Between Two Wars: Generational Responses of Toronto Croats to Homeland Independence

Abstract

This article explores the impact of varied migration trajectories and settlement experiences on the ways in which diaspora Croats have engaged with the homeland and with each other. The pre-migration experiences of Croats over the past century, spanning imperial and fascist periods, socialism, the Yugoslav Wars of Succession, and independence, combined with the struggles and challenges of life in Canada, have all but defined the lives of diaspora Croats for generations. This is reflected not only in the particularities of different migration waves, opportunity structures, and other barometers of diaspora adaptation but in the effects of major upheavals and transformations in the “place of origin,” variously defined as empire, nation, republic, region, or domovina (homeland). Disparities among and between different generations of Croats are typically conceived of as political/ideological. This tendency, though driven largely by the tumultuous history of the former Yugoslavia, overlooks the complex dynamics underlying significant social, cultural, and other conflicts and contestations within diaspora Croat communities, many of which were on full display during the Homeland War, a time when the “thousand-year-old dream” of Croatian independence was to unite all Croats globally. The implications of the Croatian case for thinking about generation are found in the constant and, at times, fraught engagements of diaspora Croats with their homeland.