Val Colic-Peisker harnesses concepts and theories from sociology, anthropology, and political science to compare the vastly different experiences of two Croatian immigrant cohorts in the city of Perth, Western Australia. The populations explored represent an earlier group of working-class migrants arriving from communist Yugoslavia from the 1950s to 1970s and a later group of urban professionals arriving in the 1980s and 1990s as 'independent' or skills-based migrants. This latter group integrated into professional ranks but also used their Australian experience as a stepping stone in becoming part of a highly mobile global professional middle class.

Employing a refined theoretical analysis, this rich ethnography challenges the domination of the ethnic perspective in migration studies and the idea of ethnic community itself. It emphasizes the importance of class, focusing on the intersection of class, ethnicity, and gender in the process of migration, migrant incorporation, and transnationalism. In theorizing the connection of the two migrant cohorts with their native Croatia, the study introduces concepts of "ethnic" and "cosmopolitan" transnationalism as two distinctive experiences mediated by class.

| 1. The Homeland 29 2. The Global Context 54 3. The Hostland: A Designed Nation 70 4. Farewell My Village by the Sea: Working-Class Croatians in Australian Suburbia 91 5. Ubi lucrum, ibi patria: Incorporation and Transnationalism of the Professional Cohort 128 6. The Croatian Diaspora: Transnationalism, Class, and Identity 157 7. From Communism to Capitalism: Altered Values and Shifting Identities? 18o Conclusion: Between or Beyond Nations? Class, Ethnicity, and Transnationalism in the Global Century 205 Notes 219 Bibliography 229 |

"Recommended."—Choice

"Well informed about the current research agenda and theoretical debates of immigration studies ... engagingly written, and with proposed arguments supported by extensive citations from interviewees, the book is an evident accomplishment."—American Historical Review
"An outstanding study. . . . Written with (com)passion and commitment, and profound understanding of many complex and interrelated migration processes and issues."—Labour/Le Travail
|Val Colic-Peisker is an associate professor in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She is the coauthor of The Age of Post-Rationality: Limits of Economic Reasoning in the Twenty-First Century and the author of Split Lives: Croatian Australian Stories.