the
ethnogenesis of the group and the character of its minority situation in the
republic of Serbia. People adapt to random opportunities offered from the
"outside" in order to exploit these within the framework of the village. Of
course, inputs ofmoney, ideas and new forms of organization act to transform
patterns of material reproduction in the villages oforigin, as well as their social
structure and the local conceptual universe. However, this does not take place
as a "straight line" acculturation or "modernization", adopting ready made
alternative frameworks. The "little tradition" provides much of the "tool kit"
by the means of which new situations are perceived and new practices elaborated.
Unlike Wallachians, the Macedonians have a centuries-old tradition of
labour migration to destinations in the Balkans and in the Middle East. By the
turn of the century these migration routes had been superseded by large scale
migration to overseas destinations, mainly in North America. After the introduction
ofimmigrant quotas in the United States in 1924, Australia became
26