School of Social & Political Sciences

Dr Sara Bernard

  • Lecturer in societal transformations (Political & International Studies)

Biography

I joined CEES as a lecturer in societal transformations in January 2020. Prior to that I taught at Goldsmiths, University of London. I was educated at the University of Bologna, and at the University of Regensburg, where I obtained my PhD in 2016. I have held a research fellowship at the Centre for South East European Studies, University of Graz, and spent periods of study and research in Madrid, Belgrade and Zagreb.

I am a social historian of international migration in the twentieth century, particularly interested in the Cold War period and in South and Southeastern Europe. My doctoral project examined the return of the Gastarbeiter to socialist Yugoslavia. It was turned into a book and published by Harrassowitz in 2019 https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/titel_5814.ahtml .

I am coordinator of the Working Group Labour Migration History of the European Labour History Network https://socialhistoryportal.org/elhn/wg-migration .

Since 2019 I have been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

Research interests

There are two major lines of inquiry in my research agenda:

One of my principal research interests lies in the history of migration in the former Yugoslav region in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I am particularly interested in the different ways in which Yugoslav unity was legitimised but also challenged by ‘Yugoslavs on the move’. I explore how different types of migration and mobility involving diverse individuals, families and communities led to the establishment of different transnational networks which affected Yugoslav nation-building and overall development. I am also interested in exploring the immigration history of the former Yugoslav region. In particular I am currently exploring the social and legal status of those ‘migrants’ who reached Yugoslavia as foreign workers during socialism, a topic which links me to my second area of interest.

A second and more recent line of inquiry is the examination of experiences and understandings of uses of foreign labour within the cooperation and solidarity networks developed within the Second and Third Worlds during the Cold War. Yugoslavia was a key player in these networks thanks to its independence from Moscow and its leadership role in the Non-aligned Movement. Using Yugoslavia as the starting point for my research, the questions which I am interested in investigating include: How did political elites in the Global South translate and incorporate experiences with international migration into their fight for a better and more equal world? How did knowledge and debates arising from these experiences work to undermine and transform existing policies and patterns of intervention from the Global North? What can the experience and regulation of the status of labour migrants in socialist countries tell us about the global history of labour?

Research groups

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2015 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2007
Number of items: 26.

2026

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Archer, Rory (2026) Eastern Europe during the Cold War: a laboratory of migration. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies. Oxford University Press: Oxford. ISBN 9780197852699 (doi: 10.1093/9780197852699.003.0066)

2025

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2025) Global imaginaries of work and workplaces: Yugoslavs employed abroad and the conceptualisation of Yugoslav identity. Europe-Asia Studies, (Accepted for Publication)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696, Archer, Rory and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S (Eds.) (2025) The Cold War of Labor Migrants. Opportunities, Struggles and Adaptations across the Iron Curtain and Beyond. Routledge. ISBN 9781041135005

Archer, Rory, Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S (2025) Afterword. In: Bernard, Sara, Archer, Rory and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S. (eds.) The Cold War of Labor Migrants Opportunities, Struggles and Adaptations across the Iron Curtain and Beyond. Routledge. ISBN 9781041135005

Archer, Rory, Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S (2025) Introduction. In: Bernard, Sara, Archer, Rory and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S. (eds.) The Cold War of Labor Migrants Opportunities, Struggles and Adaptations across the Iron Curtain and Beyond. Routledge. ISBN 9781041135005

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2025) Re-Imagining the Balkans. How to Think and Teach a Region. Festschrift in Honor of Maria N. Todorova Augusta Dimou, Theodora Dragostinova & Veneta Ivanova (eds), Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2023, 426pp., £50.00 h/b. Europe-Asia Studies, 77(9), pp. 1508-1510. (doi: 10.1080/09668136.2025.2567182)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2025) Le conseguenze del conflitto e la questione migratoria. In: Betti, Eloisa and Zaccaria, Benedetto (eds.) L’Italia e le guerre jugoslave: Reti solidali, società civile, istituzioni. Carocci: Rome, pp. 61-85. ISBN 9788829026357

2024

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2024) Randall Hansen. War, Work, and Want: How the OPEC Oil Crisis Caused Mass Migration and Revolution. H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences, [Book Review]

2023

Bajić-Hajduković, Ivana and Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2023) “Money can’t buy me love”: Remittances, return migration, and family relations in Serbia (1960s-2000s). In: Meyer, Silke and Ströhle, Claudius (eds.) Remittances as Social Practices and Agents of Change: the Future of Transnational Society. Palgrave MacMillan: Cham, pp. 77-98. ISBN 9783030815042 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-81504-2_4)

Archer, Rory, Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Papadopoulos, Yannis G. S. (2023) Introduction: The cold war of labour migrants: opportunities, struggles and adaptations across the Iron Curtain and beyond. Labor History, 64(4), pp. 321-329. (doi: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2227600)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2023) The regulation of international migration in the Cold War: a synthesis and review of the literature. Labor History, 64(4), pp. 330-357. (doi: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2237924)

2022

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2022) Citizens without Borders: Yugoslavia and its Migrant Workers in Western Europe. By Brigitte Le Normand. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2021. xxii, 304 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Tables. $ 34.95, paper. Slavic Review, 81(3), pp. 760-761. (doi: 10.1017/slr.2022.242)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2022) Bringing labour back to migration history: a report on the activities of the working group labour migration history. Migration Letters, 19(4), pp. 537-546. (doi: 10.33182/ml.v19i4.2401)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Cosovschi, Agustin (2022) Cooperation, migration and development: Yugoslavia and the Southern Cone in the postwar period. In: Damilakou, Maria and Papadopoulos, Yannis G. S. (eds.) Migration and Development in Southern Europe and South America. Series: Routledge studies in development, mobilities and migration. Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY, pp. 132-146. ISBN 9781003250401 (doi: 10.4324/10.4324/9781003250401-12)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2022) Annemarie Steidl: On Many Routes. Internal, European, and Transatlantic Migration in the Late Habsburg Empire. Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 71(1), pp. 129-130. (doi: 10.25627/202271111088)[Book Review]

2019

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2019) Oil shocks, migration and European integration: a (Trans)national perspective on the Yugoslav crises of the 1980s. National Identities, 21(5), pp. 463-484. (doi: 10.1080/14608944.2018.1498471)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2019) Deutsch Marks in the Head, Shovel in the Hands and Yugoslavia in the Heart: the Gastarbeiter return to Yugoslavia (1965-1991). Series: Studien zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas (28). Harrassowitz Verlag: Wiesbaden. ISBN 9783447111874

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2019) Governing Diasporas in International Relations: The Transnational Politics of Croatia and Former Yugoslavia. Europe-Asia Studies, 71(3), pp. 515-517. (doi: 10.1080/09668136.2019.1593625)[Book Review]

2018

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2018) Times of hope and despair. In: Hornstein-Tomić, Caroline, Pichler, Robert and Scholl-Schneider, Sarah (eds.) Remigration to Post-Socialist Europe: Hopes and Realities of Return. Series: ERSTE Foundation series (3). LIT Verlag: Zurich. ISBN 9783643910257

2017

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2017) Transnationalism, Diaspora and Migrants from the Former Yugoslavia in Britain. Südosteuropa: Journal of Politics and Society, 65(1), pp. 187-189. (doi: 10.1515/soeu-2017-0012)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2017) Martin Zückert, Heidi Hein-Kircher (Hrsg.), Migration and Landscape Transformation. Changes in East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Century. Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 66(2), pp. 256-258. [Book Review]

2015

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2015) Tamara Scheer: „Minimale Kosten, absolut kein Blut“. Österreich-Ungarns Präsenz im Sandžak von Novipazar (1879-1908). Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 64(1), pp. 118-119. [Book Review]

2013

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2013) Il ritorno dei gastarbajteri nella politica migratoria della Jugoslavia socialista (1969-1991). Percorsi Storici, 1,

2012

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2012) Developing the Yugoslav Gastarbeiter Reintegration Policy. Political and Economic Aspects (1969-1974). Working Paper. Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz.

2011

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2011) Emigrazione, Reti e Coscienza di Appartenenza. In: D'Alessandri, Antonio and Pitassio, Armando (eds.) Dopo la Pioggia: Gli Stati della Disooluzione della Ex Jugoslavia e dell'Albania 1991-2011. Argo: Lecce. ISBN 9788882341541

2007

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2007) L’immigrazione in Italia: un’indagine sulle politiche emergenziali. Storicamente, 3, 29. (doi: 10.1473/stor350)

This list was generated on Tue Jun 9 10:28:16 2026 BST.
Jump to: Articles | Books | Book Sections | Book Reviews | Edited Books | Research Reports or Papers
Number of items: 26.

Articles

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2025) Global imaginaries of work and workplaces: Yugoslavs employed abroad and the conceptualisation of Yugoslav identity. Europe-Asia Studies, (Accepted for Publication)

Archer, Rory, Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Papadopoulos, Yannis G. S. (2023) Introduction: The cold war of labour migrants: opportunities, struggles and adaptations across the Iron Curtain and beyond. Labor History, 64(4), pp. 321-329. (doi: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2227600)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2023) The regulation of international migration in the Cold War: a synthesis and review of the literature. Labor History, 64(4), pp. 330-357. (doi: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2237924)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2022) Bringing labour back to migration history: a report on the activities of the working group labour migration history. Migration Letters, 19(4), pp. 537-546. (doi: 10.33182/ml.v19i4.2401)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2019) Oil shocks, migration and European integration: a (Trans)national perspective on the Yugoslav crises of the 1980s. National Identities, 21(5), pp. 463-484. (doi: 10.1080/14608944.2018.1498471)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2013) Il ritorno dei gastarbajteri nella politica migratoria della Jugoslavia socialista (1969-1991). Percorsi Storici, 1,

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2007) L’immigrazione in Italia: un’indagine sulle politiche emergenziali. Storicamente, 3, 29. (doi: 10.1473/stor350)

Books

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2019) Deutsch Marks in the Head, Shovel in the Hands and Yugoslavia in the Heart: the Gastarbeiter return to Yugoslavia (1965-1991). Series: Studien zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas (28). Harrassowitz Verlag: Wiesbaden. ISBN 9783447111874

Book Sections

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Archer, Rory (2026) Eastern Europe during the Cold War: a laboratory of migration. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies. Oxford University Press: Oxford. ISBN 9780197852699 (doi: 10.1093/9780197852699.003.0066)

Archer, Rory, Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S (2025) Afterword. In: Bernard, Sara, Archer, Rory and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S. (eds.) The Cold War of Labor Migrants Opportunities, Struggles and Adaptations across the Iron Curtain and Beyond. Routledge. ISBN 9781041135005

Archer, Rory, Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S (2025) Introduction. In: Bernard, Sara, Archer, Rory and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S. (eds.) The Cold War of Labor Migrants Opportunities, Struggles and Adaptations across the Iron Curtain and Beyond. Routledge. ISBN 9781041135005

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2025) Le conseguenze del conflitto e la questione migratoria. In: Betti, Eloisa and Zaccaria, Benedetto (eds.) L’Italia e le guerre jugoslave: Reti solidali, società civile, istituzioni. Carocci: Rome, pp. 61-85. ISBN 9788829026357

Bajić-Hajduković, Ivana and Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2023) “Money can’t buy me love”: Remittances, return migration, and family relations in Serbia (1960s-2000s). In: Meyer, Silke and Ströhle, Claudius (eds.) Remittances as Social Practices and Agents of Change: the Future of Transnational Society. Palgrave MacMillan: Cham, pp. 77-98. ISBN 9783030815042 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-81504-2_4)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 and Cosovschi, Agustin (2022) Cooperation, migration and development: Yugoslavia and the Southern Cone in the postwar period. In: Damilakou, Maria and Papadopoulos, Yannis G. S. (eds.) Migration and Development in Southern Europe and South America. Series: Routledge studies in development, mobilities and migration. Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY, pp. 132-146. ISBN 9781003250401 (doi: 10.4324/10.4324/9781003250401-12)

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2018) Times of hope and despair. In: Hornstein-Tomić, Caroline, Pichler, Robert and Scholl-Schneider, Sarah (eds.) Remigration to Post-Socialist Europe: Hopes and Realities of Return. Series: ERSTE Foundation series (3). LIT Verlag: Zurich. ISBN 9783643910257

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2011) Emigrazione, Reti e Coscienza di Appartenenza. In: D'Alessandri, Antonio and Pitassio, Armando (eds.) Dopo la Pioggia: Gli Stati della Disooluzione della Ex Jugoslavia e dell'Albania 1991-2011. Argo: Lecce. ISBN 9788882341541

Book Reviews

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2025) Re-Imagining the Balkans. How to Think and Teach a Region. Festschrift in Honor of Maria N. Todorova Augusta Dimou, Theodora Dragostinova & Veneta Ivanova (eds), Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2023, 426pp., £50.00 h/b. Europe-Asia Studies, 77(9), pp. 1508-1510. (doi: 10.1080/09668136.2025.2567182)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2024) Randall Hansen. War, Work, and Want: How the OPEC Oil Crisis Caused Mass Migration and Revolution. H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences, [Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2022) Citizens without Borders: Yugoslavia and its Migrant Workers in Western Europe. By Brigitte Le Normand. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2021. xxii, 304 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Tables. $ 34.95, paper. Slavic Review, 81(3), pp. 760-761. (doi: 10.1017/slr.2022.242)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2022) Annemarie Steidl: On Many Routes. Internal, European, and Transatlantic Migration in the Late Habsburg Empire. Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 71(1), pp. 129-130. (doi: 10.25627/202271111088)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2019) Governing Diasporas in International Relations: The Transnational Politics of Croatia and Former Yugoslavia. Europe-Asia Studies, 71(3), pp. 515-517. (doi: 10.1080/09668136.2019.1593625)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2017) Transnationalism, Diaspora and Migrants from the Former Yugoslavia in Britain. Südosteuropa: Journal of Politics and Society, 65(1), pp. 187-189. (doi: 10.1515/soeu-2017-0012)[Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2017) Martin Zückert, Heidi Hein-Kircher (Hrsg.), Migration and Landscape Transformation. Changes in East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Century. Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 66(2), pp. 256-258. [Book Review]

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2015) Tamara Scheer: „Minimale Kosten, absolut kein Blut“. Österreich-Ungarns Präsenz im Sandžak von Novipazar (1879-1908). Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 64(1), pp. 118-119. [Book Review]

Edited Books

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696, Archer, Rory and Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S (Eds.) (2025) The Cold War of Labor Migrants. Opportunities, Struggles and Adaptations across the Iron Curtain and Beyond. Routledge. ISBN 9781041135005

Research Reports or Papers

Bernard, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6055-9696 (2012) Developing the Yugoslav Gastarbeiter Reintegration Policy. Political and Economic Aspects (1969-1974). Working Paper. Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz.

This list was generated on Tue Jun 9 10:28:16 2026 BST.

Supervision

I am happy to supervise on any aspect related to my research interests and I welcome enquiries from potential PhD applicants in any of my main areas of research.

  • Trosclair, Bria Angelle
    Imagining Ontologically Secure Futures with Migrants in Glasgow: Activating Heritage Using PAR?

Teaching

Undergraduate

Contributor: CEES 1B: COMMUNISM AND ITS COLLAPSE

Contributor & Convenor: CEES 2B: CENTRAL EUROPE AFTER COMMUNISM

Honours Option: (DE)CONSTRUCTING YUGOSLAVIA: MIGRANTS, REFUGEES, AND DIASPORAS 1918-2008

Postgraduate

Convenor: YUGOSLAVIA AND AFTER: THEMES AND CONTROVERSIES

Professional activities & recognition

Editorial boards

  • 2023: Europe-Asia Studies