Migration for Cooperation

Abstract

Recent studies on labor migration from socialist Yugoslavia have almost exclusively focused on East–West movements and their economic aspects. This paper aims to fill some of this gap in the literature by examining the migration of highly skilled Yugoslav labor to a country in the Global South, namely Algeria. As opposed to previous work that has focused on Yugoslav workers accompanying engineering investment projects in the Global South, this paper examines those who were directly employed by the receiving country. The case of Algeria as a host country deserves attention because Algeria was one of Yugoslavia’s primary partners with whom it cultivated a close political relationship. Drawing on records from the Croatian State Archives, the article will examine Yugoslav technical cooperation experts who were employed by the Algerian government between the early 1960s and the end of the 1980s. The paper will argue that, in pursuit of its political and economic interests in the Global South, the Yugoslav state encouraged and promoted the mobility of highly skilled experts in Algeria to foster cooperation.