Timoc Romanians in Denmark

Special Issue Article • DOI: 10.2478/njmr-2014-0030 NJMR • 4(4) • 2014 • 184-
191
Abstract
Serbia-born migrants living transnational lives consciously or unconsciously
move between visibility and invisibility in their performance of migrant success
stories. Cases in point are public festivals, performed to make visible migrants’
successful inclusion in Danish society, i.e. celebrating invisibility. Meanwhile,
other celebrations are consciously relegated to the invisible confines of the
my informants implies being identical with the Danes (see Juul 2011:
239).
As has been discussed widely in the literature, festivals,
ceremonies and celebrations are important means of maintaining and
enhancing migrants’ sense of belonging (see Boissevain 1992; Fortier
PERFORMING BELONGING, CELEBRATING INVISIBILITY?
The role of festivities among migrants of Serbian-Romanian
origin in Denmark and in Serbia
Serbian homeland. This article analyses celebrations in Denmark and in Serbia
and shows how visible displays of ethnicity and difference tend to turn into
easily palatable heritage versions of local culture when performed in a Danish
context. In turn, the visibility acquired through celebrations of migrants’
belonging in their homeland is inclined to render invisible those who did not
take part in the migration experience.
Keywords
Visibility • invisibility • spatial division of ritual space • public celebrations • Serbian-
Ronanian migrants in Denmark
Received 19 February 2014; Accepted 14 September 2014
1 Introduction
In April 2013, the Danish–Serbian Friendship Association in the
Danish town of Næstved was involved in the celebration of no less
than three public events within a month. First, more than 300 persons,
including representatives from municipal key institutions such as
trade-unions and political parties, gathered to celebrate the 40th
anniversary of the Association. A few days later, a similar number
attended the Association’s folklore dance festival, and finally the
Association made itself visible at Næstved’s annual open air festival
by organizing a large food stand with local grilled specialties. Through
these acts, the Serbia-born minority of the Danish town were able to
communicate their sense of belonging and their ability to fit in with the
customs of the host community, while at the same time celebrating
their cultural particularities as Danes born in Serbia.
As will be shown below, folkdance performances and food
specialties from the homeland are often standard ingredients in the
attempt by ethnic minorities to demonstrate belonging while,
simultaneously, maintaining difference and sameness. By laying
claim to public space and addressing the local public, citizens of
foreign origin are able to make their presence visible and thereby, on
a more symbolic scale, to demonstrate their contributions to the
vitality of local communities, in terms of hard work, tax compliance
and other civic virtues. In this manner, the visibility acquired through
these acts may also be seen as the result of conscious efforts to blend
in, i.e. a celebration of having become invisible, which according to
Kristine Juul*
Institute of Environment, Social and Spatial Change, University of Roskilde, Denmark
1999; Gardner and Grillo 2002; Salih 2002). Belonging is, as
expressed by Nagel (2011: 110), basically a matter of the heart: “it is
a feeling of being part of something and some place, and its absence
may be felt very keenly”. Belonging is, however, often an incomplete
process. On the one hand, it is structured by laws and norms, and
involves negotiations between dominant and subordinate groups that
can lead to reformulation of the terms of membership. On the other
hand, individuals can belong to places, groups or communities in
some ways and not in others. In this process, issues of visibility and
invisibility may play a crucial role, among other things by defining
membership.
In this text, I distinguish between “public celebrations”, which are
formal acts or performances directed towards the majority public in
the community in question, and other (semi-private) celebrations.
These tend to be less visible, targeting primarily the private or
semipublic realm of migrant communities themselves. Here, it is
rather the markers of difference that are played out as a way of
strengthening the sense of belonging, of kinship and of ethnic roots.
Often lifecycle events, such as weddings, serve as arenas upon which
the elation and joy of having succeeded as a migrant can be
celebrated through lavish festivity. Such events usually take place in
the country of origin, a feature that Gardner and Grillo (2002) attribute
to the high expenditures, which may render them inappropriate for the
relatively low-paid workers to carry out in the country of settlement.
In recent years, this partition of celebrations between public
events in the host country and lifecycle events in the country of origin
has been challenged as Danish Serbs increasingly support the
organization of civic events addressing the Serbia-born public of their
communities of origin. Simultaneously, an increasing number of
festivities related to marriage, birth and death are now performed in
Denmark. This alters previous strategies of invisibility, where
exposition of wealth and success were confined to the private spheres
of migrant communities.
The article seeks to look into what Salih (2003) has termed the
“transnational division of ritual space”, i.e. how rituals may express
very different aims according to where and with whom they are carried
out, and how this division may be used consciously or unconsciously
by migrants in their quest for social recognition. By examining
festivities, celebrated either in the community of settlement or in the
village of origin, the article discusses how visibility and invisibility may
be performed and enacted by migrants under different circumstances.
Before delving into the ritual practices carried out among Danish
Serbs, a few words are needed to explain the particularities of this
Danish minority group.
* E-mail: kristine@ruc.dk
Unauthenticated
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2 Yugoslavs in Denmark and Romanians in
Serbia
The group of migrants included in this study is special in several ways.
First of all, they arrived in Denmark during the 1970s as Yugoslav
guest-workers, but after nearly three decades of expatriation, their
homeland disintegrated and they became Serbs. Apart from being
Serbs, they form part of a minority group called the Romanians,
which, although small in Serbia, held a majority position among the
Yugoslav guest-workers in Denmark until the 1990s, where the influx
of refugees from Bosnia changed this picture. 1
Their insertion into the Danish society is generally experienced as
successful. This is underpinned by high employment rates, economic
consolidation and an often expressed feeling of being wellintegrated
into the Danish society to which almost all hold citizenship. Their
tightly knit social networks that entail both a rich associational life
among the émigrés in Denmark and maintenance of strong links to
their communities of origin in Serbia make the group particularly
interesting for research on performance and belonging.
The strong social cohesion may be linked to their status as a
minority. The Romanians in Denmark all originate from a few villages
in eastern Serbia along the border with Romania. They speak their
own language, Romanian, and were at the time of the first migrations
in the early 1970s among the most ruralized of all Yugoslav guest
workers in Europe. According to Schierup and Ålund (1986: 78), their
habit of living in three-generational households facilitated a particular
form of chain migration, where children could be left with their
greatgrandparents while the two middle generations joined efforts to
put aside enough money to enable a fast but successful return.
In Denmark and Sweden, which were among the most popular
destinations, the Romanians tended to cluster in certain areas. In
Denmark, they settled primarily in four industrial towns of Eastern
Denmark, each of which now hosts 50 to 100 families. With time, the
prospects of moving back to the village on a permanent basis have
dwindled and their position now is best characterized as a “silent
integration”, where insertion into society takes place unnoticed on an
everyday basis (Petersen & Rytter 2006).
For the Romanian villages in Serbia, the rush of out-migration
implied that many villages had most of their inhabitants living abroad
by the early 1990s. In the village of Ljubicevac, where I did most of
the fieldwork, less than 10% of the inhabitants are now permanently
settled in the village. 2 Nonetheless, capital and labour continue to be
invested in keeping the houses and the home village “up to standard”.
Many visit the village several times a year and families often spend
the bulk of their summer holidays “at home”. Particularly among the
large group of retired persons, it is common to divide their time equally
between their beautiful house in the village and a smaller home in
Denmark close to their children and grandchildren. A prerequisite for
keeping strong ties within the group and to the home village has been
frequent celebrations and festivities held either in Denmark or in the
village of origin.
3 Methodology
The article takes its point of departure in three recent public events
held by Danish Serbs. As the research revolves around the
performance of belonging and on how Danish Serbs divide their
celebrations and ritual space between Denmark and their homeland,
data are derived primarily from ethnographic observation and analysis
of recordings and articles documenting the festive events in question.
These all took place in the year of 2013 and were selected because
they represented different “prototypes” characteristic of the activities
carried out by the Danish–Serbia-born community. One event took
place in Denmark. The other two festivities were carried out in Serbia.
As I was not physically present at all the events cited, documentation
for the local evening in Denmark was found primarily in local
newspapers and on the homepage of the Association. This was
compared with experience gathered from participation in similar
events during earlier fieldwork (see Buciek & Juul 2008; Juul 2011).
Analysis of the two events in Serbia was based on participant
observation (the pensioners’ dance) and an analysis of digital
recordings (the Diaspora Fair). This was supplemented with informal
conversations with people (primarily older migrants) who were
present at the events. Finally, seven in-depth interviews were carried
out with key persons such as the wedding photographer, a Danish–
Serbia-born bride and five members of the community. Together with
insights generated during previous fieldwork between 2005 and 2013,
the interpretation of these interviews served to understand how
people make sense of the changing ritual practices and the narratives
surrounding them.
Fieldwork in Serbia was carried out in October 2013. Because this
period lies outside the main holidays and because the events
described mainly attracted a public over 40 years of age, the article
primarily conveys the perspective of the older generation of
Romanians, who were born in Serbia but have a migration experience
from Denmark. Hopefully, future research can uncover the new role
of life-cycle celebrations among and between generations. This is,
however, outside the scope of the present article. Finally, I have
chosen not to include the many disputes of a more personal than
political content, which characterizes much of migrants’ associational
life, as these are of limited relevance for the present topic.
4 The ambivalences of (in)visibility
Invisibility has been used to describe certain groups of migrants
whose quiet insertion into their new country has led to a lack of
interest from the general public. This ability to blend-in often hinges
on perceived similarity either in language, culture or skin colour
(Fortier 2000, 2003; Leinonen 2012). Visibility, in turn, has been
applied to groups of migrants deemed “out of place” i.e. too exotic,
too religious or in other ways too different to be integrated in the
majority society (Nagel & Staeheli 2008). In all cases, however,
visibility and invisibility are perceived as conditions more or less
imposed on individuals or groups by external structures such as the
media or political, social or cultural institutions in the host country.
Scholars like Ghorashi (2010) link processes of visibility and
invisibility to a culturalist turn in discourses of integration in western
European countries during the course of the 1990s where more
concern was directed towards ensuring migrants’ integration as
citizens. For Ghorashi, this entailed that migrants’ cultures came to be
seen as completely different from the culture of the majority. By
defining migrants through assumed socio-cultural non-conformity, a
heightened attention to difference was created, which implied that
those groups that stood out as “most different” from the “host
population” became extremely visible. This focus on difference and
socio-cultural non-conformity is according to Ghorashi also present
when “active and emancipated western women” engage in “helping
out” migrant women from their position as invisible. Here, a focus on
difference often entails that the competences and skills of these
women are left unnoticed (ibid: 77). While highlighting the effects of
the culturalist turn on migration politics, Gorashi’s analysis
nonetheless appears to relegate migrants to a position of passive
objects leaving no room for understanding migrants’ active efforts to
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ecome either invisible or visible as part of an attempt to blend in or
be heard.
Nagel and Staeheli’s work on British Arab activists likewise tends
to consider invisibility as detrimental to migrant’s inclusion into
society. In contrast, visibility, in terms of making themselves seen and
heard, is perceived by their informants as part of a general struggle
to enhance their status in the public eye. Visibility is considered a
necessity if they were to “submerge particular forms of stereotypes,
that have been stigmatized in the public discourse” (Nagel and
Staeheli, 2008: 84).
Indeed, Nagel and Staeheli (2008: 92) recognize a certain
ambiguity among the activists, who on the one hand see themselves
as different from the dominant white and English population, but on
the other hand also seek to avoid being categorized within minority
categories, for example based on their religion, out of fear of being
connected to Islamic radicalism. They compare this situation with the
difficult choices faced by disabled people: Should they pass as
similar/able-bodied or should they perform the dominant culture’s
stereotypes of otherness/disability? Both groups face the same type
of dilemma, knowing that by “passing”, one may face a profound
sense of misrecognition and dissonance (ibid: 87). Ambivalence and
ambiguity are, therefore, likely to follow whatever choice is made.
This emphasis on ambiguity in relation to visibility and invisibility
seems fruitful when looking at the Danes born in Serbia who have had
to deal with the common identification of Serbs as the villains of the
1990s Balkan wars, and with the derived public image, displayed in
fictional TV series, of People from Serbias as warmongers, smugglers
and drug tycoons. Few attempts to confront such stereotypes were
(to my knowledge) registered among Danes born in Serbia. Instead,
remaining invisible by stressing sameness became an attractive
manner to avoid these less agreeable aspects of visibility. Particularly
during the 1990s, a generally negative view on their homeland
attachment seems to have been conducive to a down-playing of
cultural difference and to the relegation of major cultural celebrations
from the eyes of the Danish public to the less visible hinterland in
Serbia.
Where invisibility in the works of Ghorashi, Nagel and Staheli is
seen as detrimental to integration as it makes citizens powerless and
objectified vis-à-vis the state, the situation of the Danish Serbs
underscores ambiguity. Here, both visibility and invisibility relate
closely to belonging. As transnational beings, people can obviously
“belong” in many different ways and to many places, but it is always
a dynamic (and even contested) process, not a reified fixity. Effective
belonging and membership to host communities and homeland can
always be questioned and membership must, therefore, be enacted
and regained again and again through acts of visibility or conformity.
Because the results always depend on the context and the audience
towards which it is enacted, it can never be a fixed state with either
negative or positive effects to the individual migrant. This point is likely
to be missed out if (in)visibility is viewed solely as structurally
imposed. This will be further elaborated in the next paragraphs.
5 Performing belonging through visibility and
invisibility
Exploring the intricate ways in which migrants struggle to construct
their lives and maintain their membership both in the area of
settlement and in the places they have left entails looking into the
multi-local practices of group identity. This in turn delineates the
politics and social dynamics of “fitting in”.
As mentioned above, visibility and invisibility are not static
conditions. Although not entirely under the control of the individual,
visibility and invisibility may be characteristics that individuals actively
take upon themselves to achieve certain goals vis a vis a certain
group of on-lookers. Migrants as well as other individuals may choose
to enforce or downplay their visibility to ascertain or occlude their
position whether in the host society or in the community of origin.
One does not simply and ontologically “belong” to the world or any
group in it. Belonging is an achievement at several levels of
abstraction. For Bell (1999: 3), identity is, first and foremost, the effect
of performance, not vice versa. This perspective is useful for the
present study as it underscores the active role of the “performers”.
Citing Butler, Fortier (1999: 43) explains the role of performativity
in relation to identity formation:
Performativity is not merely about routine or the reiteration of
practices within one individual’s life. Nor is reiteration ‘simply replicas
of the same’. Rather [..] performativity is about the reiteration of norms
that precede, constrain and exceed the performer. Performative acts
include legal sentences, baptisms, inaugurations or other forms of
statements that do not only perform an action but confer a binding
power on the action performed. Viewing identity as performative, then
means that identities are constructed by the very expressions that are
said to be their result.
Visibility as well as invisibility in this context must therefore be
understood primarily as the act of performing (by acting or lying low).
This is not necessarily equivalent with the end result of the
performance.
Indeed, the performance of visibility may be both contradictory
and conflictual. While Serbia-born attempts to “fit in” to the point of
becoming invisible may provide a temporary hideout from
stigmatization, it may also be problematic because it carries the risk
of becoming a non-person (see Ålund 1996). Fortier’s description
(2000: 23) of the “invisible” Italian community in London stresses this
ambiguity. Representing themselves as “invisible migrants” enables
the Italians to emphasize their quiet insertion into the British social
fabric, but it also highlights the political indifference they come up
against.
Becoming invisible conveys a fear of losing one’s own ethnic and
national identity (Fortier 2003: 240). Many Italians, therefore, seek to
move out of this invisibility by performing different collective acts of
remembrance, rituals and commemorations, thereby creating a new
and idealized form of belonging to Britain as “Italians abroad”.
Employment of public performances as vehicles for obtaining
visibility is also frequent among the Danish-Serbs. Like other groups
of migrants, they invest efforts into the re-creation and maintenance
of continuity between the past and present by creating places of
memory or through the performance of various heritage practices
(Juul 2008). These enactments of migrant identity and belonging are
carried out both “here” and “there” in what Crang et al. (2003: 445)
have termed “triadic geographies of belonging”, where belonging
hinges on places of residence, a sense of homeland elsewhere and
a sense of belonging to a diaspora community. Since many of the
events that shape our sense of self are connected to specific places,
localities, therefore, continue to be important sources of meaning and
identity for mobile subjects. This is among the issues that will be
explored below.
6 Transnational ties and ritual practices
Who we are derives in part from the multiple connections we have to
other people, events and things, whether these are geographically
close or distant, located in the present or past (Conradson & McKay
2007: 167).
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According to Barth (1969), events such as celebrations and
festivals may be seen as vessels of meaning, which can be used by
organizers and spectators alike to communicate different kinds of
messages. Events may be dichotomic in structure, at once uniting and
separating. For migrants residing in a new country, rituals,
celebrations and popular culture within the group may on the one
hand open up ways to forge new and even morally founded
relationships between members of the group. By celebrating bodily
together, by eating, dancing and singing, a “we” group is defined visà-vis
a “they group”. In this manner, transnational migrants are able
to reshape their subjectivities, ethically and spiritually (Werbner 2013:
118), just as new spaces of “belonging” may be created in an
otherwise alien environment.
Ritual performances may, on the other hand, also be carried out
explicitly to address a wider public of the host country. Highly visible
and collective celebrations such as carnivals, parades, games and
greetings can turn into important vehicles of strengthening group
solidarity and re-appropriating urban space. Visibility may also be
acquired by incorporating as a distinct group into existing festivals (as
in Næstved’s annual fair). Both cases are expressions of migrants’
investments in becoming visible as citizens with equal rights to the
public space of the host country.
With increased incomes and cheaper flights, many migrants are
now able to travel extensively between their new countries of
settlement and their “homeland”. This allows them to rely on more
than one country to construct their social identity and to participate in
ritual practices both in the host country and the country of origin. In
the words of Salih (2003: 82), “migrants are able to create a
transnational division of ritual space which involves a distribution of
symbolic and economic resources across both countries”.
Salih’s framing of a transnational division of ritual space makes it
possible to explain how the aims of certain rituals may differ according
to where they are carried out and to understand why some ritual
activities only acquire full meaning if performed in the sending
community. Certain rituals aim to express a collective religious,
national or political identity that has to be recognized in the country of
residence. Others seek to give social recognition to the migrants’
families within the community of origin. Often ceremonies carried out
“at home” try to achieve a twofold purpose:
• They aim to provide a symbolic reintegration into the social and
cultural system the migrants have left.
• They serve as a contextual assertion of their difference from the
spectators of these rituals, those who remained behind. Thereby
they serve to expand migrants’ symbolic status and capital.
For Salih (2002: 223), this indicates that the social recognition of not
only kin but also the society left behind is paramount to migrants’
social status.
Keeping relations to families, friends and communities at home is
an emotionally and materially intensive endeavour. Although
successful migration can provide improved material opportunities, it
is at the same time accompanied by complex dynamics of longing and
connection, obligations and guilt (Conradson & McKay 2007: 168).
Hage (cited in Werbner 2013: 116) describes how the feeling of guilt
remains deeply associated with transnational migration: being born
into a community or a nation is in many societies considered a “gift”
that one repays through lifelong participation. Leaving the community
induces a state of guilt and a sense of debt to the society left behind.
Social participation in the new place of settlement may, therefore, be
seen as a sign that one has forgotten about the original “debt”. These
feelings of “distancing” produce a desire for proximity, which can only
be overcome momentarily by gestures that convey a sense of being
affectively implicated. Performing lavish celebrations in the home
village may, therefore, be important visible signs of still caring for the
homeland.
Also public celebrations may be seen in the perspective of
obligations, guilt and sacrifice. Often migrants invest both work and
money in creating or renewing old traditions and in beautifying the
village as a manner of honouring the home community. Unfortunately,
diasporic support to public celebrations in the homeland is seldom
conflict-free. Often, a bland heritage version is created not to threaten
the unity upon which such celebrations depend (Boissevain 1999: 11).
Even so, they seldom escape the creation of disunity in the sense that
they exclude those unable to afford the authentic costumes or those
unwilling to accept the authority of those capable of imposing their
version of tradition.
The role of festivities as simultaneously uniting and separating is
also stressed by Salih. Because consumption and/or gift exchange in
relation to these events are part of a discourse of power between
places, these performances of tradition often include a hidden agenda
(Salih 2003: 94). Not least the wedding tradition is becoming an arena
for performance of social status and class, where dominant symbols
are received and interpreted as emblems of status by participants as
well as by onlookers. Salih (2003, 98) stresses that:
What counts in this interpretation is not the aesthetic form of the
ritual, in the sense of imported consumer goods and fashion the
migrants insert in their ceremonies, but rather the social meaning
conveyed in the introduction of these.
In the remaining text, I discuss examples of ritual practices among
Romanians from a perspective of performativity. First, I reiterate the
role of invisibility in the everyday life of Serbian Romanians. Secondly,
I discuss a public cultural evening held in Denmark under the
auspices of the Danish Serbian Friendship Association. After this
follows three examples of celebrations held in Serbia, representing
different levels of ceremonial activity, from the regional (the Fair), over
the parochial (the Dance), to the semi-private (wedding ceremonies).
7 Celebrating the invisibility of everyday life
Among migrants of Serbia-born origin in Denmark, invisibility is in
many ways a cherished quality. Satisfaction is often expressed with
regard to perceived similarities between the Serbia-born minority and
the Danish majority population. Ballhausen and Tonnesen (2008)
show how similarities in culture and religion are accentuated, often in
contrast to Muslims who are framed as difficult to integrate.
Particularly, the similarities between the Orthodox faith and Danish
Protestantism are emphasized by referring to the common use of the
Cross.
On the individual level, keeping a neutral appearance is
accentuated. Traditional first names are, therefore, losing out to more
cosmopolitan or even common Danish first names as parents
consider such names to be more suitable for a successful career.
Also in terms of housing, similarity and invisibility are celebrated.
Among house owners, what is valued is a house that resembles the
rest of the row. These anonymous standard houses stand in glaring
contrast to the extravagant “mansions” built in the village of origin. But
in order not to stir up resentment and gossip, the attractiveness of tthe
migrants house is seldom made visible to the Danes (Juul 2011).
This emphasis on sameness and invisibility has enabled Serbiaborn
migrants to cast themselves as “ethnic whites”, leaving the role
of “the absolute other” to “darker” and more “different” groups of
migrants. This is also conveyed in the statements by a Serbia-born
lady in her fifties:
I don’t understand those immigrant women carrying scarves.
When my mother and I came to Denmark [in the early 1980s] and saw
that no one in the factory were covering their heads, we immediately
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took off our scarves and sneaked them into our bags. Why is it that
these people want to stand out?
The statement underscores how features of invisibility and
sameness have been acquired through conscious and individual
efforts to blend in. This is in contrast to efforts at the collective level,
discussed below, where energy is invested in making the migrant
community visible in the communities where they have established
themselves.
8 Celebrating belonging – confronting
stereotypes?
In most of the Danish towns, where Serbian Romanians have settled,
they have established Friendship Associations, which have actively
participated in local politics. In Næstved, for example, members of the
Association have been instrumental in developing a municipal policy
of integration, where difference is celebrated, “while leaving aside
divisions between ‘them’ and ‘us’” (Næstved Council of Integration,
2012: 2).
The Associations also engage in organising semi-public events
where local culture is celebrated. These events serve to create and
maintain a sense of unity among the Danes born in Serbia but
frequent inclusion of Danish key personalities from the municipality
has secured that these events also act as windows towards the wider
public and as acts of belonging. The following account of a local
evening celebrated in the town nonetheless shows the difficulties
related to the public presentations of a homeland culture.
In the local newspaper, the chairman explained the initiative in the
following manner:
A cultural evening like this one is an obvious opportunity to tell
about homeland and about their culture, and put issues such as
integration, dialogue and community on the agenda in an entertaining
and different manner. People always communicate well when eating
together. I’m in no doubt that we can inspire a lot of Danes when we
tell about the Serbs as an ethnic group and about our culture. (Extract
from Ugebladet Næstved 10.04.2012)
This was followed by a description of the cosy atmosphere
created when servings of spiced sausages, smoked ham and
homemade bread accompanied talks on Romanian folk costumes,
rituals and festivals.
Compared with the British-Arab activists interviewed by Nagel
and Staeheli (2008: 90) who were editing magazines or sponsoring
lectures, the ambitions of the Danish–Serbian Friendship Association
may appear fairly narrow. If a “confrontation of stereotypes” was
taking place, it was in an indirect manner. Instead, the event
confirmed a picture of Serbia as the locus of “traditional” and rural
values. It nevertheless served the purpose, manifested in many other
similar public events, of showing the wider public that all Serbs “are
not how the media portray us”, which was also the goal articulated by
the British–Arab activists.
What the evening also highlighted was how difficult it was for the
Association to present more than this particular, harmless bit of
Romanian “culture”. First of all, the chairman’s insistent claim that
Danes can be inspired by learning about Romanian culture was
bound to remain hazy. In spite of the ostensible traditions of hospitality
and multi-ethnic cohabitation characterizing the pre-conflict Yugoslav
Federation, the recent Serbian history of political stalemate, religious
intolerance and direct xenophobia makes the proposition
questionable. To present a palatable version of their place of origin,
which simultaneously can stand out as “special” but not too “different”,
the chairman was forced to present an imaginary homeland, based
on a bland and un-conflictive version of the Serbian society. In this
fictional homeland, emotional issues such as Serbia’s recent loss of
Kosovo, Serbia’s negotiations with the European Union or the war
tribunal in The Hague had evaporated.
More surprising was the absence of references to the Romanian
minority culture, a background shared by all the Serbs present. There
was no mentioning of their beautiful villages or the everyday life
between homes in Denmark and in Serbia, issues that could have
provided substance to the dialogue on integration and community
proposed by the chairman. This occlusion of the personal, emotional
or political aspects of everyday culture in the countryside in Serbia
was probably a conscious choice. By stressing the nostalgia of rural
life as opposed to the present urban lifestyles, the chairman enabled
a “we” group to emerge, which was palatable to the Danes who are
able to draw on a similar national heritage. Attachment and belonging
were thus confirmed, while key elements characterizing the
transnational family such as emotions, difference and belonging were
kept away from the wider Danish public. These came out more
prominently in those celebrations carried out in Serbia.
9 Public celebrations in Serbia: The Fair and
Diaspora Assembly
The month of July is very demanding down here. Every three days,
there is a celebration where you must be present. You get home late
and when your children and grandchildren visit, there is no time left to
spend with them. All the time, there are weddings, birthday parties,
baptisms that you must attend. (woman, aged sixty)
The ritual activities of the diapora community carried out in the
homeland may appear as full of contradictions. Many speak of their
summer holidays in the village as a time of relaxation.
Nonetheless, most are constantly engaged in hectic festive activities.
Despite frequent expressions of fatigue, the amount of private or
public celebrations seems to have increased exponentially. New
traditions and rituals are added to the old ones, all of which imply timeconsuming
preparations and economic sacrifices.
One re-invention is the annual Fair and Diaspora Assembly
celebrated in July in Ljubicevac, one of the villages where
outmigration has been most prominent. Besides shopkeepers
marketing a variety of local goods, the festival consists of a football
tournament and a number of staged activities. In 2013, entertainment
included not only the obligatory folk dance groups but also a beauty
contest with age categories ranging from young girls to matronly
ladies. Finally, a popular singer from Belgrade lent lustre to the event
by attracting between 700 and 1000 spectators.
To initiate the fair, a parade through the town was led by the
chairman in his traditional attire, carrying the flag of the municipality.
Also flaunted was the banner of the chairman’s particular wing of the
Danish Friendship Associations. 3 After innumerable folk dances and
much parading of the local beauties, three women entertained the
public with Romanian folk songs, while the winners of the contest
were elected.
The beauty contest where lightly dressed women mixed with
wearers of traditional home-embroidered dresses and hand-woven
aprons neatly exemplified the general mixing of tradition and renewal.
Tradition and modernity were likewise contrasted through repeated
references to the European Union. A billboard with the E.U. stars
surrounding the village name read: “Welcome to the European village
of Ljubicevac”. The term “European village” [Evropska Selo] was
continually used by the host and village leader in his praise of the
village and its initiatives. Although Serbia is still waiting to become an
applicant country to the E.U., the village served, he said, as a model
for the villages of the region.
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188

The event was generally an interesting jumble of intentions. In
spite of the traditional costumes and the frequent allusions to a rural
past, the festival did not link up to any traditional event. The central
intention was obviously to celebrate the village as a migration success
story. Interestingly, there were no flags or other symbols relating to
the countries hosting migrants from the village or from other friendship
associations. Despite the inclusion of the term “assembly” in the
official name, no official meetings or decisionmaking took place, a
situation that likely reflects the deep divisions that characterize the
diaspora community.
Obviously, huge effort had been invested in establishing the fair
as a public and egalitarian meeting place, where those living abroad
could renew friendships with those permanently settled in the region.
Through this act of sacrifice, the organizers were able to repay their
moral guilt to their community of origin. This was, however,
interspersed with elements of exclusivity and hierarchy. Through the
constant evocation of the village as “European”, 4 as an “E.U. territory”,
and as a model for the region, a distance was created between the
migrants and the local non-EU-citizens.
The Fair generally straddled between different goals. On the one
hand, it acted to strengthen homeland belonging by making the
success of the village and its diaspora population (or a particular
group therein) visible towards the population in the region and to
strengthen the diaspora population’s ties to the municipal authorities
(who were purposely invited). On the other hand, it served as a
performance of superiority towards those inhabitants who had not
taken part in the migration experience (by evoking their status as E.U.
citizens or by dressing up in expensive traditional clothing not
affordable to the locals).
Because the performance was carried out under the auspices of
the local council, it also served to demonstrate the superior rights of
the majority population of migrants to the public space and local
resources vis-à-vis the permanently settled minority. This served to
underscore the wide-ranging social and political marginalisation
experienced by the locals who face a general withdrawal of public
schooling and health infrastructure in consequence of the dwindling
population.
Everyone will dance, even if afterwards they will have to spend
two days in bed to recover.
Long after the official closing time, a few couples persistently
placed large euro notes on the foreheads of the musicians, urging
them to play just one more song. It was, they explained, difficult and
painful to stop, as the nostalgic wording of the songs brought back
memories of the hardship they had experienced in the course of their
migration.
The event highlights what could be termed as the emotional costs
of transnationalism. The reunion, the songs and the dancing acted to
reconcile the transnational pensioners with the past and the emotional
consequences of being away were “mended” through the
performance of ritual practices, kept out of the sight of the people in
the new areas of residence.
In contrast to the other gatherings described above, this get
together in Serbia may be characterized as an insider event, where
dancing and celebration worked out satisfyingly precisely because
they were performed by people who knew each other. As ordered and
formal events, with their own rules and hierarchies, performances
such as the pensioners dance also include elements of exclusivity
and expressions of power relations. These were articulated in
different ways: (a) to demonstrate the superior taste acquired while
abroad and their position as the economically most potent clients, the
migrants felt obliged to voice their disappointment with the meal to the
local caterer; (b) a not-quite sober, local inhabitant insisted on joining
the chain to dance with the researcher, resulting in a public castigation
of the outsider; (c) frustration vented from a visiting villager when
winners in the lottery turned out to be almost exclusively from the
hosting village showed that not all participants felt that they were
treated on equal terms.
Although the community celebration was intended to soften for a
short moment the internal divisions within the migrant group or
between migrants and those permanently settled, these incidences
highlight how diverse meanings about unity and community tended to
surface and become contested in the process. As will be shown
below, this social dispersion becomes even more significant when
played out in the private sphere.
10 Celebrations at the parochial level: the last
dance of the pensioners
While the Fair and Diaspora Assembly may be seen as projects of
reintegration at the regional level, it is the reconciliation with the past
and the emotional memory work which forms the core of the
celebrations at intra-village level. These celebrations are reminiscent
of old Romanian traditions where “friendship villages” took turns to
arrange public dances. The quotations below, collected among the
villagers in 2013, show how these expressions of unity and equality
still convey strong sentiments of nostalgia:
Every Sunday there was festivity in one of the villages. We would
take our bikes and drive there to look at the boys. Local musicians
would come and we danced till late in the afternoon.
Everyone would come to the parties, nothing was private.
The friendship village structure is still intact and in charge of
organising common activities, such as the farewell-dinner in October
2013 where 250 retired migrants gathered before taking off to their
countries of residence. As required by tradition, entertainment
involved dancing the Romanian chain dance ore. For almost 10
hours, ore was performed by pensioners, many of whom were marked
by age or physical constraints acquired through hard and unhealthy
jobs abroad. As explained by one of the participants:
11 Celebrating in “private”
Until recently, wedding performances have been firmly tied to the
hinterland. While Gardner and Grillo (2002) explained this as
deliberate attempts to keep the reckless spending out of sight of the
host communities, Salih (2003) emphasizes the role of weddings as
arenas in which migrants can perform simultaneous acts of belonging
and difference vis à vis the community of origin. In this perspective,
weddings only make sense when performed “at home”.
The conspicuous commodity consumption that characterizes the
Romanian wedding may be traced back to the very start of labour
migrations in the 1970s. As shown by Schierup and Ålund (1986: 53),
it was precisely through the development of a ceremonial sphere of
society, which consumed a major proportion of their savings that
migrants were able to purge themselves from the envy of the
community, while reinforcing their status and social networks. During
this period, weddings were collective and inclusive acts where the
entire village would participate either as guest, in preparing the meals
or as spectators and participants in the dancing that followed.
Over the years, the number of invited guests has increased
dramatically, while exclusivity has augmented. A young woman
explained: “We had 500 guests at our wedding. Now that the hotels
have increased their facilities, it’s no longer common to celebrate at
home”. By moving celebrations to the confined spaces of a hotel, the
189

inclusive aspects of the ceremonies are downplayed. The
performance of difference becomes crucial, which is why weddings
are carefully documented. A wedding photographer interviewed
during fieldwork in 2013 explained:
The wedding DVD must feature the dress, the shoes and the
bridal bouquet. It must capture the rituals at the church, the dining and
the dancing. Most couples wish to perform something that no one else
has done. Natural sceneries are popular, as are sequences where the
bride, her mother and her sister in traditional costumes haul water
from the Danube to bring good fortune to the couple. In some cases,
people pay to have their wedding transmitted on local TV. So far the
most extraordinary shooting carried out by our business was a
wedding ceremony high in the sky in a helicopter.
This visibility is accompanied by the occlusion and “privatization”
of the wedding gifts. Earlier, dowry and wedding gifts were paraded
through the streets as a collective display of the burgeoning
purchasing power of the village. Nowadays, wedding gifts consist of
envelopes containing at least one 50 Euro bill per dining guest (a
feature that has tempted some to solve the financial problems related
to the multiplication of celebrations by depositing anonymous and
empty envelopes on the gift tables).
Increased interactions with the communities of settlement also
change previous divisions of ritual spaces. The proliferation of mixed
marriages implies that weddings are celebrated in the country of
settlement, but often celebrations take place both in Denmark and
Serbia, in order to resolve conflicting ritual requirements.
Furthermore, economic success in the country of settlement
challenges the previous practices of saving money in the host country
only to spend it on extravagant celebrations in the home town.
Increasingly, people express a desire to display wealth, status and
sameness within the host society. This has given a way to new types
of celebrations, previously outside the ritual catalogue of the Serbian-
Romanians. This includes celebration of silver and golden wedding
anniversaries, 18th birthdays and, most surprisingly, the observance
of the confirmation ceremony of the Lutheran Church. These
ceremonies provide a fertile ground for a public display of pomp and
circumstance as well as sameness, both in terms of religion and
alcohol and conspicuous consumption.
12 Conclusion
Contrary to studies highlighting invisibility as structurally imposed, the
article shows how migrants actively perform acts of visibility and
invisibility to achieve certain gains. For many Danish Serbs, invisibility
is associated with successful integration and with being an
that migrants are able to simultaneously shape localities “here” and
“there”.
This balancing between the performances of difference and
sameness also has a price. While the visible displays of ethnic
difference presented to the mainstream society in Denmark often are
restricted to easily palatable versions of an imaginary rural culture,
the material practices and consumption characterizing the
celebrations in the homeland are significant domains through which
migrants are able to expand their symbolic capital and social status.
This active performance of migrant success to the audience “back
home” obviously contributes to strengthening on-going processes of
difference and marginalization.
Where rituals and celebrations previously served to reconcile
migrants with the community of origin, the needs of the diasporic
community increasingly overrule those of local inhabitants who
struggle to keep the home villages alive between the festive summer
seasons. An effect of the increased festivities performed by migrants
is that the population left behind becomes invisible and marginalized
both socially and politically, while being relegated to a situation as onlookers.
Meanwhile, intermarriage and migrants’ growing desire to display
their successful incorporation into Danish society have prompted the
multiplication of festivities held in Denmark. Here, sameness is
celebrated among other things through religion, consumption and
common tastes for food and alcohol.
Kristine Juul is an associate professor in Geography at the Institute
of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change at Roskilde University,
Denmark. Her research focuses on transnational living among
Serbian-Romanian immigrants, on homeless West-Africans in
Copenhagen and on natural resource management in Africa and Asia.
Recent publications include: Schmidt, J., et al. 2012. “Til bunds i
metropolen: hjemløse udlændinge i København”, in Byen i
bevægelse: mobilitet - politik - performativitet, eds J. Andersen et al.
Roskilde Universitetsforlag, and “From Danish Yugoslavs to Danish
Serbs; National Affiliation caught between Visibility and Invisibility, in
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 37, no. 2, 2011”.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the editors of this volume and two anonymous
reviewers for useful comments and the community of DanishSerbs for
extended hospitality and interesting conversations during fieldwork.
Notes
1 The exact repartition of Yugoslav groups in Denmark is difficult to
families.
4 This is in itself contradictory as the whole region belongs to Europe
although not to the European Union.
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From Danish Yugoslavs to Danish Serbs:
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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Vol. 37, No. 2, February 2011, pp. 237255
From Danish Yugoslavs to Danish
Serbs: National Affiliation Caught
Between Visibility and Invisibility
Kristine Juul
Immigrants from Serbia who came to Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s found a large
number of shared values between Yugoslav ideals of brotherhood and unity and the
Scandinavian welfare model. As a result, they felt well integrated into Danish society,
almost to the point of being invisible. This invisibility is upheld through a constant
emphasis on sameness between themselves and the majority population in the public
sphere, while the cultivation of difference has been relegated to the private realm or
to cultural associations such as the Yugoslav Clubs. Over the last decade, this ‘sharing
of values’ has been contested from several points of view. During their absence,
Yugoslav migrants have witnessed the destruction of their homeland and have been
forced to take on a new Serbian identity. In what remained of their former homeland,
social and political instability has stimulated a re-traditionalisation of society.
Meanwhile, the growing attention given to religion and origins has changed the room
for manoeuvre of immigrant families in Denmark, challenging the tight networks
hitherto maintained with the home village. Through interviews with members of the
Serbian community in Denmark, I explore how they manoeuvre between strategies
of visibility and invisibility in their quest to become full members of Danish society
while maintaining their cultural particularities. I also look at the often contradictory
ways in which the transformation of values and norms in Serbian and Danish society
have impacted on the cultural and social practices of Serbian families in Denmark.
Keywords: Danish Serbian Diaspora; Romanian Identity; Visibility and Invisibility;
Denmark

238 K. Juul
Kristine Juul is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Roskilde, Denmark. Correspondence to:
Prof. K. Juul, Institute of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, University of Roskilde, PO Box 260,
DK4000 Roskilde, Denmark. E-mail: kristine@ruc.dk.
ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/11/020237-19 # 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2010.521333
Introduction: A Night at the Serbian Association
In May 2008, a small gathering was held on the premises of the Danish-Serbian
Friendship Association in a Danish provincial town. Hosting the meeting was a
mixture of middle-aged, first-generation immigrants and some younger men, born and
raised in Denmark by Serbian parents.
The purpose of the meeting was to introduce some Danish students*and myself as
their supervisor*to the daily life of Serbian migrants in Denmark as part of their
preparation for a field-trip to Serbia. Our hosts shared their thoughts and experiences
about being Serbs in Denmark and told us about their jobs, family situations and
leisure activities, notably in the town’s Serbian football club. Many of our younger
hosts figured prominently in the photographs of consecutive football teams which
adorned the walls, among a large number of cups and prizes won at football
tournaments and in fishing competitions. Among these were also a number of pictures
showing young people practising Yugoslav folk dances, on which the humorous
comment was: ‘If you told them back in Serbia that you were practising folk dancing,
they’d start kidding you. They’d think you’re a hillbilly. It’s only here that we carry
on like this’. Whereas the dancing and the Serbian football teams represented the
association’s activities in maintaining and cultivating bonds within the Serbian
community, other photographs illustrated the strong commitment of the association to
Danish society by documenting the visits of Danish politicians and the leaders of local
labour movements at cultural events organised by the association.
During the evening, a lively mixture of Danish, Serbian and Oltenian Romanian was
spoken. Oltenian Romanian is a Romanian dialect spoken by members of the
Romanian minority in eastern Serbia, to which all the association’s members
belonged. Asked how they handled three different languages in their daily lives, the
young men replied that they mainly speak Danish, even in their homes. The majority
used Serbian regularly, primarily to communicate with older family members and with
their families back home. Oltenian Romanian was understood but seldom used.
Several had been given Danish first names by their parents. In other cases their friends
had turned their Serbian name into a Danishsounding equivalent. These young men
had many Danish friends and acquaintances, but maintained a core of Serbian
(football) friends with whom they communicated almost exclusively in Danish. This
was in contrast to the older members, who mainly used Oltenian Romanian, and more
rarely Danish, in chatting with each other.
Likewise, the younger members tended to speak of themselves as Danish Serbs,
whereas the older people often spoke of themselves as Yugoslavs and of their
homeland as Yugoslavia. This reflected a reluctance among the older generation to
accept the eradication of the Yugoslav state in 1990, a reluctance that postponed the

elabelling of the Yugoslav Club to its present name (the Danish-Serbian Friendship
Association) until 1998. It was in this process that the club was restructured as an
association which included Danes. One young man stressed that he felt 80 per cent
Danish and 20 per cent Serb. He said that he found it difficult to take seriously those
who called themselves Serbs but who had lived all their lives in Denmark. Discussions

240 K. Juul
nonetheless made it clear that our hosts attributed great importance to the association
as a means of successful integration. It was precisely because of the continuous
backing of the Romanian community that ‘their’ youngsters had managed to steer clear
of the flaws encountered in other immigrant communities. 1 The many social, cultural
and sporting activities, it was stressed, had acted to maintain tight relations and a strong
sense of identity within the Serbian Romanian minority. This had, they held, facilitated
their integration into Danish society to such an extent that they had become successful
and respected citizens. Several of them had obtained solid positions either in the
municipality or as mid-level managers in private firms. Some had been elected to the
town council or the ‘Council for Integration’ as political representatives. 2 As for the
latter, they stressed that they no longer discussed integration. ‘Now it’s no longer
‘‘them and us’’, but instead a question of civic participation’.
The Romanians in Denmark: Difference and Sameness
We do not form a glaring contrast to the Danish population. We do not have dark
skins, and our culture and habits are no different from Danish habits (Serbian male,
2005).
Many Yugoslavs live here. But then, when you think about it, we aren’t here, because
we are so integrated. We are accepted so much that you won’t sense any unrest here.
[...] We are here, yet we are not here (middle-aged man of Serbian descent, 2005).
The focus of the present article is a group of immigrants who, in their own and the
public’s view, have become so well integrated that they are almost invisible. Indeed,
the fate of the Romanian 3 community during their 40 years of migrant history is well
described by the label ‘quiet integration’ used by Pedersen and Rytter (2006) to
designate those immigrants whose integration has apparently been so undramatic that
they are barely mentioned in the Danish media.
As shown above, the Romanians consider the integration process of their co-ethnics
as extremely successful. They have integrated peacefully into the towns where they
settled and have managed to maintain themselves in the labour market until health
problems or age have forced them to retire. The younger generation has by and large
managed to move upwards in the educational and social hierarchy. 4 Both groups
generally endorse the Danish welfare model and articulate no desire to move back to
their villages of origin, except, as one expressed it, ‘if a smart business trick could
make him rich in a jiffy’. Finally they are proud to resemble the Danes both physically
and culturally, something which in their eyes positions them favourably in the social
hierarchy of Danish immigrants.
Paradoxically the feeling of being successful seems to be linked to the condition of
invisibility. As was the case for the Italian community in London studied by Fortier
(2000), invisibility, or ‘blending in’, is the product of integration and acceptance rather

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 241
than the outcome of conditions of marginalisation and imposed silence, as has been the
case with, for example, black Americans. In this group, invisibility is upheld through
a constant emphasis on the sameness between Danes and Serbian immigrants (for
example, being both Christian and European).
The gathering nonetheless underscored the fact that the ability to remain ‘invisible’
is to a large extent the fruit of their consciously working to maintain and strengthen
the Romanian identity. This is upheld through the activities of the Serbian association
and frequent visits to their villages of origin; that is, through the cultivation of
difference. The maintenance of a Serbian meeting place, a Serbian football team and
Serbian folk-dance training indicates that, in spite of their achievements in terms of
jobs and status, both young and older migrants experience a tension between difference
and sameness in their relations with the Danish majority culture. While their strong
ties with their villages of origin may contribute positively to their ability to blend in
with the majority society in Denmark, these ties do not remove the difficulties involved
in keeping up obligations and loyalties to several places at once. The ambivalence
created by straddling between these different loyalties has become all the more salient
as the former clean, bright and ‘white’ attributes of being Yugoslav have darkened as
a result of their contemporary history, the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation and
the subsequent civil war.
The aim of this article is to discuss to what extent invisibility has become a necessary
condition for successful integration into Danish society. Is ‘invisibility’ a product of
conscious strategies to blend in with the majority society, or is it rather a consequence
of trying to keep celebrations of cultural difference outside the realms of the society of
the majority? Different strategies of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ will be investigated in
order to understand how a distinct social structure, such as the closely knit Romanian
family and the strong ethnic bonds both among Romanian immigrants and between the
homeland and the diaspora, have facilitated their apparently smooth integration into
Danish society. Finally I look at how this strategy of invisibility was affected by the
historical events that transformed the Romanians’ former homeland from a socialist
federation heralding ‘brotherhood and unity’ into an inward-looking and unstable
republic struggling to maintain a democratic fac¸ade.
The article is based on my interviews with Danish-Romanian immigrants between
2005 and 2008. Around 20 formal interviews were carried out with (mostly) male
members of different Friendship Associations. These were supplemented by
participant observation during five visits to the villages (either alone or as the
coordinator for two graduate students’ field-trips to Serbia) 5 and at social gatherings at
the associations in both Denmark and Serbia. Also important were the 20 informal
conversations with retired men and women carried out in their homes in Serbia and/ or
Denmark. These persons were either active members of the Associations or connected
to them through family ties. Others were randomly selected during visits to the
villages. As most visits to Serbia have taken place outside the prime holiday season,
interviews with younger people, with a few exceptions, were carried out in Denmark

242 K. Juul
as part of Club meetings. Key persons*such as the Serbian priest in Denmark, the head
of the local Diaspora Office in Serbia, etc*were also interviewed. The interviews
focused on personal migration stories and on how the transnational lives that stretch
between Serbia and Denmark are organised, especially by those firstgeneration
migrants who have been brought up with the values and norms of the ‘old’ Yugoslavia
and who participate on a more or less regular basis in the activities of the Serbian clubs;
it only includes the perceptions and practices of the second generation when they add
to the perspective of their parents. Furthermore, most respondents were found among
the great majority who take part in most important club activities, such as the
celebrations; the study does not include the perceptions of those who no longer feel a
need to maintain their links with the Romanian migrant community in Denmark in this
way.
Living Dual Lives: Transnational Strategies and Obligations
Until the 1990s*when the break-up of Yugoslavia and the outflows of refugees
changed the ethnic pattern of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia*the Romanians,
a small minority group from eastern Serbia, were among the largest diaspora
communities in Denmark.
From the diaspora’s start in the late 1960s, Romanian migration strategies had been
characterised by chain migration, with the arriving migrants being under strong
pressure to facilitate and help the successive migration of close family relatives and
more-distant kin. The close-knit social relations of the Romanian minority encouraged
a particular pattern in which settlement was concentrated in four provincial towns all
located within a radius of 100 kilometres of Copenhagen. After 40 years of settlement,
this pattern remains more or less the same, as few of the younger generation have
chosen to move far from their families.
In contrast to many other groups, the Romanians mostly migrated as couples. Once
established, these couples would often be joined by their parents, with whom they
would share an apartment and living expenses, to increase savings as much as possible.
This was a reflection of a particular Romanian family tradition in which up to four
generations would live under the same roof. A low birth rate (one or two children per
couple) facilitated migration, as the children could be left back in the village in the
care of the grandparents (Schierup and A˚lund 1986: 185). This family structure fitted
well a strategy where migration was seen as a temporary means to quickly improve the
family’s social and economic status.
During the 1980s and 1990s, changing immigration policies in Denmark and the
difficult situation of the Yugoslav economy contributed to a transformation of
migration patterns. The initial focus on improving the agricultural unit at home was
replaced by a strategy in which the home town and the housing facilities there mainly
served as a backdrop for displaying economic success and improved status. Only a few

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 243
migrants have moved back to the village. 6 Instead, the great majority have opted for
what Schierup and A˚lund have labelled ‘permanent temporality’ (1986)* constant
movement between one’s homes in both Denmark and Serbia.
This mobile lifestyle is maintained not only by pensioners, but also by the large
group of workers in health-related early retirement, which requires that the recipient
must stay at least six months in Denmark. Permanent temporality is also motivated by
a desire to be able to stay six months in one’s beautiful house in the village, where the
cost of living is reasonable, while on the other hand maintaining close contact with
one’s grandchildren and the Danish health-care system. This constant oscillation
between the ‘home at home’ and the ‘Danish home’ is not limited to the older
population. Younger Romanians also continue to visit Serbia on a regular basis during
holidays and festivities*essential in keeping the village alive as a moral ‘hinterland’.
The situation of the Serbian immigrants may to a certain extent be characterised as
one of living dual lives (see Vertovec 2001: 574) in which they move between two or
three cultures with relative ease, and ‘pursue economic, political and cultural interests
that require their presence in both’. Events, norms and values from their country of
origin continue to exert a considerable influence on the everyday lives of both firstand
second-generation immigrants. Furthermore, their maintenance of homes in both
countries, and their bilingual or even trilingual language skills, contribute to their
ability to sustain multi-stranded social relations. These act to link together societies of
origin and those of settlement. As shown by Levitt and Glick Schiller, it is precisely
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
and in ‘place’ therefore continues to have both practical and emotional importance
(Escobar 2001 in Jackson et al. 2004: 67). 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 the
society of settlement.
This dual orientation has received much attention in the recent literature on
diasporas. Werbner (2000: 5), for example, 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

244 K. Juul
between the ‘home at home’ and the home in the country of settlement, but just as
much between a public realm that is open and comprehensible to the Danes, and a
private realm that focuses on ‘Serbdom‘ or ‘Romanianess’. This private realm is to a
large degree unobserved, if not concealed, in relation to the public gaze, but it retains
an important role in shaping the worldview, norms and values of the ‘transnational
citizen’. In the case of the Serbian Romanians, 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 that are 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 integration and an opportunity to become acquainted with the norms and
values of the country of settlement. In the case of the Serbian Romanians 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 dirtiest jobs (Federspiel 1998: 124), the working conditions to which Romanian
men were subjected were more favourable than those encountered by Romanian
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 workers with different trades and kinds of skills (Federspiel 1998:
101). It also implied submitting to the rules and conditions of the workplace and
becoming members of the strong trade unions. This made it easier for Yugoslav
migrants to adapt to the tacit codes of work or ‘self-evident codes of conduct’ within
the hierarchy of the industrial enterprise (Schierup and A˚lund 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 also visibility, thus
making it far more difficult for Romanian men to go against the collective bargaining
of the trade unions.
This was different for Romanian 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 acquiring their first job outside the
rural sector, but also taking on hard and fatiguing double work in the factory and the
home (Schierup and A˚lund 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 them worked full-time on
night shifts. In these industries, the unions were less present in regulating working
conditions, stimulating a far more conflictual relationship with the Danish workers,

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 245
where Romanian women were accused of speeding up the working processes in order
just to get a tiny bonus.
Motivation to work so hard was found primarily in the private realm, in the prestige
game of the Romanian community, where status required the purchase of a new dress
for every dance or wedding (Schierup and A˚lund 1986: 1024). The option of working
harder than their Danish colleagues and earning extra hinged on the ability of
Romanian women to leave their children in the village or in the care of older female
relatives, thereby stressing difference with regard to their Danish colleagues, who were
more dependent on the services of the welfare state. The help provided by the family
network nevertheless had its price in terms of increasing the level of obligations
towards the private realm where high levels of hospitality and other services were
expected in exchange.
One consequence of the heavy burdens placed on them is that a large number of
older women suffer from health problems and are now retired. Being away from the
labour market and consigned to the private sphere of homemaking and childcare
obviously implies a degree of withdrawal from the wider Danish society. In reality,
however, many of the older women primarily worked in industries where the bulk of
workers were other immigrants, 7 for which reason the integrative ‘outcomes’ of being
exposed to the Danish labour market are likely to have been more limited. Things are
different in the younger generation, as higher levels of education and language
proficiency have contributed to a general shift towards the service sector. Few, if any,
of this generation work in groups with other Romanians and being Romanian does not
seem to influence their job situation.
The trade unions generally play a very positive role for the older men, who accepted
and felt represented by their collective-oriented policies and by the emphasis given to
equal rights and worker solidarity, features which the Danish welfare state had in
common with socialist Yugoslavia. The trade unions also stood up for their new
members and actively campaigned against the widespread racist attitudes of some of
their other members, thereby increasing the sense of security of the former. 8 However,
these more conflictual memories are seldom raised by the migrants, who tend to
emphasise instead their more positive work experiences.
At present, when the industry-based welfare state is under pressure in both Serbia
and Denmark, collective forms of identification have tended to wither away. New
forms have emerged in both states, with greater emphasis being placed on issues such
as religion and origin. This has changed attitudes towards collective structures such as
union membership. Although the number of Serbs holding a union card tends to be
higher than among native Danes, the high employment rate which has characterised
the recent economic boom has compelled a growing number of young workers of
Serbian origin to abandon the ‘old’ trade unions. This attitude*shared by many
Danes*is regretted by members of the older generation, who feel they fought an
important struggle in fighting to organise the Yugoslav work force:

246 K. Juul
Young people don’t bother to be members of a union nowadays. But the unions have
helped us so much. We used to pay 25 kroner (3 euros) per month to the Social
Democratic Party as part of union membership. Then a collection of signatures was
made to end this tradition. But it is with these 25 kroner that we have obtained the
society that we have today (Serbian man, 2008).
Nevertheless, the generally poor health of the older Romanian workers speaks for
itself. Many suffer from serious diseases and injuries stemming from accidents and
attrition inflicted by their labour conditions. But instead of voicing protest, these old
people do not hold the labour system responsible. Rather, they choose a strategy of
invisibility where compensation negotiated through the social security system is
invested in social acts directed towards the Romanian community, such as extravagant
wedding celebrations or the like. In their eyes, the ability to gain financial
compensation continues to make unhealthy work conditions a worthwhile venture.
This strategy reflects an uninterrupted emphasis on prestige goods, which are not
necessarily made visible to Danes. Such prestige games are also at work when some
of the young Serbian couples leave their children in the care of their grandparents while
taking on an extra night job to be able to purchase luxury holidays in some distant
tourist destination. Through the so-called ‘experience economy’, these adventures may
visualise and make public their successful integration in the consumer economy.
Although individual, such adventures are consumed collectively as a way of increasing
the status of the entire group.
Integration Through Consumption: The House ‘At Home’ and the New ‘Home’
In general, the successful integration of the Serbian Romanians has been closely linked
to the consumer society. But what does this imply, and what are the migrants so eager
to gain?
Interestingly, both young and old declare that they find the building of large houses
in the village of origin unreasonable and irrational. Nevertheless, the home ‘at home’
persists as both a moral commitment and a financial burden. Great efforts are invested
in the constant refurbishing of the large and only partly inhabited houses, to keep up
with the latest fashions in homes and gardens. These beautification projects reflect
obligations to provide a decent shelter for retirement while demonstrating the status
and success acquired in the course of migration. But there is also a more collective
dimension*the beautification projects also serve to pay respect to the village by raising
its status vis-a`-vis the surrounding villages. This visibility, however, is mostly directed
towards the Serbian public. In order not to stir up jealousy, the size and attractiveness
of the Serbian house is usually not made visible to Danes.
As settlement in Denmark has become more permanent, the home in Denmark has
also acquired value as a symbolic point of reference, not only for the individual family,
but also for the groups’ collective identity. For many Serbs in Denmark, the detached

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 247
house stands out as the most important marker of integration and participation, the
most obvious expression of their commitment to Danish society, and a way of
involving oneself. In Denmark, the house (as well as the car and the large TV set) has
become a visible marker of membership in the consumer society. What is interesting,
however, is that, while the houses in the home town are built to impress, the Serbs’
houses in Denmark usually look like any other house on the road: indeed, the owners
take pride in not having any sign of difference displayed on the fac¸ade. Here the
project is one of invisibility and sameness, a way of demonstrating the Romanian
community’s integration and of signalling that they have now acquired a longer time
horizon.
Although this suggests a change in saving strategies among the ‘integrated
Romanians’, securing a decent fac¸ade and a modern interior in both the village and
the Danish houses remains crucial for maintaining respect within the Romanian
community. The Danish houses are also the object of meticulous attention. Most
Serbian men are constantly engaged in renovating the roof or enlarging the family
residence. In this way, they present themselves as the ideal image of the good
neighbour and hard-working migrant. For the women, who are traditionally in charge
of the garden and the interior, it is more difficult to gain such a reputation. Because of
their prolonged visits to the village during the summer, gardens in Denmark have to be
kept to a minimum. Most homes are kept spotlessly clean inside, but are also almost
devoid of any personal artefacts. Indeed the similarities between different homes are
striking. All are equipped with more or less the same type of corner sofa, a glass cabinet
with artefacts and figurines, and a large television set. Several Romanian women told
how they had stopped producing the traditional handicrafts and embroidery which used
to decorate Serbian homes. Since their daughters feel that these do not fit the modern
home, they are now hidden away in cupboards and drawers, as are the embroidered
pictures of Tito which used to adorn many Serbian homes. As Gru¨nenberg reports of
Bosnian homes in Denmark (2006: 139), the living rooms are almost devoid of
artefacts which could convey a connection with the homeland. This is probably due to
a desire to downplay the currentpolitical conflictsin thehomeland andavoid anopen
displayof any political sympathies. Keeping the home as impersonal as possible
nonetheless limits the women in their efforts to act as the transmitters of the homeland
culture. The sterile interior decoration makes it difficult to maintain the home as a
moral place in which social and religious ties to the homeland arepreserved.
Furthermore, the busy lifestyles of working couples act to make lives and identities
more individualised, thus leaving less time for daily interactions across the group. For
the women, who seldom participate in the dayto-day activities in the club, this tends
to limit their public involvement to the larger celebrations and gatherings. These
celebrations are increasingly organised by the male members and the food provided by
a Serbian catering firm, leaving the womenvery few opportunities to display their skills
to a wider public.

248 K. Juul
Re-Traditionalising Family Ties?
In discussions with younger and older Romanians, it is evident that strong family ties
remain an important issue within the group. Much in line with the logics of the multigenerational
family, parents feel a strong obligation to support their children well into
their adult lives. It is therefore not unusual for young people or couples to live under
the same roof as their parents:
Most young people prefer not to take out loans to support themselves while they are
studying. It’s not like the Danes, who leave it to the young people to support
themselves on the state’s study grants and by working. We let them stay at home
until they are 2025. There they can have a good life and are taken care of (Serbian
woman, 2008).
When a young couple do move to their own flat or house, it is usually located in relative
proximity to the parents’ house. Although the couple make use of public daycare
facilities, grandparents are expected to play a vital role in the upbringing of the
youngest generation. In return the elder generation expect that their children will
support them in their old age. However, as socialisation increasingly takes place within
Danish institutions, these relations of mutual obligation are likely to become more
problematic.
For first-generation migrants, it was important for the children to be raised in Serbia
by the grandparents and great-grandparents (Schierup and A˚ lund 1986: 52). This
reflected an anxiety that the children might become too Danish and forget their
Romanian roots and the obligations towards the older generation that are emphasised
in Romanian culture. In fact, some of the men in their late-20s present at the gathering
mentioned above indicated having spent some years in the care of their grandparents
in the village. This is not likely to happen to their own children. Instead, they are
encouraging their children to adopt Danish cultural values and practices, as reflected
in their giving Danish first names to their children.
The priority of sameness in terms of Danish culture and language has in some
instances led to tensions between the generations. One grandfather recounted that he
and his wife had been disqualified from playing a central role in the upbringing of their
grandchildren because the younger generations felt it imperative that their children
should be taken care of by Danish-speaking persons. According to him, this was also
why his daughter and son-in-law refused to live in the large house which he had
planned as a multi-generational homestead.
From the perspective of the younger generation, moving out of the multigenerational
homestead provides an opportunity for gaining more terrain within the generational
hierarchy and unequal power relations in the Romanian family structure.
From Yugoslav to Serb: A Return to ‘Ancient Values’?

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 249
Given their eagerness to ensure that their children have a high degree of Danish
language proficiency, many couples prefer to speak Danish at home. This is different
from many other diaspora groups, for whom the language constitutes one of the most
important media in preserving the native culture (see Eastmond 1993). The conscious
use of Danish in Romanian homes is widespread among both the younger and the
middleaged generations, and is, surprisingly, also frequent among those who most
ardently stress the need to preserve Romanian traditions. The question now is what
second language should be passed on to the children. Where Oltenian Romanian was
the language spoken at home in the first two decades of migration, many parents and
grandparents now give priority to Serbian. This is significant, as it is happening in a
period in which the Serbian nation is often regarded with suspicion and antipathy by
the Danish public.
The new interest in Serbian language and culture is obviously connected to the
Romanians’ shift in national affiliation. Although the new Serbian identity was
largely forced upon them, it also contributed to the development of loyalties towards
the new homeland, as the nationalist and conservative ideology of Serbia in the
1990s provided justification for a revival of traditional and chauvinist values, which
were also popular in parts of the Romanian community in Denmark, but had been
suppressed during Tito’s rule. Among these values were a greater openness towards
religious matters and a revived interest in origins, nationality and ethnicity, as well as
an ideological celebration of the family as a core institution in society.
In particular, the emphasis on the family in Serbian nationalism is likely to have
made this ideology appealing to Romanian women. For them, migration implied a loss
of previous independence and created a situation more like the traditional role of
Serbian women, whose sphere of control also tended to be confined to the private
realm. During the Milosevic regime, economic insecurity and the troubles related to
everyday existence worked to strengthen women’s self-denial, but at the same time
gave them new power and control over those who were dependent on them (Bijelic
2005: 286). The praise of motherhood in nationalist rhetoric and the celebration of
women’s strong but hidden position within the family attracted a large number of
female voters from the socially fragile and economically disadvantaged groups in
Serbia (2005: 296). Likewise, certain migrant women (particularly in the older
generation) may have regarded the ideological ‘return to ancient values’ as having the
potential to bolster their own roles as the guardians of tradition in charge of keeping
alive the connections between the village of origin and the new homeland.
At present, it is striking how the most important rites of passage, such as marriage,
baptism and burial, continue to take place in the homeland village. A trip to the
graveyards in the villages of origin reveals a large number of elaborate and well-kept
tombstones. This confirms the importance of being buried properly, that is, in Serbian
soil. Funerals continue to form a very important part of the Romanian religious
tradition as symbolic acts to celebrate their common roots (Schierup and A˚lund 1986:

250 K. Juul
53). After the funerals, pomanas are held in the village at certain intervals in honour
of the dead to represent the sacrifices, humility and co-operation towards the
ancestors. 9 Many migrants grumble over the constant obligations being placed on them
to finance extravagant ceremonies of remembrance. As the keepers of tradition,
mothers and grandmothers in particular have a strategic interest in ensuring that they
are upheld. However, they are well aware that, if such traditions are to be continued, it
is of vital importance that marriage partners should be found within the ethnic group:
Of course the young people may choose their partner as they want, but it is preferable
if the partner is ‘one of ours’. Danish girls don’t like spending all their holidays in
the village. Often the mixed marriages do not last (Romanian female, 2008).
Those who live in mixed marriages often live their own lives and do not take part in
the traditions. The spouses don’t understand our traditions. They might like the meal
and the slivovica [plum brandy] at the pomana, but they don’t understand what it’s
for. Many of the young ones do not keep up with our traditions. They do not learn
how to perform them. Furthermore, the outsiders don’t understand why the women
should behave in a modest manner and take care of the traditions (Romanian male,
2008).
As can be seen, the continuing powers of the mothers and grandmothers may explain
why, although mixed marriages are gaining momentum, they continue to be the
exception in Romanian society. 10 However, the fear of losing control is as present as
ever.
New Types of Loyalty and Obligation
In general, religion and superstition are gaining ground, both in Serbia and among
Serbs in Denmark. Old Serbian religious traditions such as the Slava*the annual
celebration of the family saint*have become important events in both Denmark and
Serbia. In Serbia, the churches, which were relatively deserted during Tito’s rule, are
increasingly visited by both young and old, all seeking an answer to the social crisis
and the ‘crisis of values’ of the last decade. Bio-rythms, healing, all types of herbal
medicine and supernatural powers are also popular solutions to various social ills.
Among the Danish Serbs, the ‘Civil Religion of Brotherhood and Unity’ of the Tito
era (see Perica 2002) is gradually being replaced by a renewed interest in the Serb
Orthodox Church. As an expression of this interest, the largest ‘diaspora village’ in the
Romanian area inaugurated a beautiful little church in 1997, financed primarily by its
communities abroad. The construction, which started in 1987, could be seen both as a
contribution by the diaspora to the revitalising of old religious traditions and as
political support for the Serb Orthodox revivalist campaign encouraged by the
Milosevic regime (see Juul and Nielsen 2007).
At present, many Romanians also display their religious affiliation openly in
Denmark, for example, by wearing large Orthodox crosses or religious bracelets.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 251
However, going public with your religious affiliation is not without its contradictions.
Although a Serb Orthodox congregation exists in Copenhagen, only a few Romanians
are affiliated to it. The great majority find the church unwilling to deal with the
Romanian variant of Orthodox Christianity, which is regarded as involving too much
superstition. 11 Most ceremonies therefore continue to be performed in the villages of
origin, where the priests are less reluctant to converge with the Romanian ancestor
cult.
With this controversy in mind, it was somewhat surprising to find that a growing
number of Romanian children now opt for Lutheran confirmation, a ceremony which
has no equivalent in the Serb Orthodox Church. Romanian weddings held in Danish
churches according to the Lutheran liturgy are also gaining in popularity. Yet fitting in
with the Danish Church does not imply abandoning the Serb Orthodox Church. Rather,
it is an act where sameness in terms of Christianity is valued over difference embodied
in the official Serb Orthodox Church. Lacking other public rituals or symbols of
integration, these ceremonies*celebrated with pomp and circumstance*serve as yet
another manifestation of sameness and successful integration. This promulgation of
visibility and Danishness in what has hitherto been perceived as a wholly Romanian
domain dominated by older women acting as the custodians of the Romanian tradition
is a significant topic deserving greater attention in the future.
The need to perform such public acts of convergence may have increased as a
consequence of the difficult transformation from being Yugoslavs to becoming Serbs.
For many migrants, the eradication of Yugoslavia as a state involved important
modifications of their status in Danish society, as well as their previous loyalties
towards nation and homeland. At present it is difficult to obtain a precise picture of
how loyalties towards the nationalistic project of a Greater Serbia have developed
within the Danish diaspora, as few are keen to discuss this matter. In the 1990s, many
diaspora communities in Europe and the USA welcomed the new nationalistic spirit in
Serbia (Hockenos 2003). In Denmark, the diaspora was less eager to attract attention
to the Serbian cause. Nonetheless, the majority of Romanians in Denmark were
supporters of Milosevic, a loyalty which seems to have been widespread until 1999. 12
An important factor contributing to commitment to the Serbian cause was the
opening of a satellite link to Belgrade in 1991 (Hockenos 2003: 149). This enabled
individual immigrants to watch Serbian television directly, and to watch the news that
mattered to them in a language they understood. At present the Serbian channels
provide the most important source of information, not least among those who have
retired, who often have relatively little contact with Danish society.
During the war, however, the satellite links communicated not only pro-Serbian
versions of the crisis in Yugoslavia, but also widespread intolerance towards other
ethnic groups. The Albanians in particular were depicted as primitive Muslims sharing
the goal of expelling all Serbs from Kosovo (Arsenijevic 2007). Taking into
consideration the increasingly xenophobic rhetoric that gained momentum in Denmark

252 K. Juul
in the 1990s with the growing influence of the nationalistic Danish People’s Party (see
Kofoed and Simonsen 2007), it is not surprising that these antipathies were widespread
among the often poorly educated and marginalised Serbian workers. The Danish
People’s Party was also among the few to protest against the violation of Serbian
sovereignty in relation to Kosovo’s independence, an act which is likely to have evoked
further sympathy for this party among the Serbs. In the version of the Danish People’s
Party, however, this protest is often spiced with strong anti-Muslim rhetoric. 13
For some Serbs, the common mistrust with regard to Muslims has induced a sense
of sameness between Danes and Orthodox Serbs, as expressed in the quotation below:
It is not as difficult for us to integrate as it is for the Muslims. It’s the culture, isn’t
it? We’re Christians and they’re Muslims. It’s another God that they believe in. We
have the cross and the Orthodox faith, that’s equal to the Protestants (young
Romanian male in Denmark, in Ballhausen and Tonnesen 2008: 77).
Not least because voicing pro-Serbian attitudes in relation to the Balkan wars or the
Kosovo conflict remains largely unacceptable to a Danish public, it seems that the
focus on shared (European) origins and (Christian) religion has provided a
muchneeded platform upon which the difficult process of integration can be pursued.
However, it is important to stress that not all Serbs in Denmark supported the Serbian
nationalist project, and that many retain a large degree of nostalgia towards what was
formerly a state that emphasised equal rights and liberty. Nonetheless, they have
limited means with which to contest the increasingly stereotyped backdrop of the
Balkan countries as a perpetual powder keg and the site of ancient ethnic divisions and
hatreds. Hence, football, folk dancing and traditional food are now among the few
activities through which Serbs can become visible as a group vis-a`-vis the wider
Danish public. Such acts of publicity often take place under the auspices of the Serbian
clubs, to which I now turn.
The Danish-Serbian Friendship Association as the Merger of Sameness and
Difference
Serbian associations exist in all four towns where the Romanians have settled and are
among the institutions working the most energetically to make the often contradictory
webs of visible and less visible strategies meet. They act both as the public face of the
Romanian community and as more private meeting places for its members.
Originally the associations were tightly controlled by the Yugoslav state, which also
used them to control the political activities of its diaspora groups. Through the
embassies, cultural exchanges took place where writers, folk dancers and musicians
toured the different countries where migrants had settled. This contributed to
maintaining a feeling of being a part of the homeland and of not being forgotten ‘down
there’ (Nylund 2006). At present, the clubs are independent but they still undertake

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 253
different exchange activities, among them participation in Danish and Serbian sports
events, or facilitating study visits from the local trade unions and other political or
charity-oriented activities.
It was only in 1998 that these organisations shifted from being Yugoslav clubs to
becoming Serbian associations. The term ‘Danish-Serbian Association’ serves to
underscore the fact that the associations are subsidised by the municipality and in
principle are open to all. The board members take pride in narrating how the everyday
activities and football training are attended by Danish members, as this takes away the
‘immigrant’ connotation of the associations. Indeed the name of one of them is the
Danish-Serbian Friendship Association, which stresses the transnational ethos. In
everyday usage, however, the Association is usually called the ‘Serbian Club’ (or even
the Yugoslav Club). Few, if any, non-Romanian Serbs participate in its social life, and
it remains a predominantly Romanian club engaged in homeland activities.
Women do not use the club on a daily basis, but some of the clubs have tried to
organise so-called Saturday matine´es which are more family-oriented, though these
do not seem to have gained much popularity. In fact, the ordinary users are middleaged
men, who play cards, watch Serbian television and discuss politics. The younger
generation show little interest in keeping up with Serbian politics: ‘To be honest, I’m
more interested in what is happening in Denmark’, one young man said. Core activities
such as folk dancing tend to lose out, as it has become difficult to motivate either
trainers or children. Compared to earlier periods, the level of attendance in ordinary
social activities is generally low. Nonetheless, having a club and receiving municipal
support retains their importance for the social cohesion of the group*a place where
Romanians can meet and cultivate their distinctiveness by speaking their native
language(s) and discussing whatever challenges they, as an ethnic minority, are
confronted with*and is an important identity marker for most Romanian migrants,
including those who only use the club once in a while.
Increasingly, the activities of the clubs revolve around the organisation of large
parties to celebrate events such as Orthodox Christmas, the club’s anniversary and
International Womens Day*a kind of Mothers’ Day on 8 March. These are all official
Serbian celebrations whereas Romanian celebrations such as pomanas or Thunder Day
are not held on the club’s premises. Normally the club’s celebrations attract several
hundred people of Romanian origin. Here, care is taken to invite notables from the
Danish community, such as union bosses, local politicians and representatives of the
municipality. These are opportunities to display the very best of Romanian and Serbian
culture, varying from the handmade folk costumes to the Romanian folk-music and the
performance of ‘Ore’, a traditional Romanian chain dance. By drawing on Balkan
traditions of hospitality, these performances serve to create and enhance the bonds and
networks with the outside community, which are crucial in maintaining municipal
support for what is in reality the exclusivity of a Romanian club. But, as noted by
Ballhausen and Tonnesen (2008), it is primarily the hospitality and the unproblematic

254 K. Juul
aspects of Serbian and Romanian culture which are demonstrated during these events,
while the darker sides, such as the political repression and chauvinist attitudes, are
played down. In reality, it is exactly in their ability to provide such a powerful ‘public
face’ for the Romanian community that the clubs play their most important integrative
role. Here the ‘difference’ and distinctiveness of the Romanian culture is put on display
in a very visible but also selective manner which is accessible and understandable to a
wider public, enabling the club to mediate between the private and the public.
The question is, however, to what extent the clubs and other types of ethnic
affiliation will continue to inform those groups of immigrants who have lived in
Denmark for several decades and in many ways have come to see themselves as
Danish. Indeed, doubt is often expressed by the elder members of the clubs:
Nowadays, the cultural clubs do not attract as many people as they used to. People
have invested their money in cars and villas, they no longer want to spend money on
drinks in the clubs. They prefer to stay at home and invite friends to socialise there
(Serbian man, 2008).
Conclusion
As I have shown, the relatively successful integration of Romanian immigrants in
Denmark hinges upon the ability of this minority group to create and maintain a strong
and integrated ethnic community. The continued reproduction of traditions and social
practices deriving from the village of origin ensures that generational continuity and
mutual co-operation make sense also to the younger generation. Paradoxically, this has
also contributed to opening up this community towards Danish society.
The construction of the Romanian community as successful and well integrated
nonetheless carries with it a number of inconveniences. The focus on sameness in
terms of (European) origin, Christianity and whiteness obviously serves to downplay
their position as immigrants and makes it difficult to raise problems related to
discrimination or more subtle feelings of being excluded. The widespread use of
Danish, even in Romanian homes, has marginalised grandparents’ role in the
upbringing of the younger generation and has made it increasingly difficult to preserve
certain key institutions in Romanian culture such as the multi-generational homestead,
thus limiting the sphere of control of the older generation.
As Romanianess loses importance, older women in particular risk having to
relinquish their central position in the family. The continuing prestige games and the
importance attributed to being ‘modern’ add to this process of marginalisation. While
the men are active on the labour market and as ‘do-it-yourself house-owners’, and
while they participate in the day-to-day club activities, the older women are relegated
to the invisible spaces of home-making. The modern home, which is accommodated
to the public gaze, does not really serve to transmit the sense of belonging to Romanian
culture which used to be transmitted through artefacts and icons from the homeland.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 255
Finally, the Balkan wars and the re-traditionalisation of norms and values in Serbian
society have made it more difficult for migrants to straddle both their obligations to
the community of settlement and those to their villages of origin, as many emotional
issues*such as the Serbian position in the Kosovo conflict*are difficult to discuss in
the Danish public space. Paradoxically, retraditionalisation also implies a general
interest in origins and religion, something which receives an increasing interest in
Danish society too.
In this situation the role of the Serbian clubs in allowing convergence between the
visible public face and the more hidden activities of Serbian immigrants remains as
necessary as ever.
Notes
[1] I have not been able to verify this point.
[2] So-called ‘Councils of Integration’ were established in a number of municipalities with the
backing of the state in order to counsel the municipalities in matters concerning ethnic
minorities and integration.
[3] In the text, the Serbian-Romanian community in Denmark will be called Romanian when
it relates to the specific minority group, and Serb/Serbian when it relates to traits which are
common to all Serbs or to Serbian immigrants in Denmark.
[4] While their parents were industrial workers and bus-drivers, the younger generation prefers
jobs within information technology, administration or organisation and management. Some
have concentrated on vocational training and are now skilled workers (bricklayers or
carpenters), while the girls prefer jobs as nurses, nursing auxiliaries, home helps or
secretaries (Serbian male, 2008).
[5] Graduate students participating in Geography field courses in 2006 and 2008 contributed
with inspiring observations and opened my eyes to many issues that were later discussed
with other respondents.
[6] Mainly those who have not worked sufficient years in Denmark to obtain a full Danish state
pension.
[7] Many of the Romanian women who were interviewed had worked in a large factory
producing medical equipment, in dry-cleaning or as fruit-packers.
[8] The frequent mugging of Yugoslav guestworkers by motorcycle gangs reported in
interviews with former gang members are revealing for the degree of xenophobia to be
found in certain layers of the Danish working class in that period (see Kru¨ger 1976).
However, such racist clashes are actively downplayed by the Romanian community.
[9] For a more detailed account of the pomana ritual, see http://romani.kfunigraz.ac.at/
rombase
[10] According to Smith (2004: 129), 81 per cent of marriages among people from ex-
Yugoslavia are with a partner with roots in the same homeland.
[11] This was confirmed in an interview with the head of the Danish congregation.
[12] In the eyes of my interviewees, Milosevic’s refusal to sign the Rambouillet Accord in 1999
was indicative of his lack of willingness to end the war.
[13] Their sympathies for the Serbian cause can be seen on the internet blog of one of the
Friendship Associations, where a letter of sympathy from one of the leaders of the Danish
People’s Party is posted.

256 K. Juul
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