Building Loyalty on the Margins: Interwar Yugoslavia and Emigrants from the Julian March and Prekmurje

Abstract

By examining the cases of emigrants coming from the Julian March to Argentina and Prekmurje to the United States, the article evaluates state-diaspora relations in the interwar context of shifting borders and changing political regimes. Whereas the Slovene-speaking population of Prekmurje, due to lasting Hungarian influence, was reluctant to embrace the Yugoslav idea, Slovene and Croat emigrants from the Julian March were fond of it. Assessing the methods of the Yugoslav extraterritorial nation-building process and emigrants’ identifications, the author suggests that while Prekmurje emigrants maintained their non-national identity, the Julian March diaspora developed its own vision of the Yugoslav “homeland.”