The export of know-how at the (semi)peripheries: The case of Yugoslav-Iranian industrial collaboration and labor mobility (1980–1991)

Abstract

The paper explores experiences of temporary labor migration that entailed Yugoslav export of know-how (highly skilled knowledge and expertise) between 1980 and 1991, a result of industrial collaboration between Mining and Smelting Combine Bor, a state-owned copper-processing ‘giant’ in former Yugoslavia, and the biggest copper company in Iran, National Iranian Copper Industries Company. Based on interviews with individuals engaged in the Yugoslav project, supplemented by analysis of documents and historic newspapers from that period, the paper analyzes everyday practices of managerial bureaucratic improvisations and improvisations at work. The article shows how such improvisations helped overcome excessive and rigid Yugoslav socialist bureaucracy and made Yugoslav entrepreneurial capitalist ventures possible. Moreover, it argues that the export of know-how was constitutive of silent acceptances of reproduction of capitalist relations, which helped consolidate the process of liberalization of the socialist market in the late 1980s. We argue that such temporary labor migration and the often improvised work carried out by the Yugoslav workers cannot be seen as a resistance or alternative to the Western/Northern hegemonies. Rather, we argue that such practices were facilitators of the capitalist ventures at semi-peripheries.