Romanians from Serbia in Denmark

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Levitt and Glick Schiller, it isprecisely through such interlocking networks of social relationships that ideas, practices and resources are unequally exchanged, organised and transformed (2004: 1009). The content of such ‘dual lives’ is therefore neither static nor homogeneous. Transnational practices may be performed differently between various groups and generations, as is the case with the practices of sameness and difference put forward at different stages in the immigration process. But, while I agree with Levitt and Glick Schiller that transnational ties are not binary opposites, but rather form part of a mutual transnational field (2004: 1003), it is also important to recognise,with Escobar, that, for most people most of the time, ‘culture still sits in places’, and that attachment to andin ‘place’ therefore continues to have both practical and emotional importance (Escobar 2001 in Jackson etal. 2004: 6–7). I therefore use the notion of dual lives to underscore the often contradictory ways in which migrants engage with their surroundings and develop competencies in relation to both their homeland and thesociety of settlement. This dual orientation has received much attention in the recent literature on diasporas. Werbner (2000: 5), forexample, stresses how immigrants tend to fight for citizenship and equal rights in the place of settlement, often alongside other ethnic groups, while at the same time continuing to foster transnational relations and living with a sense of displacement and of loyalties to other places and groups beyond that of settlement. I argue here that this implies a divided or dual social life, not only between the ‘home at home’ and the home in the countryof settlement, but just as much between a public realm that is open and comprehensible to the Danes, and aprivate realm that focuses on ‘Serbdom’ or ‘Vlachness’. This private realm is to a large degree unobserved, ifnot concealed, in relation to the public gaze, but it retains an important role in shaping the worldview, normsand values of the ‘transnational citizen’. In the case of the Serbian Vlachs, invisibility may well be a convenient strategy for blending in with the Danish majority population. Nonetheless,such a practice appears to hinge on the existence of a private realm in which norms and cultural practices thatare different from those of the majority culture are prevalent.
Visibility and Invisibility: The Job Market as a Site of Integration? In present-day political rhetoric, it is common to refer to the labour market as the prime forum for integrationand an opportunity to become acquainted with the norms and values of the country of settlement. In the case ofthe Serbian Vlachs in Denmark, this has to some degree been the case, although with some important modifications. First, the situation proved fairly different for men and women; secondly, public performances do not entirely match activities in the private sphere. From the outset, male and female migrants were integrated into the labour market. Although they got the dirtiestjobs (Federspiel 1998: 124), the working conditions to which Vlach men were subjected were more favourable than those encountered by Vlach women. Men were primarily employed in shipyards and the steel industry. The traditional division of labour in these large industries tended to favour closeness and cooperation among workerswith different trades and kinds of skills (Federspiel 1998: 101). It also implied submitting to the rules andconditions of the workplace and becoming members of the strong trade unions. This made it easier for Yugoslavmigrants to adapt to the tacit codes of work or ‘self-evident codes of conduct’ within the hierarchy of theindustrial enterprise (Schierup and Ålund 1986: 92). Although Federspiel shows how the temptation to undercut wages and increase working hours existed, being part of a collective increased not only sameness, but alsovisibility, thus making it far more difficult for Vlach men to go against the collective bargaining of the tradeunions. This was different for Vlach women, who had enjoyed relatively high degrees of equality and influence in the agricultural collectives in which they had worked in Yugoslavia. For them, migration meant not only acquiringtheir first job outside the rural sector, but also taking on hard and fatiguing double work in the factory and the home (Schierup and Ålund 1986: 102). In most cases women acquired the most monotonous and stressful jobs, and had the most-isolated working conditions over which they had the least influence. A high proportion of themworked full-time on night shifts. In these industries, the unions were less present in regulating workingconditions, stimulating a far more conflictual relationship with the
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Page 5 and 6: training indicates that, in spite o
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Page 11 and 12: At present, when the industry-based
Page 13 and 14: sameness, away of demonstrating the
Page 15 and 16: encouraging their children to adopt
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Page 21 and 22: Serbian sports events, or facilitat
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Page 25 and 26: 35-53. Federspiel, S. (1998) Arbejd
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Romanians from Serbia in Denmark

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