THE FERGUSON CENTRE FOR
AFRICAN AND ASIAN STUDIES
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Roehampton Conference Abstracts 8. Zhivko Ivanov (Paissij Hilendarski University of Plovdiv,
Bulgaria): Zhivko Ivanov is Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Philology and Professor of Literature. His numerous publications include: Hristo Smirnenski. Selected works. Volume 1-2 + CD-ROM (2001-2002), Baj Ganyo. Between Europe and Homeland (1999), New Bulgarian Literature 1878-1918 (1998), Bulgarian Literature from Liberation to the End of World War I (1989 with Bistra Ganchseva), and Bulgarian Literature after World War I (1995). He is also a GIPSC Project coordinator. Unlike Yugoslavian citizens, Bulgarian citizens until the end of 1989 had no opportunities to travel and reside abroad without special permission of the Bulgarian Communist Party and state officials. During the 1970s a system was experimentally set up in Yugoslavia whereby Yugoslav Federation workers could take up temporary residence in specified countries of Western Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden). This resulted in legal economic emigration that by the end of the 1970s reached the number of 1 million, while today this number amounts to almost 2 million.1 The Bulgarian situation proved to be different. From the very beginning 'wild', non-institutionalised emigration came to the foreground, pursuing purely economic goals, usually understood as an attempt to achieve a higher standard of living. Only after 1997-1998 has the Bulgarian government initiated certain measures for the civilised structuring of the process of emigration with economic goals. Within or outside control, at the beginning of 2004 Bulgaria could announce that over 1.250 million of its citizens were choosing a job in a country other than their homeland. Although somewhat delayed, this wave of emigration continues to expand. In about 15 years a Bulgarian Diaspora has emerged abroad with a coherent character and in unprecedented numbers. Neither after World War 1, nor in the late 1920s and early 1930s, or after the Communist take-over have the Bulgarian 'full-fridge seekers' been so numerous. The idea of the presentation is to trace how this community speaks and assesses its own position in an alien society, how it has formulated its initial goals and to what extent it reports its achievement. The other purpose of this study is to examine the hidden nationalism that Bulgarian economic immigrants discover in themselves to different degrees during their residence in the recipient community. This process of rediscovery of national identity flows with different intensity in two directions: on the one hand, Bulgarian economic immigrants suffer from deepening nostalgia and reassess the quality of life in their homeland; on the other hand, they try to justify more emphatically their choice and perceive any retreat from it as a surrender that will impede their reintegration in the homeland environment. This dual disposition generates both a new devotion toward and a new detestation of the homeland environment, as well as a critical attitude towards the recipient environment. Bulgarian economic immigrants come to detest the place that feeds them but continue to detest the place that chased them away as well. Typically, the choice of leaving the homeland is seldom formulated as personal and deliberate, and is usually presented as a coerced decision in which the main pressure comes from the allegorical being of the 'state'. It is in this process that the division between 'homeland' and 'state' was born, and became a battle-cry of the Socialist party during the local elections in autumn 2003. Their leader Stanishev quoted a graffiti message on the wall of the French Language Secondary School in Sofia, which announced: 'I Love the Motherland but I hate the State'. This syllogism is probably embraced by the majority of Bulgarian residents abroad, who accuse the state for their own choice. This schizoid situation generates for immigrants a traumatic gap that each tries to fill up with various forms and means of a secondary home-coming. Forums and websites where Bulgarian immigrants unburden their hearts and curse the state have emerged avalanche-like the past few years (such as, http://ide.li - The Website of Bulgarians all over the World, containing commentary, opinions, short stories, travel notes, links etc.; or the newsgroup ‘Soc.culture.bulgaria' at http://www.bulgaria.com/aba/ index.html - Agency for Bulgarians Abroad). Another dimension of this duality is a useful and essential one. Bulgarians abroad reassess the contents and meanings of a series of stereotypical, trivial and hackneyed national values that had been inculcated at school, through the media and by the political class. This reassessment leads to a true understanding of the homeland in its natural and concrete value, which doesn’t have to take recourse to naive and ingenious explanations of national shortcomings, or even apologetic views about past 'shortcomings'. As a result of these processes Bulgarian economic migrants share a compromise position between their national identity and the standard of living that estranges them from their homeland environment. In the language of the immigrant appears the desire of homecoming under certain conditions, i.e. the emigrant becomes an exigent and critical Bulgarian who would like to transport the positive in the alien world to his/her homeland space. This desire is apparent in the language of potential migrants as well, as they 'threaten' the political class and the ruling officials that they will leave the country if conditions of life do not improve. Divided between a deep devotion to the homeland and a desire for a civilised
standard of life (achievable at present in the alien environment), Bulgarians
of the 21st century foresee a new lot for their country, characterised
by: 1 A survey of the National Centre for Monitoring Public Opinion from last year shows that 41% of the population with high standard of living (by Bulgarian criteria) are ready to emigrate - Sevelina TODOROVA. The Years of Emigration, or Why the West Is the Best for a Large Number of the Young Bulgarians. Accessed 11 October 2003:http://members.tripod.com/~NIE_MONTHLY/nie9_00/mladej.html
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