Paper short abstract:

The uncertainty in front of the future brought about by numerous transitions within one generation experienced by a small islander population of the borderland from Northern Croatia with the integration of to socialist Yugoslavia led to mass emigration to Northern America between 1948 and 1956, following the previous path of economic migration.

Paper long abstract:

Through storytelling of islanders from Northern Croatia living in North America this ethnographic research explores the experience of transition and migration, and its effects on the feeling of ethno-national belonging. The "islanders" originated of a small island community were a peripheral minority population of the borders, at the time divided between pro-Italians and pro-Croatians, who experienced a transition 1- of State and politics (from the Austro-Hungarian empire to the Italian Republic - 1919, and to Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia - 1945), 2- of culture (a relative freedom in the Austro-Hungarian period, Italianization with the Italian period and Yugo-slavization under Tito's regime) 3- of economy (from relative auto-subsistence to socialist auto-gestion).

The storytellings have revealed two fundamental emotions, uncertainty and fear, that played a key role in the individual and collective strategies to "survive" : uncertainty in front of the economic crisis of the post-second world war, and fear in front of the borders closing in a South-Slavic Socialist State, in an insular community used to cover up the auto-subsistence system by a temporary labor migration of men in the USA, since the beginning of the XXth century. The consequences of the transition have been the appearance of survival strategies to cope with uncertainty (Levi, Giovanni, 1989, Le pouvoir au village, Paris, Gallimard), and especially the transformation of a temporary masculine emigration to a family definitive emigration, following the old migration paths and melting with the mass refugees of Italian minority from Istria and Dalmatia from the second world war to the 1950's.