TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FIELDS: A CASE STUDY OF POST-SOCIALIST BULGARIAN IMMIGRANTS IN VANCOUVER

by

TATIANA GADJALOVA

BA., The University of British Columbia, 2002

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN THE PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

in

THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

(Anthropology)

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

May 2006

© Tatiana Gadjalova, 2006 ABSTRACT

In this thesis I present a study of Bulgarian immigrants who arrived in

Vancouver after the fall of the 'Iron Curtain' in 1989. I conducted my fieldwork from the summer of 2004 to the fall of 2005 in both Bulgaria and in Canada.

Although the study presented me with numerous themes that speak of a transnational lifestyle, what struck me the most was the need of the Bulgarian immigrants to create new spaces and locales that reflect and reinforce their true identities, something they can call home. I am searching to clarify how the embodiment of the so-called transnational identity is lived and how it is taking shape in the age of post-socialism. For this purpose I have chosen to focus in particular on the production of transnational social spaces in the case of the

Bulgarian Heritage Language School in Vancouver. I explore two instances of the production of public social space, which relate to transnational Bulgarian ethnicity. The analysis of these case studies reveals how particular locales are produced by authorized representatives of transnational social groups and how at the same time these concrete social spaces reaffirm the authority of the speakers within their respective habitus. As proposed by transnational theorists like Peggy

Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, I apply Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social space, making use of his concept of habitus, and complement it with Henri Lefebvre's theory of the social production of physical spaces. By combining these theories in the analysis of the two events I am outlining the specific features of Bulgarian ethnic habitus which is shaped by, but also is continuously shaping, Bulgarian transnational identity.

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ii

Table of Contents iii

List of Figures iv

Introduction 1

The Identity of the Fieldworker and Other Stereotypes 3

Doing Transnational Fieldwork 4

Numbers and Theories Entangled in the Fallen Iron Curtain 8

Doing Transnational Fieldwork Analysis 13

Celebrations of Bulgarian Culture and Music in Vancouver 20

The collage exhibition "Bulgaria in Me" 21 Balkan Folklore amid Northwest Coast Totem Poles 28

Theoretical Discussion 31

In Conclusion 38

Bibliography 45

iii LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 8

Figure 2 8

Figure 3 38

Figure 4 38

iv Introduction

I do not feel at home here in Canada, I will always be the foreigner, even if it's only for the accent. When we went back to Bulgaria for the holidays I realized for my great regret that I did not feel at home there either. Somehow I became more of an observer. The things that bothered me there before because I depended on them, do not affect me anymore. And so you realize that there is no home for you anywhere, you know, a place where you can say -1 am at home. [Lilly1]

Not that they are bad [the Canadians], they are just different. I definitely believe that we live on different building floors. I live in Canada but I don't live with the Canadians... [long pause] There is no base for communication on any other level than the practical issues of dealing with something at work - the contact is just on a professional level. [Perounika]

Nowadays [when we go back to Bulgaria] we pick our friends carefully.. .we try to stay in touch with people who do not perceive us as extraterrestrials,... something like: "Don't tell us your problems. You guys are ok there; we are the ones who have a hard life." [Trendafil]

I remember people asking me about the events in Kosovo. They inquired about my opinion of how I think the situation will resolve. And I had to present an opinion. It is some kind of identity that I have to perform here quite often, the identity of "the East European".. .1 was bothered by the fact that I had to be "the East European" but then again... First of all, if I don't say anything, people would not know anything. So, at least, I should give my opinion about it. As long as I am able to qualify my opinion as just one point of view about an event over there [in East Europe], I think it should be considered as legitimate. Otherwise, how will people here know what you lived through if you don't present some kind of position? [Trepetlika]

The quotes above are frominterview s with post-socialist Bulgarian immigrant women and men in Vancouver that I conducted from the summer of 2004 to the fall of 2005. Each of the quotes touches on themes that are present in almost every conversation among Bulgarians in

Vancouver. It would not be fair to say that every Bulgarian immigrant agrees fully with the opinions or emotions expressed above. I, for one, can challenge them with examples from my own experiences, being myself a Bulgarian Vancouverite since 1998. The quotes express mostly a sense of frustration and inadequacy in situations of social interaction. Nonetheless, they also

1 All of the real names of interviewees are replaced by pseudonyms. reflect the strategies immigrants draw on, choices they make in order to integrate not only into the new homeland, Canada, but also into the Bulgarian society in which they continue to play a role and participate in from a distance. The feelings revealed in these comments address the need to create new spaces and locales that reflect and reinforce these individuals' true identities,

something they can call home. In the following pages I am exploring such spaces. They are

social and mental but also very concrete and physical; I am searching to clarify how the

embodiment of the so-called transnational identity is lived and how it is taking shape in the age

of post-socialism.

In research and analysis of interviews and fieldnotes I have been able to identify a number of themes and significant relationships that bear upon this process of identity formation.

For instance, many of the people I interviewed reflected on their experiences and first encounters

with the reality of Canada, the process of adaptation and identity formation they underwent in the

very first years, conflicts they encountered inside the family, and crisis situations they faced

related to child care and school. Many also talked about loneliness and the loss of the extended

family support that they were used to in Bulgaria. Others discussed how they reconstructed

transnational extended family ties when grandparents would come to visit for long periods of

time or when children were sent for long summer vacations to Bulgaria. Bulgarian immigrants

often reflect on the stereotypical ways in which they are perceived in Canada as well as in

Bulgaria. They express their frustration with the insensitivity they faced in their new home and

when visiting their friends and relatives in Bulgaria. Either they are the "East Europeans" or they

are the immigrants who have nothing to complain about. In both cases they feel like "the other",

and this feeling contributes to their loneliness and isolation.

2 These and other issues create the intricate fabric of what it means to be a Bulgarian transnational person. The present thesis, however, aims for a deeper exploration of just a few of these themes and their interconnections. I have chosen to focus in particular on the production of transnational social spaces in the case of the Bulgarian Heritage Language School in Vancouver.

In the first part of the thesis I provide an overview of the methodology I use in this study and foreground the theory I apply. In the second part I explore two instances of the production of public social space, which relate to transnational Bulgarian ethnicity. One is the annual celebration of the Cyrillic alphabet organized by the Bulgarian immigrants in Vancouver, and the other - at which Bulgarian Vancouverites were present as visitors - was a concert of Bulgarian folk music at the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia. The analysis of these case studies will reveal how particular locales are produced by authorized representatives of transnational social groups and how at the same time these concrete social spaces reaffirm the authority of the speakers within their respective habitus. As proposed by transnational theorists like Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, I apply Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social space, making use of his concept of habitus, and complement it with Henri Lefebvre's theory of the social production of physical spaces. The combined use of these theories allows for a better understanding of the ethnographic material in terms of the particular role individuals play in shaping transnational social spaces. Furthermore, by linking these theories in the analysis of the two events I will be able to outline the specific features of Bulgarian ethnic habitus which is shaped by, but also is continuously shaping, Bulgarian transnational identity.

3 The Identity of the Fieldworker and other Stereotypes

According to anthropological conventions that were developed in colonial times, I might be considered an insider or "native" to the culture I am studying as I am myself a post-socialist

Bulgarian immigrant in Vancouver. However these assumptions have been problematized in more recent anthropological texts. Kirin Narayan for example points to the fact that 'native'

"anthropologists are perceived as insiders regardless of their complex backgrounds" (1993:667).

She argues that as a result of class differences or variations within an arbitrarily constructed

cultural entity, 'native' researchers can sometimes be more detached from the people they study than so-called outsiders to that group. This terminology also reinforces dichotomies that are of

very little use in today's world where cultural identities within any given community are in

continuous flux. In the words of Stuart Hall,

cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialized past, they are subject to the continuous "play" of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in a mere "recovery" of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by and position ourselves within the narratives of the past. (Narayan 1993:676)

I will adopt the words of Kirin Narayan and state that I am writing this thesis as a

native ethnographer who points out in her writing the "personal and intellectual dilemmas

invoked by the assumption that a 'native' anthropologist can represent an unproblematic and

authentic insider's perspective" (1993:672). Thus, the present discussion adopts an

autobiographical standpoint of a person who embodies traits from various cultures; in particular,

I am a researcher entangled in transnational and post-socialist sociological discourse, as well as a

graduate student at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of British

Columbia.

4 Doing Transnational Fieldwork

This case study is based on a larger project involving participant observation of many events organized by the Bulgarian Language Heritage School in Vancouver. As a Bulgarian

Canadian I communicate most often and most extensively with other Bulgarians in Vancouver.

Many of the opinions and viewpoints that I describe in the present text have been shared with me informally in conversations, as it was much easier to talk in a relaxed atmosphere with fellow immigrants and without a cassette recorder. Turning on the recording device often changed the tone of the conversation by making it more formal; interviewees would sometimes start to reflect on the usefulness of the information given. On the other hand these remarks also offered me an opportunity to probe what they saw as the purpose of such studies. As the people I have interviewed are mainly university graduates in the arts or sciences - some have advanced post• graduate degrees - the interpretation of their own experiences was an interesting and important element in the development of my study. In other instances, the use of the recording device and the structuring of the conversation with a set of questions made the experience much more focused and at the same time more intimate.

The research findings presented in this thesis are mainly based on participant observation in Vancouver and in two towns in Bulgaria, as well as on formal semi-directed interviews that lasted one to one and a half hours, and numerous informal conversations. Since 1998 I have been a Bulgarian post-socialist immigrant myself. Inevitably, this document contains some observations and experiences that I have had before the more structured study began. Most of the formal interviews have been conducted with women. In the course of two years in Vancouver I have formally interviewed eight women and one man between the ages of 29 and 50, and engaged in numerous informal, but in-depth conversations with five men (a total of fourteen

5 interviewees). Among the men I decided not to use a recording device or note-taking when I noticed that these created tension and resistance. In some cases men would listen to the conversations I had with women and casually make comments and express opinions or share personal experiences. Likewise, since the people who know me and talked with me are thoroughly informed about my research, they know that I am constantly keeping an ear open for their comments and shared stories for my thesis. In fact, many informal comments directed toward me were consciously contributed for the purpose of my research or were offered without prompting from me.

When I started to look for participants for my interviews in Bulgaria I did not confine myself to people who have immediate connections or relatives in Canada or other countries. It turned out, however, that all 13 of my interviewees had either relatives or very close friends

abroad, including often in Canada. In Bulgaria I formally interviewed eight women between the

ages of 30 and 50, and I had one formal interview with a man and numerous informal

conversations with at least four men. As in Canada, I found that the recording device interfered when talking with men about issues of the socialist past and I did not record or take notes during

these conversations; rather I took notes later. All of the men knew very well about my research

and verbally agreed that I could use their reflections.

The interviews in Bulgaria were conducted in order to better understand the motives for

emigration and the types of connections Bulgarians have with the home country. I also asked

questions about how immigrants are represented in the mass media and what is known about the

lives of Bulgarians abroad. During the interviews I inquired about the lives of the people in

Bulgaria, what they celebrate, how they feel about their children's education and prospects in

Bulgaria. My research in Bulgaria also aimed to look at official policies that discourage or

6 encourage emigration or shape attitudes towards emigrants as valuable members of their home country. With this in mind, I also looked at articles in the Bulgarian press published over two months in the summer of 2004. This analysis allowed me to consider to what extent emigration

and links to Bulgarian immigrants were also officially encouraged by the state. The data gathered

in Bulgaria is only occasionally used in the present document; its role was to help me understand the overall transnational social situation in which Bulgarian immigrants are entangled.

To conclude these comments on methodology, I would like to point out that the present text is written with a certain audience in mind. It is mainly a continuation of the dialogue I am having with the same group of Bulgarians I have been interviewing and consulting with in the past few years of our immigrant lives in Vancouver. However, I embarked on writing this study

with the hope that I will be able to include in this dialogue people from outside of this group,

namely people who are interested and sincerely wish to participate in overcoming stereotypes of

the East European that have prevailed in North American popular culture from the time of the

Cold War. Perhaps every researcher runs a risk of creating new stereotypes when writing a study

focused on a particular group of people. Thus, I would like to point out that this research does

not claim to portray a single image of Bulgarian immigrants in the area of Vancouver, but only to

account for the activities and identity formation of a group of people who in one way or another

are associated with the Bulgarian Heritage Language School in Vancouver.

I have written this thesis to resemble a collage. Sometimes the reader will not fully

comprehend the transition from one section to the next, but I hope by the end he or she will be

able to formulate a coherent picture. I intend this text to appear like the collages called "Bulgaria

in Me" which were made by the children in the Bulgarian Heritage School as part of an

improvised exhibition, and which I will discuss in detail below (see Figures 1,2 below). The

7 materials used in the illustrated collages include photographs, post cards, a shirt with the label

"Made in Bulgaria" and various color crayons. Many images and words in the collages appear as small fragments out of context, observed from afar they seem chaotic and messy. However, on closer inspection and on an intuitive and emotional level they fuse and create the fascinating and rich fabric that reflects part of the identity of each child. Many in the adult audience were moved to tears, tears of joy and laughter, by the work of the children. I hope the present text will likewise communicate to outsiders - including non-immigrant Bulgarians - an understanding of experiences of the post-socialist Bulgarian immigrants in Vancouver. On a largely intuitive level,

I also appeal to the emotional intelligence of the kind reader.

Figure 1 Figure 2

Numbers and Theories entangled in the fallen 'Iron Curtain'

One of the outcomes of the dramatic political events in the late 1980s in East Europe has been the disintegration of old borders and the installation of new ones. This has contributed to the immigration of a large number of East Europeans to West European countries, the United

States, and Canada. Many have settled permanently and have already acquired or are in the

8 process of acquiring a new citizenship. In 2001 the total number of persons with Bulgarian ethnic

origin for Canada was 15,195, the majority of whom live in the province of Ontario (8,805)

(Statistics Canada 2001). In the last decade, West Canada, and Vancouver in particular, has become an attractive place for newcomers from Bulgaria. While eastern Canada has a much

larger population of Bulgarian immigrants with a considerably longer history, the number of

Bulgarians in the Vancouver area became significant only after 1990. According to census data,

a total of 7,240 Bulgarians in Canada aquired immigrant status between the years 1991 and 2001.

Of these 680 went to Vancouver (Statistics Canada 2001). According to the 2001 census data,

1,205 people living in Vancouver indicated their ethnic origin to be Bulgarian (Statistics Canada,

2005). Within a decade the number of Bulgarians in British Columbia has doubled, with 1,664 people identifying themselves as having a Bulgarian background.

The official statistics indicate that the average number of years between the year of

immigration and acquisition of Canadian Citizenship is 3.65. Another report from Immigration

and Citizenship Canada shows that in 2004 there were a total of 2,014 permanent residents with

Bulgarian origin in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2005). If one considers the average number of

years it takes to acquire Canadian citizenship, one can conclude that from 2001 to the present

day at least 2,000 more Bulgarian immigrants have entered Canada. One can also estimate that

about 10% of all post-1989 Bulgarian immigrants to Canada choose to come to Vancouver. It

can be concluded that roughly about 1,500 persons with Bulgarian ethnic background, the

majority of whom have arrived after 1989, reside in Vancouver.

According to the data, until the end of the Second World War about 10,000 Bulgarians

immigrated mainly to the eastern part of Canada (Traykov 1993:56). Of this number only very

few came to British Columbia. Nearly ten times more Bulgarian immigrants entered the country

9 between 1991 and 2001 than between 1980 and 1991. In the period after the Second World War

until 1980 there were about 300 Bulgarians entering Canada per decade. Of this number only

about 25 people arrived in Vancouver per decade. Similar waves of immigration from East

European countries to Canada were recorded twice: at the turn of the 20th century and after the

Second World War (Altankov 1979; Bobeva 1994; Traykov 1993; Mitev 1993). Wesselin

Traykov, the author of one of the most comprehensive historical accounts on Bulgarians in North

America, cites the Statistical Yearbook of the Bulgarian Kingdom from 1909 to demonstrate that

between 1904 and 1907 a total of 21,372 Bulgarians emigrated to America, Australia and New

Zealand. The emigrants were mainly men, only 28 of them were women (Traykov 1993:21).

This first emigration wave was comprised of migrant workers who did not intend to settle down

in the New World. Many of them had wives and extended families waiting for them and their

financial support in Bulgaria. The second wave of immigration from Bulgaria to North America

must have included more women as the various sources point to numerous Bulgarian schools and

women's societies that were organized by Bulgarians in North America between the two World

Wars (Traikov 1993; Altankov 1979).

According to the Census data the post-'Iron Curtain' immigration wave to Vancouver

shows almost equal numbers of men and women immigrating to Canada: 420 men and 400

women (Statistics Canada 2001). The total number for Canada in 2001 included 4,560 women

and 4,570 men having Bulgarian as their mother tongue.

As a result of the post-1989 selection criteria of Canadian Immigration regulations, which

give preference to highly educated individuals with at least five years of professional experience,

the majority of first generation Bulgarian immigrants in the Vancouver area are women and men

in their thirties and forties. Since these people were brought up and educated in a Soviet type

10 socialist state, they experienced the financial and psychological hardship brought about by the transition to a market economy and emergence of neo-liberal value system in their home country.

The transition meant the disruption of established social structures in East Europe and the delineation of new rules of social mobility. The desire among highly qualified individuals for remuneration that is commensurate with their level of education and professional experience continues to be one of the main motives for emigration (Markova and Saris 1997). No less important for East European emigrants is the need for a secure environment characterized by crime control and social stability. These reasons for migration are rooted in the new socio• political and economic reality in Bulgaria, but they are also grounded in a particular personal upbringing.

Arriving in Canada, Bulgarian immigrants are faced with yet another set of social and economic challenges which are further complicated by the ties to their extended families in their homeland. Given relatively affordable telecommunications and travel costs, Bulgarian immigrants are able to maintain stable and habitual transnational relationships with their

Bulgarian relatives and friends. Most of the Bulgarian immigrants support their extended families financially and therefore are able to maintain and enforce their social position in

Bulgaria as well.

Ethnographic and anthropological analysis of post-socialist Bulgarian immigrant groups is very limited. In the post-1989 period a significant number of statistical and economic studies have been conducted. These studies were sponsored by different western government organizations as well as the World Bank, the organs of the United Nations and the European

Union and The Council of Europe, among others. These institutions share a common aim to develop the economic status quo as well as human potential of post-socialist Bulgaria and to

11 formulate new or revised immigration, refugee and asylum conventions and policies in anticipation of Bulgaria's EU membership in 2007 (Immigration, Asylum and Social Integration

2002; Rees and Kupiszewski 1999). In addition to the latter studies some research has been conducted on seasonal Bulgarian migrant workers in the informal sector of Greece and Turkey.

Press coverage on Bulgarian migration is also limited. The popular press in Bulgaria tends to speak of the Bulgarians abroad in a generalized way, lumping them all in one category and creating a typology of the emigre; seasonal migration is not referred to in these discourses.

Migrants' motives for emigration are also simplified, as well as their way of life in foreign countries. This is probably not only caused by the efforts of politicians to cover up their inability to deal with the crisis, but also by the lack of ethnographic studies of the present day emigres.

Anthropological research on Bulgarian migration is slowly starting to grow but still largely consists of doctoral dissertations or conference papers. Ethnographic research like that conducted by Maria Stoilkova focuses on what she calls "the Bulgarian intelligentsia in exile," and examines the underlying reasons why children of the former nomenklatura have immigrated to the United States. This type of research is rarely published in Bulgaria and access to the research findings is very difficult even for researchers like me.

This thesis builds on social science research that has emerged in the last two decades focusing on transnational social relations in which migrants engage (Margold 1995; Ong 1999;

Parrenas 2001; Bloch 2003; Forrester, Zaborowska and Gapova 2004). While post-socialist ethnographic studies have been carried out in various East European countries, very little

Studies of seasonal worker migration to neighboring countries like Greece and Turkey provide an interesting contribution to an understanding of transnational Bulgarians. This research uses historical data, and presents statistics on demographics of the region, and surveys data in order to establish a "typical" migrant worker (Markova and Saris, 1997). To some extent these studies can be helpful for looking at historical processes and economic tendencies and motivations for emigration. Nonetheless, these studies tend to mask the personal experiences and cultural factors that contribute to the processes of migration.

12 anthropological research has been conducted on post-socialist transnational communities. The

studies on Bulgarian post-socialist emigration, in particular, have considered mainly economic

issues and serve the interests of Western government and non-government organizations to

control or limit migration flows (Markova and Saris 1997, Cholakov 2003, Ghodsee 2002). The present study aims to contribute to the anthropological literature on transnationalism by drawing

on a case study of Bulgarian post-socialist immigrants in the Vancouver area.

Doing transnational Fieldwork Analysis

"Crossing of boundaries", "immigration", "nations and states", "post-socialism",

"gender" are all keywords that mark the academic discourse of transnationality. These keywords

are also used in theories of place and space, in theories concerning change in hegemonic

ideological systems and in theories examining the implications of social change for identity

formation. The present project synthesizes elements of these theories to offer a new reading of

social space.

The discourse of transnationality in the social sciences is not coherent. Some writers

hypothesize the disappearance of the nation and the formation of ethnic and cultural

communities that are not nation- or state-bound or even bound to a particular territory

(Appadurai 1996a, 1996b). Contrary to this view, some anthropologists argue that massive

waves of permanent and semi-permanent migration have led states and corporate capital to

incorporate diasporic groups within the borders of the nation, thus creating transnational social

spaces and actors within them (Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc 1992; Levitt and Glick

Schiller 2004; Ong 1999). Some transnational theorists challenge the idea that processes of

globalization lead to the loss of culture and propose instead that diasporas can develop agency

and recover non-Western models of social life (Clifford 1994). Others look at transnational

13 migration as the manifestation of the "failure of civil society" (Spivak 1996:249). Many of these theorists approach the analysis of these problems by making them gender specific (Fouron and

Glick Schiller 2001; Spivak 1996; Constable 1999; Kaplan 1994). Fouron and Glick Schiller, for instance, reflect on how power relations between genders shift in transnational social space.

In a relatively recent article Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller propose "a social field approach to the study of transnational migration and distinguish between ways of being and ways of belonging in that field" (2004:1003). The authors draw on the social field theory of Pierre

Bourdieu in attempting to exceed the boundaries of the state and try to "conceptualize the potential array of social relations linking those who move and those who stay behind" (1009).

The authors define 'ways of being" as how "individuals can be embedded in a social field but not identify with any label or cultural politics associated with that field". By contrast the authors define "belonging to a field" as the "practices that signal or enact an identity which demonstrates a conscious connection to a particular group" (1010). Depending on the context, different individuals choose sometimes to belong to and sometimes only to be in the transnational social field. This set of concepts is useful in its attempt to overcome the binary oppositions that are often implied by transnational theories.

A social field analysis of transnational realities invites a revision of the theory of habitus as first formulated by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu suggests that members of a social field inhabit a similar habitus, which is characterized by practices as well as by specific object and spatial markers (Bourdieu 1991; 1998). An alternative Marxist approach to the production of social space developed by Henri Lefebvre can be fruitfully applied to an analysis of the production of space by transnational social relations (1992). Lefebvre's emphasis on the production of spaces through social relations complements Bourdieu's notion of social fields and their interrelations.

14 Thus, combining both theories would be a fruitful approach to the understanding of the being and belonging to a transnational social field. In the analysis of the two events described in the second part of the present text, I will apply the above theories and demonstrate how concrete social spaces are produced by authorized representatives within various transnational social fields and how at the same time these locales reaffirm the authority of the speakers within their respective habitus. My analysis will be further complicated by taking into account the socialist past of the researched group and by outlining the distinctiveness of post-socialist transnational individuals.

There is a growing body of anthropological research that impressively documents post- socialist life in East European countries going through the socio-political and economic

"transitory" stage (Burawoy and Verdery 1999; Harm 2002; Kaneff 2002, 2004). Post-socialist studies of private and public spaces have pointed to the relationship between architecture, infrastructure, state ideology and power structures (Boym 1994; Buchli 1999; Humphrey 2005;

Berdahl 1999). Private and public spaces produced during the Soviet era encode and reproduce memories and notions of a particular way of being and belonging (Lass 1994; Boym 1998;

Watson 1994). Memories of these places are 'building blocks' of the production of the public and private places of post-socialist immigrants in their new home.

As Maria Todorova points out in her introduction to the collection Balkan Identities.

Nation and Memory,

the notion of historic memory.. .has been traditionally treated as the repository of ideas about common origins and the past, creating a deep feeling of group solidarity. Memory as a discrete category of analysis, on the other hand, has only recently come under academic scrutiny in East Europe as a whole, and in the Balkans in particular. Yet, this need not necessarily mean that the Balkans are in the stage of.. .naturalized collective memory. (2004:3)

15 Furthermore, she points to the extensive body of research in which identity is part of the memory

discourse:

The usual object of study is the memory constructed by politicians and intellectuals, which is 'largely a public, often official, and narrowly political memory'. Memory in the private spheres of family, workplace, neighborhood and friends may be very different and this poses the problem of not only studying popular memories, but also the important and difficult issue of reception (Alon Colfino cited in Todorova 2004:3).

While the research on personal memories is very recent and is still very rarely addressed for

former East Block countries, studies related to memory among post-socialist immigrants also pose a particular challenge. The celebration of May 24th among Bulgarian immigrants in

Vancouver, which will be described later, exemplifies the performance of collective

remembering through a fusion of official history, individual memory, private events and the

invocation of emotions from the past. Later, I will elaborate on how the organization and the

decoration of space reflects practices from past socialist times as well as a new social

environment.

My aim has been to consider memories of socialist times and the period of the transition

to the market economy both in order to understand the motivations for immigration and also to

understand practices and ideologies that shape transnational spaces. As Rubie S. Watson points

out, "a focus on state socialism makes it possible to contextualize many of the compelling issues

of the post-socialist era" (1994:5). The activities Bulgarians in Vancouver described here are

shaped by a distinctively socialist upbringing. The motivation and desire of audiences to

participate in these activities are also driven by a need to perform particular rituals related to the

past socialist state. Attendance at classes and celebrations organized by the Bulgarian Language

Heritage School are often tied to a need to carry on traditions. As Lass writes, "history and

culture, both stories and commodities, are through the institutionalized means of dissemination,

16 re/presented as components of everyday life with the added distinction of the past tense"

(1994:88-89).

In "From Memory to History" Andrew Lass elaborates on "the feelings of violence and

the sense of loss that accompanied the transformation of [his] personal recollection into

memorable facts" (Lass 1994:97). He realizes that the official events of the Velvet Revolution in

the Czech Republic served as a timeframe for his interviewees' recollection of personal and

private events that were rather routine and followed a usual schedule. However, their awareness

of being morally responsible to "move away from the passive complacency and opportunism"

made them re-remember certain events in order to subconsciously make their life stories

historically significant, sometimes "to the point of reenacting and appropriating other persons'

recollections" (1994:96-97).

Lass conducted his life-story interviews very soon after the changes in the Czech

Republic. The destruction and degradation that followed in the next ten years is reflected in all of

the interviews I have conducted. The destruction and degradation proved to be more emblematic

of the changes than the glorious historic events of the victory of democracy highlighted so

vigorously by the mass media and politicians at the time. I conducted my interviews almost 15

years after socialist governments fell throughout East Europe and my interviewees were among

these people who left the country as a last resort. The images of unrestrained criminality,

growing destruction, poverty and mass migration have proven to be more enduring symbols of

the period after the Fall of the 'Iron Curtain' than the euphoric demonstrations and the removal

of monuments and beacons of communist rule. In discussing their reasons for leaving

interviewees pointed not so much to the hardship that had to be endured, but to their

disappointment that there did not seem be a chance for positive changes to happen in the society.

17 Temenouga (35), who is one of the active members of the Bulgarian Heritage School, shared with me details of how her and her brother's small business was slowly but steadily jeopardized by the extortion of mafia groups. She shared that at some point they either had to start associating with the mafia in order to be able to survive or to drown their business by deciding to remain honest. After her bank savings diminished to almost nothing in just a matter of days due to speculative inflation in 1996-7, she and her husband started to realize that the only way to make it in an honest way was to leave the country.

The violence and aggressive behavior of people, the feeling of being vulnerable and unprotected were also leading themes in the memories of the post-1989 immigrants from

Bulgaria. Another recollection of Temenouga's is relevant here:

I actually started a fight with a guy. The one whose windshield I broke. I was trying to get into a parking space to drop off my kids in daycare when a mutra [the Bulgarian name for a Mafioso] slipped into the free spot. I asked him to get out but he showed me the finger - this is when I stepped out of my car and banged my purse into his windshield, breaking it... I lost my nerve and fell to his level. .. .My children are in the car, and I break the windshield of a mutra. Was I out of my mind? Usually these guys walk around armed, but he did not carry his gun that day. I asked myself, what are we doing here? How am I going to raise my children, if I have to pay bribes to get them into good schools, if at 301 have to take sleeping pills to go to sleep? So, I made up my mind to leave.3

Mimosa (45), a mathematician and mother of three sons, worked as a full-time professor

at a Bulgarian university. She described how her son was beaten almost to death for no apparent

reason on one of the well-illuminated and bigger streets in a provincial Bulgarian town. She

remembers being very upset because neither his friends nor any other people on the street tried to

help him. For Mimosa this was the poslednata kapha [the final drop] that made the decision to

leave the country final.

3 The interviews were conducted in Bulgarian. All translations are mine.

18 The recollection of experiences of violence was often associated with feelings of being vulnerable in one's own home. What is typical during this period is the overlapping of private and public spaces. For example all the new small businesses were run from home, which was a new reality in Bulgaria. During socialist times the sphere of professional life was clearly outlined, there were no professional activities happening in the homes of people (with the exception of some artists). Perounika (49), a chemist and researcher, who worked in the

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences4, shared the following:

Because of all the corruption and insecurities, a lot of banks went bankrupt at that time, and all the people had to keep their money at home. My husband was forced to buy an air gun, just in case he needed to scare someone off. Can you imagine the psychosis? Plus, he could not expand his business, because every time they [the mafia] would come and extort you. Our home was his business space. Customers were constantly in our house, in our living room. One time clients called at 2 in the morning; they said they have to come to recycle a cartridge, or they would not be able to print a magazine in the morning. And this at 2 am; they call at your home. Yes, my husband says, come on over... Maybe in time things will change in Bulgaria.

Recollections of this period by people that I have interviewed point to a loss of values and of physical and mental structures. Here is how Perounika reflected on the loss of cultural values in this period: "The other thing that tormented me was the decline in culture, in language, all this plague of newspapers with all this vulgar language, street language, where you cannot hear, not see one sentence written out in normal Bulgarian, you know. You can't hear someone speak about something normal, just about - killing, robbing." All of the interviewees who shared with me similar accounts of experiences that made them leave the country also noted that they could never describe such experiences to non-Bulgarians in Canada. They reasoned that from the perspective of the Canadian society this would make them appear to be living in very low social circumstances or even worse, to be criminals themselves.

4 Perounika was actively involved in the design and mounting of the exhibition for the Vancouver Language Heritage School.

19 In the section that follows I describe the production of spaces and performances which are in different ways silent about these historical events and painful memories. The reasons for this are grounded in the social environments of two nation states, but also in the practices of a former social order. The analysis of the participation and involvement of Bulgarians in two

events that took place in the area of Vancouver provides me with valuable material for an understanding of transnational social spaces. The ethnographic analysis of specific events has proven fruitful in crystallizing theoretical points for a number of scholars (Das 1995; Gray 2005;

Panagakos 2003). Veena Das develops the idea of "critical events" in her examination of India

and discusses how, as she says, "new modes of action came into being [following these events] which redefined traditional categories" (1995:6). Similarly, Patty Gray draws on Das to develop

what she calls "epitomizing events" to explore how "through their gradual unfolding in a limited

context, key issues and conflicts emerged that revealed how different social groups...perceived

the social space they occupied and the proper way to share that space... These events.. .serve to

place the key issues of concern.. .in sharp relief (2005:8). In what follows, I draw on event

analysis to underline the differences between imposed ethnicity and transnational ethnic habitus.

Celebrations of Bulgarian Culture and Music in Vancouver

Meetings involving a large number of Bulgarian immigrants in the area of Vancouver are

regularly organized by the Bulgarian Heritage Language School. The organizers of the Heritage

School are women who have maintained this school and its activities for the last thirteen years.

The school's regular weekly classes and the celebration of ethnically specific events have been

held on a regular basis only for the last five years. These events are organized in public libraries,

community centers and churches that are arranged and decorated by the teachers with the help of

20 the parents and other volunteers according to their own understanding of how these particular

events should be framed.5 The events organized by the school are very popular and Bulgarians

from all over the Greater Vancouver area come to attend. The last celebration of May 24 was

attended by more that 180 people, which is a very high number compared to previous events that

often drew no more than 50-60 people. In what follows two events are described, the celebration

of May 24th and a Bulgarian Folk Music Concert at the Museum of Anthropology, UBC.

The collage exhibition "Bulgaria in Me "

Children's giggling and laughter surround the teachers of the Bulgarian Heritage

Language School while they roll out the brown packaging paper rolls on the ground. They

discuss the project and how they are going to do it. One little girl is the first to "have her picture

taken". She lays down on the long strip of paper and a teacher outlines her body with a marker.

Then she writes down the student's name on the bottom of the sheet and the next kid is called in

to be "outlined". The students will take home their brown paper body outlines. Their homework

is to fill their body outlines with colors, images or anything that illustrates for them how Bulgaria

is part of their lives here in Vancouver. Since it is expected that their parents will help them, they

receive a short written description of the idea of the project to take home. The finished personal

collages will be exhibited during the celebration for the end of the school year on the 24 of

May, 2005. The title of the exhibition is "Bulgaria in Me". The collages have to be ready in three

weeks and submitted to the organizers of the exhibition along with any items from the homes of

the kids that illustrate Bulgaria for them. These additional items will become part of other

displays for the celebration.

5 None of the spaces of Greek orthodox or Russian/ Ukrainian, Serbian churches in town have been used by the school.

21 On the day of the event teachers carry the heavy posters with all the materials attached to the rented event hall. I help out by carrying some of the body-collages made by the kids and their parents. They are quite heavy. While I walk I am struck by the physical expression of the weight of identity. I have to laugh; I am reminded of another weight that I have to take on, the one of responsibility towards my fellow immigrants when I have to write up this ethnographic account of Bulgarians in Vancouver in the coming months.

The stories told through the collages are emotionally very moving. An airplane is descending, ready to land on Bulgarian ground; the viewer is about to take a tour of Bulgaria through the eyes of a child and her parents. The photos, images and colors on the body-posters trigger feelings and memories not only in the children who made the posters, but also in the audience that will later admire their work. A postcard in the shape of Bulgaria's geographic outline sits on the spot where the heart is supposed to be on the body-outline of one of the kids.

A real t-shirt is placed on another outline, one of a boy. The tag of the t-shirt is made visible, it reads "Made in Bulgaria". A smile is shining from the next poster-board; it is a digital blow-up of a girl's face. The outline of her body is "filled" with the colors of the Bulgarian flag - white shirt, green and red trousers. A whole soccer player's outfit is attached to another body outline, a portrait of a soccer player. A real soccer ball hangs at the feet. The jersey and the ball have the logos of one of the great soccer teams of Bulgaria. The next body image is entirely filled with photos from a recent visit to Bulgaria. Smiling faces surround tables loaded with delicious food.

Grandmothers and grandfathers are photographed with their grandchildren at the seaside, at cafes or somewhere in the mountains around livestock, a dog or a donkey. All the posters show photos, snippets from joyous times in Bulgaria. Many display postcards with images from the sea-side or ski resorts, others show arrangements of famous Bulgarian culinary delicacies or pastoral

22 pictures from traditional houses, historic monuments, churches or monasteries. There are few postcards, and personal photos of people and places dominate the collages. The students stand proud in front of their posters and let people take photos of them. Some take their friends by the hand and lead them to their poster while explaining how they made it. A sense of pride and excitement protrudes from their faces and bodies - their real bodies, not the reflections on the long strips of brown paper. I don't need to look further for a physical expression of the transnational state of being. It is right in front of me. These children stand in a rented church hall in South Burnaby, talking partly in Bulgarian, but mostly in English about their experiences making the posters and about their friends and relatives in Bulgaria, sharing memories of parties and trips and tasty food made by grandma. They run around in the hall, stop for split seconds in front of a poster, look at it, and thus transport themselves momentarily to another land, place and people, and then as quickly continue their tireless game, coming back to the party in South

Burnaby. Is it a hybrid state of mind? I would argue otherwise. It is rather the cold fusion of differences, of distinctions that are extracted any time they are in demand to fill up the entire human vessel.

Every poster alludes to at least one of the officially established national symbols, such as the flag and famous monuments, even though they are not prominent in the posters. What is striking is the personal element that distinguishes each of the collages. The children and their parents share with the viewer an image of how Bulgaria is meaningful to them. The stories told through the images are of happy times, beautiful nature and the warmth of people, and feelings of pride and joy. These images contrast sharply with the images of Bulgaria described in the stories I recorded about Bulgaria during my interviews.

23 The preparation for the event started many weeks in advance. The last months of the regular classes in the Bulgarian Heritage Language School were entirely devoted to rehearsals and memorization of the texts and poems for the program. The main driving force of the

Bulgarian Heritage Language School is Vania Alexieva; she is a teacher by profession and teaches sciences and visual arts classes in a high school in South Burnaby. Many will agree with my observation that she does more than half of all the work related to keep the Heritage School running. She prepares the curriculum, teaches, composes and writes out the texts for the celebrations, as well as the PowerPoint presentations that run synchronized with the recited poetry and historical overviews. Vania is much beloved by the other teachers and the parents and has gained the love and trust of at least the Bulgarians who attended the previous May 24th celebration. In all of the private conversations I had with immigrants in Vancouver it was emphasized that if it wasn't for her energy and tireless efforts the celebrations and the regular program of the school would not exist as it does presently. The latter is supported by the fact that before she joined the school, about four years ago, the classes at the school were very sporadic and very few students attended. Last year regular classes were held weekly and the school had

32 regular students. Here I would like to note that Vania's enthusiasm is nourished by the support of a team of regular teachers, who in time have also gained the trust of everyone involved in the school with their regular and devoted attention and care for the students they teach. Without these ladies Vania would not be able to achieve her great projects.

All of the teachers work entirely on a voluntary basis. The money collected as fees for the school covers transit fares for the teachers, who use public transportation to go to class. The rest of the funds, as well as donations, are put toward the cost of accrediting the Bulgarian language program of the Heritage School by the Ministry of Education in British Columbia. This

24 accreditation would allow students to receive high school credits for studying Bulgarian, but it would also firmly establish the school as having symbolic capital recognized by the Canadian

State. The symbolic capital the school currently has aquired was largely established by Vania.

Among the Bulgarians Vania has achieved a certain status, what Pierre Bourdieu calls the status

of a person who concentrates within his or her speech "the accumulated symbolic capital of the

group which has delegated him and of which he is the authorized representative" (1991:111). I

will come back to this point in my theoretical analysis of the event.

As noted above, many Bulgarians actively support the School's initiatives and the

celebration of May 24th was no exception. On the day of the celebration many Bulgarian men

and women arrived one hour earlier than the start time to decorate and transform the rented space

- the event hall with a stage in a South Burnaby Anglican church. Quickly the walls of the hall

were covered with the body-shaped collages of the project "Bulgaria in Me". In between the

collages were hung the materials of the folklore exhibit. The exhibit was comprised of folklore

objects and textiles as well as illustrations from historic or ethnographic books and Bulgarian

tourist magazines and brochures brought by the students from their homes.

Tables with souvenir displays were put up in the back of the hall, close to the entrance.

Two tables were reserved for the exhibit of the cellophane-wrapped traditional Bulgarian pastries

and culinary chef d'oeuvres for the silent auction. Although not planned, the food spontaneously

became a part of the exhibition of Bulgarian culture and labels were put in front of each food

item with the name of the dish or pastry.

Before sitting down, people went around and looked at the posters and displays. They

were moved by the beauty of the textiles and embroidery, and they also spent time looking at the

25 students' self-representational collages. The displays created a festive atmosphere, which was at the same time very intimate.

After a delay due to technical difficulties, the celebration finally began with a greeting by

Vania, who was also the main moderator. She introduced the Bulgarian choir, an amateur group of 10 men and women managed and conducted by a professional female violinist, who also teaches music at Douglas College. The group sang the hymn Wurwi narode wuzrodeni (Go On

You Enlightened People). I looked around; everybody was singing along. The hymn is probably the most famous musical piece that has maintained its popularity independent of the political winds and changes in state power during the 19th and 20th centuries in Bulgaria. After the end of the song the audience reassured one another that the 24th of May is the truest Bulgarian

celebration and the hymn is the brightest and most moving music. Everybody applauded, the hall

exploded with joyous voices. Many had tears in their eyes. The choir then performed three

classical songs. Next, the students of the school stepped on the stage and accompanied by a

PowerPoint presentation, one by one contributed to a comprehensive historical overview of the

development of the Bulgarian state since its founding 1300 years to the present.

The highlight of the historic overview was the story of the creation of the Slavic Alphabet

by the Holy Brothers Kiril and Methodius. It is this event that is celebrated each year in Bulgaria

on the 24th of May. The most important part of this story is the fact that the Bulgarian Czar at

that time was the only ruler of a Slavic speaking population who not only harbored the

persecuted disciples of the Holy Brothers, but also financed the building of two great literary and

spiritual schools, thereby securing for the Bulgarians their rightful place among the great

European nations. In the following centuries Slavic literature written in the Cyrillic alphabet

spread from these schools in Bulgaria to Croatia, Kievan Rus (what was to become Russia),

26 Moldova and many other countries. Thus, the students concluded, "Bulgaria has given something to the world". The audience applauded and everybody was visibly moved.

The historic overview continued by very briefly pointing out officially celebrated events like the National Liberation struggle against the Ottoman Yoke in the 18th and 19th centuries and its heroes. The preservation of the Bulgarian language during the 500 years of the Yoke was pointed out as one of the markers of the persistence and strength of the Bulgarian national spirit.

More contemporary historical events were marked mostly by portraits of Bulgarian rulers flying by quickly on the presentation screen. Not much time was spent on the period between the

Liberation and the Second World War; the coming to power of the Communists was noted in passing along with the fact that at that time Bulgaria became a Republic. A portrait of Georgi

Dimitrov, the most acclaimed leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party, was shown. The historic events of the past 15 years in Bulgaria were barely remarked upon with students only noting that since 1989 Bulgaria is a democratic country and the President of the Republic of Bulgaria is

Georgi Parvanov. This part of the presentation finished with a short overview of the colors of the

Bulgarian flag; a portrait of the president was shown, as well as the new coat-of-arms.

Remarking upon an image of the shape and design of the Bulgarian currency, a student said that in Bulgaria the dollars are called Lewa and the cents are called Stotinki. The last part was greeted with humor from the audience; applause and laughter followed. The historical facts presented by the very young students and their partly clumsy pronunciation of the long and complicated words created an atmosphere of general amusement and laughter in the audience.

The younger students continued the presentation with a new theme - "An invitation to come on board a plane". The visual presentation continued with images of a plane flying and crossing the sea to reach a map of Europe. The students pointed to the geographic location of

27 Bulgaria in Europe as well as to historic sites, monuments and famous tourist destinations in

Bulgaria. A musical program with classical music performances by young piano players followed. Prizes were given out to students and parents who correctly answered questions posed during a quiz called "Who wants to be a Millionaire". The questions were from Bulgarian history, geography and sports.

May 24th concluded with a performance of the Women's folklore dance group accompanied by two male accordionists. The audience joined in nearly all the dances. Everybody was cheering again and expressing how this is the true spirit of being Bulgarian. Finally, a woman made a speech in which she thanked the team that organized the event, especially the teachers, whose tireless efforts have contributed significantly to the preservation of the Bulgarian spirit and culture in Vancouver. Bouquets of flowers were presented to all the teachers.

This event is meaningful in many ways. In its complexity it is a representation of group identity, but also of the uniqueness of each immigrant experience. It is an act of collective remembrance, but only of certain events that are meaningful to Bulgarians in Vancouver. The celebration validates forms of identity expression that are new and unique, and also the production of a locale, a space characterized by social relations of a new kind - transnational ones. For the purpose of a comparative analysis in the next section I turn to a second event that is also rendered by Bulgarian ethnicity. It is an institutionally organized event, supported by

Canadian academics and connoisseurs of Bulgarian music and dance. I have chosen to focus on this event because it highlights the issue of authorized representatives and issues of transnational belonging. Such celebrations of Bulgarian folklore are very rare in Vancouver; in fact it is the only such event held since my arrival in Vancouver.

28 Balkan Folklore amid Northwest Coast Totem Poles

The event described here was organized by the Department of Anthropology and

Sociology (ANSO) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) with the active participation of one of the administrative staff members, who is also a member of a Balkan folklore dance group in Vancouver. The event started in the afternoon with a talk on Roma (Gypsy) music from the

Balkans given by a professor of Anthropology and Music from a University in the northwestern

United States. In the evening of the same day this same professor along with her husband, also a professor of music at the same US university, and a Bulgarian grad student of theirs gave a performance of Balkan folk music in the Great Hall of the Museum of Anthropology, UBC. The event at the museum was announced in the museum's official program. The graduate student and third member of the trio is a former professional Bulgarian folk music performer, who sings very well and plays such folk instruments as the gadulka (a string instrument), the kaval (a wind instrument) and the tupan (a percussion instrument).

A staff member of the ANSO made numerous announcements, informing and inviting the officially-registered Bulgarian-Canadian Society to the event. She did not receive any response.

Bulgarians were present at the event; however, they were there as part of a school field trip to the

Museum of Anthropology sponsored by the Language Heritage School. The teachers planned first to visit the museum and then to attend the concert. The teachers of the Heritage Language

School were to my knowledge the only Bulgarian adults who were present at the concert.

Including the school children and myself there were 16 people who can be considered as belonging to the Vancouver Bulgarian Community. The teachers received information about the event through me. I offered to organize a guided tour of the museum for the students, parents and

29 teachers before the concert and so everyone was excited that the long trip from the suburbs, would be, in their words, "worthwhile".

When the students and teachers and some parents arrived at the Museum they were

greatly disappointed that the museum was closed for visitors and only the Great Hall was

accessible for the concert. When the parents, who came with their children, were informed that

they were not going to be able to tour the museum, they dropped off their children at the entrance

and decided to go and have sushi instead. One of the teachers refused to enter the concert even

though a ticket was provided for her. Instead, she went for a walk to see the University campus.

Despite the lack of interest on the part of these Bulgarian-Canadians, the concert was

very well attended. The audience was mainly comprised of the members of the Balkan dance

group and their friends and relations. No Bulgarian is a member of this group, and few members

are from the Balkans. The core and oldest members of the group are not ethnically associated the

Balkan region. However, they love the music and the dances and passionately support folkloric

events like the one described here.

The musicians invited the audience to dance to their music. The members of the group

danced to almost all the music that was performed that night. The Bulgarians participated in two

or three dances. All of the pieces performed were introduced and the songs were translated and

interpreted by the professor before they were performed.6 Three of the very young Bulgarian

students participated in the dances along with the big dance group, although not following a

particular dance step. The kids seemed to like the attention they received from the audience

rather than the participation in the dance. They continuously bowed to the audience and

performed quick pirouettes (dance elements that are not typical of Bulgarian folk dance). The

trio performed Bulgarian music as well as Macedonian, Serbian and Gypsy music. Two of the

6 Both of the professors are ethnically not from the Balkan region.

30 teachers who sat next to me commented several times how unusual it feels for them to hear

Bulgarian music performed by non-Bulgarians and to see Bulgarian dances danced with such enthusiasm by non-Bulgarians, all set among ancient First Nations totem poles.

At the end of the event organizers commented on the low number of Bulgarians attending the concert, and they expressed regret that such a successful concert was not attended by more Bulgarians; some commented that this would have reaffirmed their tradition and ethnicity. Jokingly, one of the members of the dance group even blamed the activists of the

Bulgarian-Canadian Society for being impolite and not actively supporting events like this by at least being present.

I was given a ride to my house in the van of the main teacher of the Heritage Language

School. The van was packed with students and other teachers. As soon as we left the museum and entered the van, everyone again started expressing their regrets for not being able to visit the museum and I had to promise to make up for the missed tour some time in the near future. No further mention of the event was made.

As a graduate student at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at UBC, I considered myself to be one of the hosts of this event and I was saddened by the reactions of the

Bulgarians. I even blamed myself for not being more active encouraging more Bulgarians to attend the unique event. Nonetheless, I concluded that such social behavior must be understood from a wider frame of reference. I found a way to approach this case using the theories of

Bourdieu and Lefebvre and applying them to the larger frame of transnational theory.

Theoretical Discussion

Transnational theory hardly touches on the moment of the concrete production of social space or locale in the sense Henri Lefebvre refers to. As mentioned above, in my analysis I want

31 to contribute to one understanding of the transnational production of space by applying Levitt and Glick Schiller's insights from Bourdieu's concept of social fields in light of Lefebvre's theory of the production of social space.

Since transnational social spaces in which immigrant Bulgarians belong are marked ethnically, in the following analysis I propose to include the concept of ethnic habitus in the theory of transnational social fields. The concept of "ethnic habitus" was introduced to some extent by Bourdieu himself, and it was refined by G. Carter Bentley (1987) and Kevin

Yelvington (1991). It has also been applied in transnational ethnographic studies by authors like

Eva Illouz and Nicholas John (2003) and Anastasia Panagakos (2003). In one of his comments on cultural habitus Bourdieu mentions the role of ethnic social spaces. Social space is understood as a multi-dimensional space in which individuals are defined by their "relative positions" to one another (1991:230). The multidimensionality of such space is defined by the volume and the relative weights of different types of capital (social, cultural, economic) that a person possesses, and according to which he/she acquires a position in the space. Bourdieu clarifies that

in certain social universes, the principles of division, which like the volume and structure of capital, determine the structure of the social space, are reinforced by principles of division that are relatively independent of economic or cultural properties, such as ethnic or religious affiliation. The distribution of agents appears in this case as the product of the intersection of two spaces which are partly independent of each other, since an ethnic group situated in a inferior position in the space of ethnic groups can occupy positions in all the fields, even in the highest, but with rates of representation which are inferior to those of an ethnic group situated in a superior position. Each ethnic group can thus be characterized by the social positions of its members, by the rate of dispersion of these positions and finally by the degree of social integration despite dispersion. (Ethnic solidarity may have the effect of ensuring a form of collective mobility.) (1991:289. Parenthesis added by Bourdieu)

According to the last statement, ethnic habitus and the delineation of social fields by ethnic affiliation can also define a form of capital. Although Bourdieu points to how social space

32 may be formed by ethnic groups, he does not explicitly link ethnicity to cultural capital or consider it as a form of symbolic or even social capital. He treats ethnicity as an element in the construction of social space in which the position of ethnic groups is defined by their intersection

in social space. For members of a society whose ethnicity overlaps with the official culture of a

society, for example the French in France or the English in Britain, ethnicity is not the basis for a

form of capital separate from cultural capital. Bourdieu's understanding offers a useful way of

conveying how different ethnic groups embody habitus that are different and differentiating within actual spaces. If an ethnic social space exists, it means that its structure is governed by the

existence of forms of capital associated with ethnicity which secure the social mobility and position of agents in this social space. In a multicultural society like Canada, ethnic difference is

the basis for accumulating cultural capital and in many cases it creates the necessary distinction

and differentiation which confers specific social positions. In the case of Bulgarians in

Vancouver this ethnic space is further complicated by transnational social relations and a

socialist past that raise questions about the function of ethnic capital in a transnational social

field.

Similarly, in her study of a Greek community in Alberta, Anastasia N. Panagakos

develops a critique of state-imposed ways of being Greek and the official legitimation of cultural

institutions (2003). She describes annual Greek public food and culture festivities that have to be

politically neutral and to produce the expected notion of 'Greekness' in order to be perceived as

successful. Panagakos looks at alternative ethnic social spaces in which ethnic capital can be

transformed into economic or symbolic capital. For the younger generation such spaces are often

found on the internet, and for the elderly they are frequently located in Greek soap operas,

produced in Greece. In these spaces ethnic social networks are created and maintained. These

33 ethnic habitus are very different from the lifestyle that outsiders of the Greek community imagine Greeks to have since they embody a transnational element that crosses multiple national borders. The Greek soap opera also maintains transnational relationships by imposing a type of

Greek habitus from Greece onto the ethnic habitus of Greek people in Canada. The soap opera produced in Greece thus becomes part of the Greek habitus in Canada. The social capital -

extensive networks between transnational Greeks - created by this specific ethnic group can

then be transformed into symbolic or economic capital, for example, when information about

cheap travel tickets, good Greek food, job opportunities, and so on is circulated through these

networks.

Like the Greeks in Alberta, Bulgarians in Vancouver also embody alternative forms of

ethnic habitus that truly exist and define their distinctive transnational social field.

Here I arrive at the question: how do the particular places formed by Bulgarian post-socialist

transnational individuals produce and reaffirm their identities and social practices? I will

approach this question by applying these theories to the two events described above.

The Museum of Anthropology (MOA)-event offers a sharp contrast to the May 24th

celebration in how it reflects transnational ethnic identity among Bulgarians in Vancouver.

Indeed, given that it was one of the rare occasions of wonderful celebration of Balkan folk music

and dance in Vancouver, the MOA-event should have been attended in greater numbers by

Bulgarians. However, it is interesting to go deeper into the reasons for why it was ignored or

even purposely avoided by some Bulgarians.

In a theoretical discussion on authorized language, Pierre Bourdieu states:

A performative utterance is destined to fail each time that it is not pronounced by a person who has the 'power' to pronounce it, or more generally, each time that the 'particular persons and circumstances in a given case' are not 'appropriate for the

34 invocation of the particular procedure invoked; in short, each time that the speaker does not have the authority to emit the words that he utters (1991:111).

Bourdieu's aim here is to define who has the power to pronounce successful utterances: it is the person who concentrates within his/her speech "the accumulated symbolic capital of the group which has delegated him and of which he is the authorized representative" (1991:111). I wish to

consider how this concept can be applied to the discussion of the space in which successful

utterances are made.

As Lefebvre might argue, social space offers the site for the production of authorized

representatives, and vice versa: authorized representatives assist in the production of social

space. In particular, the MOA-event was produced by the institution of the museum and by the

institutional authority of the organizers and performers in the event. The Museum of

Anthropology has a reputation based on the accumulated symbolic capital as being a competent

institution for the interpretation of ethnicity and foreign culture for the Canadian mainstream

society. In this case, the performers also receive validation from the symbolic rank they have in

the academic world, their long-term research on Balkan music, and their capacity to actively

engage in their enterprise as authentic performers. As members of the Folklore Dance Group, the

organizers of the concert receive validation through the support of various departments of the

university, particularly the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and the Department of

Music, and from their long-term reputation for performing Balkan folk dances and in

participating in various dance festivals in North America and Bulgaria.

The MOA-event is one of many events that exhibit live ethnic utterances. As such it is

fair to say that on this night visiting Bulgarians to the museum became part of the exhibited

ethnicity, rather than part of the audience from the Canadian mainstream society. Their

35 withdrawal from the event can therefore be understood as an attempt to assert both their own

Canadian identity and their right to express their own cultural heritage in their own way.

Following the tradition of a mainstream society of acquiring cultural capital by visiting ethnographic museums about ethnic groups, the Bulgarians that came to MOA that night intending to visit the space of the museum as observers of an exhibited ethnicity, namely of

Northwest Coast First Nations. Learning that they had to become part of an event that will exhibit their own ethnos, they changed their minds. The ones who chose not to enter then decided to replace the planned symbolic consumption of ethnicity in the museum with a rather

spontaneous (and quite literal) act of ethnic consumption - eating sushi. From this perspective it

can be argued that they decided to leave their children with Vania as an expression of respect for the teachers rather than the event itself, so that they could complete their field trip as part of the

initiatives of the Bulgarian Language Heritage School. The other adults who entered the space tried to distance themselves from it as much a possible, observing it from a distant and 'neutral' point of view by making comments on the setting of the event. In effect, they chose to remain

visitors of the Museum of Anthropology rather then become participants in the concert. The kids

were allowed to do their classical ballet pirouettes and fool around because the concert had no

ethnic validity for them as Bulgarians. Nevertheless, out of courtesy and the need to get some

entertainment for the money they paid, the adults danced in the first and last dance of the

performance, thereby maintaining their standpoint as observers rather then participants. In fact,

the moment the group exited the museum they became cold, distant and silent about the

performance itself, remarking only on their regret that they could not visit the museum as

promised.

36 Of course, as Bourdieu indicates, such strategies are not necessarily conscious for the agents involved. As among the Greeks in Alberta that Panagakos studies, the Bulgarians in this setting have assumed an alternate ethnic habitus to the one that the official multicultural society is trying to impose on them. In contrast to the organizers of the collage event from May 24th, the organizers of the MOA-event have not gained enough symbolic capital within the Bulgarian transnational ethnic social space in Vancouver to receive adequate support from this community.

Turning now to the May 24th celebration, I would like to look in particular at the details of the accounts of the past that were missing from the various presentations on May 24th. The theme of memory and remembrance, which strikingly dominated what I am calling the collage- event was also present in all the conversations and interviews I conducted. Here I observed an interesting discrepancy between what was shown at the event and how people reminisced in their interviews about the experiences in Bulgaria that ultimately led to their decision to leave the country. In contrast to the interviews, the exhibition and presentation did not refer to the hardships of the years after the fall of the Iron Curtain; no allusion was made to the economic destitution that still plagues the country. While the folklore element of the event was rather an illustration of the historic past and the traditional roots of 'Bulgarianness', the most striking emphasis was placed on the claim that Bulgarians not only belong to mainstream European culture, but also have contributed significantly to it. Examples of this include the formal choir performances of classical pieces, children performing classical music on the piano, and the quiz game "Who wants to be a Millionaire" with questions about Bulgarians who have claim to world fame - scientists, sport stars and famous opera singers. It is also important to note that the annual celebration on May 24th, which is called the most Bulgarian celebration in both Bulgaria and

37 here in Vancouver, commemorates the contribution of Bulgarians to world culture in developing the Slavic script.

Many formal elements of the celebration are reminiscent of similar festivities conducted in Bulgaria in the past. Deema Kaneff s ethnography Who Owns the Past published in 2004 is a valuable source for retracing the formal elements in these celebrations and relating them to structures established during socialist times. She describes the private and public life of a

Bulgarian village which was closely associated with the central political power during state socialism. Analyzing private and public events and activities she separates the experience or the invocation of the past neatly into three different categories - history, tradition and folklore which

"provided a central organizing principle not only for social relations within the community but also for the way the community engaged in wider state structures" (10). The aim of the

Communist state was to relocate "traditional practices out of private into public arenas;.. .with such a distancing, tradition was transformed into folklore" (140). According to Kaneff the objective of visually and performatively presenting the traditional was largely achieved. The collage-event exhibits exactly these features of the traditional transformed into folklore and placed into a linear evolutionary historic context. As illustrated in Figures 3 and 4,

Figure 3 Figure 4

38 traditional household items are arranged together with post cards and souvenirs from Bulgaria

and placed in front of posters of women wearing folk costumes. Traditional pastries are arranged

as exhibits, not meant to be consumed at the event.

In Conclusion

In the context of the collage-event where historical progress and cultural and scientific

achievements were presented, the hardships experienced after 1989 did not fit. The economic

and cultural demise of the Bulgarian state is a source of embarrassment for many as can be

derived from the excerpts from various interviews cited earlier. The need and effort to

disassociate oneself from the kind of past described above is obvious in the self-representational

choices made by the organizers and participants in the collage-event. The Bulgarian transnational

individual clearly exhibits her or his associations with the Bulgarian nation-state; however, these

associations as shown in the collage-event are predominantly cultural; no comments were made

regarding the economic or political situation in Bulgaria. The children's body-outline collages,

which were made with the active participation of the parents, physically and symbolically framed

the space of the event. These were very personal and filled with the intimate stories they tell of

holiday experiences in Bulgaria and close connections to extended family and friends.

The collages and the folklore exhibit were made up of objects that come from the private

spaces of the homes of immigrants. These mark the crucial defining elements in the production

of transnational social space. The collages convey the intention and need for a very close

relationship with Bulgarian tradition and culture, as well as with the extended family and friends

who live in Bulgaria. The children have very strong relationships with their grandparents and

proudly tell stories about them. These stories remind one of the fact that very often immigrants

39 rely on the help of their parents for child care by inviting them to Canada or by sending the children for long vacations to Bulgaria. While the economic support that immigrants provide to their extended families in Bulgaria is not directly referred to in the collages, they reflect this aspect of the relationship as well.

Although the folklore elements are part of a public exhibition, they are mainly reflections of private spaces in Vancouver. The privacy and intimacy of the immigrant experience is shared in public by means of the collages and the exhibit. The exhibit frames the officially constructed historic and cultural performance. Elements of performances from a different social reality are

adopted to be combined with the social realities of a present existence - a transnational one.

The South Burnaby church hall was transformed in the creating of a completely new

space, detached from political associations. None of the Bulgarians have religious associations to this church, the reason for going there was due to low rental fees. In Bulgaria the locales for such

celebrations are historically marked by political power, and political issues are frequently

invoked. The church event hall offered a 'clean slate' on which to produce a new locale, free of politics and only triggering associations with high spiritual values. In contrast to the museum

space at MOA where ethnic exhibits already shape the environment in a particular way, the event

hall of the church did not impose previously constructed ethnic frames. Although it appeared that

the setting up of the exhibits was much improvised, the arrangement of the space was carefully

planned in advance by Vania and her team of teachers and volunteers. By planning the content of

the performance as well as the elements of the visuals that physically framed the event, they

followed conventions from their past in Bulgaria as well as the new social environment in

Canada. For instance, silent auctions were performed for school fundraising, and everyone could

perform as long as they wanted to share something, breaking with the formal rules that exist in

40 Bulgaria that only highly trained professionals can be part of folk dance presentations during celebrations. The success of the event among Bulgarians in Vancouver reaffirmed the validity of the produced social space as well as the validity of the authorized representatives who inhabit that space.

As mentioned above, some elements of the celebration resembled practices from the

socialist past. Thus, the organizers received through this event a further validation - that of women having the rightful role and mission to be bearers of tradition and culture. One of the projects of the Soviet type state was to engage women actively in the production of public

cultural and educational events. During socialist times "civic participation was central to an

ideology of 'emancipation'" (Bloch 2004:99). The organizers of the event were exclusively

women, men helped out by readily following instructions. Thus, Vania's representative authority

within the post-socialist transnational social field is constructed also through her gender. She is

no exception, as there are a number of very active women who have organized the regular

meetings of the Bulgarian choir and the Women's Folk dance group. These women with their

high social standing among Bulgarians in Vancouver maintain the active social networks within

Vancouver, as well as with cultural institutions in Bulgaria.

As with the Greek community in Alberta described by Panagakos, the social capital

gained within the social field of the Bulgarian Language Heritage School is very potent for the

agents as it can be transformed into symbolic or economic capital. The social networks created

though the participation in school events lead to the cultivation of other forms of ethnic

Bulgarian habitus. Families meet in their private homes on a regular basis to view old Bulgarian

movies and reminisce. During such visits important information is exchanged about financial

opportunities or good mortgage deals. For instance, if they need to buy tickets to Bulgaria and

41 other holiday destinations, like Cuba or Mexico, Bulgarians usually consult with other

Bulgarians in Vancouver or North America. The people I have interviewed are in regular contact

over the internet with other Bulgarian immigrants in Canada as well as the United States. As

matter of a fact, a lot of information is exchanged over the internet among Bulgarians in the

Vancouver area. The teachers told me that the teenage students of the Heritage School regularly

chat with each other on the internet. They exchange various information and help each other out

for different school projects. The teachers of the Heritage School mainly use the internet to

inform parents and other Bulgarians of events at the school or even about other cultural events in

Vancouver that might be of interest.

The question of how the particular places formed by Bulgarian post-socialist

transnational individuals produce and reaffirm their identities and social practices has been

largely answered through the examples I have provided above. I have focused my analysis of the

Bulgarian transnational social field more on the individuals, who "belong to it", to use Levitt and

Glick Schiller 's term. There are, of course, many ways of being in this field, but the analysis of

the particular locales and private or public spaces created by such agents remain to be described

in another study.

In their article on transnational social fields Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller

advocate strongly for the disassociation of the notion of society from the geographical limitations

of the nation-state (2004). They argue that "much of the social science theory equates society

with the boundaries of a particular nation-sate, [and] researchers often take rootedness and

incorporation in the nation-state as the norm and social identities and practices enacted across

state boundaries as out of the ordinary" (1007). Furthermore, the authors differentiate themselves

from researchers that try to find intersections between the global and the individual and

42 completely ignore social relations and social positioning. "Without the concept of the social, the relations of power and privilege exercised by social actors based within structures and organizations cannot be studied or analyzed" (1008).This study has sought to illustrate the utility of such an approach.

Using Bourdieu's approach to social fields, I have also tried to identify the type of habitus social fields produce, but also the social spaces by which such habitus are produced. By combining Bourdieu and Lefebvre I have attempted to bridge the abstract social field with the theories and understanding of the production of locales. From this perspective the application of

Levitt and Glick Schiller's model for the analysis of transnational social fields becomes more relevant.

To some extent, this analysis of the public practices of Bulgarian immigrants in

Vancouver addresses a social field that has a distinctive position in the social structure of the

Canadian northwest coast society as a whole. Using the work of Levitt and Glick Schiller, the analysis also discussed the practices and social relations that go beyond nation-states by linking individuals and producing spaces that render different types of habitus. According to Bourdieu's theory of the habitus these types of activities simultaneously structure and are structured by transnational social space. Levitt and Glick Schiller point to a methodology that overcomes binary oppositions like "homeland/new land,.. .migrant/ non-migrant, and acculturation/ cultural persistence" (2004:1012). Since these oppositions limit research to the boundaries of nation- states, the authors insist on developing a social space model that breaches these boundaries. The analysis of the events presented above illustrates how the Bulgarian transnational social field is not fixed by the geographical boundaries of either Canada or Bulgaria. The analysis also shows that the particular social fields created by post-socialist Bulgarian immigrants in Vancouver are

43 not fixed by only one social order. Drawing on Lefebvre's approach makes it possible to recognize the processes by which transnational space is produced and defined by the experience of Bulgarian immigrants raised under state socialism.

Transnational social fields can vary widely from one community to another. As Glick

Schiller and Peggy Levitt point out, it is important to consider along with the wider global processes and nation-state policies the particularities of the social fields which they construct and by which they are shaped. As noted at the beginning of this text, my aim is to participate and contribute to the self-exploration discourse that exists among Bulgarian immigrants in

Vancouver. At the same time, I have sought to expand the understanding of immigrant groups and transnational individuals within the wider frame of the Canadian multicultural society. This brings me back to one of the comments with which I started this text. In it a woman expressed her rather pessimistic believe that different ethnic groups in Canada "live on different building floors" and therefore do not communicate meaningfully with one another. I would like to consider this metaphor more optimistically and add that the image of a building suggests also the existence of staircases and elevators that connect these floors. I find that the metaphor can also be rendered to illustrate the concept of a multicultural society rather then the concept of a homogenous nationalistic state in which ethnic groups are supposed to amalgamate into a coherent entity. In such a building different groups, including ethnic communities, have the opportunity to create their own places, their sense of home, while at the same time the staircases allow for the possibility of establishing a meaningful communication between these spaces.

In the thirteen years of its existence the Bulgarian Language Heritage School in

Vancouver has faced numerous victories and a number of challenges; it is still in search of a permanent space for its regular classes. While it is recognized by the Bulgarians who support and

44 participate in its activities as their cultural representative, it still strives to gain official institutional recognition of its language training program. The efforts of the teachers to maintain the cultural spirit of Bulgarian-Canadians are tireless. It was their idea to create a self- representational exhibit in a museum in Vancouver that inspired this research. Such an exhibit

could be one more step toward an improved communication between cultural groups in Canada.

I embarked on the study to provide the potential organizers of such an exhibit with a better

understating of the identity of Bulgarians in Vancouver. I hope I have succeeded to some extent.

45 Bibliography

Altankov, Nikolay G. 1979 The Bulgarian-Americans. Palo Alto: Ragusan Press.

Appadurai, A. 1996 Sovereignty without Territoriality: Notes for a Postnational Geography. In The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture. Setha Low and Denise Lawrence- Zuniga, eds. Pp. 337-349. London: Blackwell.

Basch, Linda, with Nina Glick Schiller and Christina Szanton Blanc 1994 Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation States. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach.

Bentley, Carter G.

1987 Ethnicity and Practice. Comparative Studies in Society and History 29(l):24-55.

Berdahl, Daphne 1999 '(N)Ostalgie' for the Present: Memory, Longing and East German Things. Ethnos 64(2): 192-211. Bloch, Alexia 2004 Red Ties and Residential Schools: Indigenous Siberians in a Post-Soviet State. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2003 Victims of Trafficking or Entrepreneurial Women? Narratives of Post-Soviet Entertainers in Turkey. Canadian Woman Studies 22.3/4:152-158.

Bobeva, Daniela 1994 Emigration from and Immigration to Bulgaria. In European Migration in the Late Twentieth Century. Historical Patterns, Actual Trends, and Social Implications. H. Fassmann and R. Munz, eds. Luxenburg: Aldershot.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Edited and introduced by John B. Thompson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1998 Practical Reason. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Boym, Svetlana 1994 The Archeology of Banality: The Soviet Home. Public Culture 6:263-292. 1998 On Diasporic Intimacy: Ilya Kabakov's Installations in Immigrant Homes. Critical Inquiry, Winter:498-524.

Buchli, Victor 1999 An Archaeology of Socialism. Oxford, New York: Berg.

46 Burawoy, Michael and Katherine Verdery, eds. 1999 Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cholakov Nikola 2003 Statisticheskite Danni za Wanshnata Migraciia I Demografskata Informacia za Bulgarskoto Naselenie (Statistical data on emigration and the demographics in Bulgaria). Dconomicheska Misal 5:53-64.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2005 Recent Immigrants in Metropolitan Areas. A Comparative Profile Based on the 2001 Census. Electronic document, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/research/papers/menu- recent.html#2001, accessed September 15, 2005.

Clifford, James 1994 Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology 9(3):302-338.

Constable, Nicole 1999 At Home but not at Home: Filipina Narratives of Ambivalent Returns. Cultural Anthropology 14(2):203-228.

Das, Veena 1995 Critical Events. An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India. Delhi; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Forrester, Sibelan and Magdalena J. Zaborowska, Elena Gapova, eds. 2004 Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-communist Cultures through an East-West Gaze. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Fouron, Georges and Nina Glick Schiller 2001 All in the Family: Gender, Transnational Migration, and the Nation-State. Identities 7(4):539-582.

Ghodsee, Kristen 2002 Mobility in Bulgaria and the European Union: Brain Drain, Bogus Asylum Seekers, Replacement Migration, and Fertility. East European Studies Occasional Papers 2002 Number 70. Electronic document, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ghod70.pdf, accessed June 30, 2004.

Gray, Patty 2005 The Predicament of Chukotka's Indigenous Movement: Post-Soviet Activism in the Russian Far. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Harm, Chris M. 1994 After Communism: Reflections on East European Anthropology and the 'transition'. Social Anthropology 2 (3):229-247

47 Humphrey, Caroline 2005 Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet imagination. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute ll(l):39-58.

Illouz, Eva and Nicholas John 2003 Global habitus, Local Stratification, and Symbolic Struggles over Identity. The American Behavioral Scientist 47(2):201-229.

Kaneff, Deema 2002 The shame and pride of market activity : morality, identity and trading in postsocialist rural Bulgaria. In Markets and Moralities : Ethnographies of Postsocialism. Ruth Mandel and Caroline Humphrey, eds. Oxford/ New York: Berg. 2004 New Directions in Anthropology, vol. 21: Who Owns the Past? The Politics of Time in a 'Model' Bulgarian Village. New York/ Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Kaplan, Caren 1994 The Politics of Location as Transnationalist Feminist Critical Practice. In Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, eds. Pp. 137-151. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lass, Andrew 1994 From Memory to History: The Events of November 17 Dis/membered. In Memory, History and Opposition under State Socialism. Rubie Watson, ed. Pp. 87-104. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Lefebvre, Henri 1991 The Production of Space. Maiden: Blackwell Publishing.

Levitt, Peggy and Nina Glick Schiller 2004 Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A transnational Social Field Perspective on Society. International Migration Review 38(3):1002-1039.

Margold, Jane 1995 Narratives of Masculinity in Transnational Migration: Filipino Workers in the Middle East. In Bewitching Women, Pious Men. Aihwa Ong and Michael Peletz, eds. Pp. 274-298. Berkley: University of California Press.

Markova, Eugenia and Alexandras Saris 1997 Bulgarskite Emigranti na Gruzkiia Trudov Pazar (Bulgarian Emigrants on the Greek Labor Market). Dconomica 7:24-26.

Mitev Trendafil 1993. Bulgarskata Emigracia w America i Borbite za Oswobozhdenieto na Makedoniia 1919- 1945 (Bulgarian Emigration to America and the Liberationfights of Macedonial919-1945). Sofia: Voennoizdatelski complex Sv. Georgi Pobedonocez.

48 Narayan, Kirin

1993 How Native is a 'Native' Anthropologist? American Anthropologist 95(3):671-686.

Office for Official Publications of the European Communities 2002 Immigration, Asylum and Social Integration. Luxembourg: Published by Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Ong, Aihwa 1999 Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press.

Panagakos, Anastasia N. 2003 Downloading New Identities: Ethnicity, Technology, and Media in the Global Greek Village. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 10:201-219.

Parrenas, Rhacel Salazar 2001 Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Rees, Philip and Marek Kupiszewski (eds.) 1999 Internal Migration and Regional Population Dynamics in Europe: a Synthesis. Population Studies No. 32. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing.

Spivak, G. 1996 Diasporas Old and New: Women in the Transnational World. Textual Practice 10(2): 245-269.

Statistics Canada 2001 Ethnocultural Portrait of Canada. Census 2001. Electronic document, http://www 12.statcan.ca/english/censusO 1 /products/standard/themes/, accessed September 24, 2005

2005 Census of population 2001. Electronic document, http://wwwl2.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/highlight/ETO/Tablel .cfm?Lang=E&T= 501&GV=1&GID=59. accessed September 24, 2005.

Todorova, Maria ed. 2004 Balkan Identities. Nation and Memory. London: Hurst and Company.

Traykov Vesselyn 1993 Iztoria na Bulgarskata Emigracia w Sewerna America (History of the Bulgarian emigration in North Amrica). Sofia: Sofia University Press Kliment Ohridski.

49 Verdery, Katherine and Caroline Humphrey, eds. 2004 Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy. Oxford/ New York: Berg.

Watson, Rubie ed. 1994. Introduction. In Memory, History and Opposition under State Socialism. Rubie Watson, ed. Pp. 1-20. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Yelvington, Kevin A. 1991 Ethnicity as Practice? A comment on Bentley. Comparative Studies in Society and History 33(1):158-168.

50