Juliette Ronsin is a postdoctoral researcher at Mucem and CETOBaC (EHESS). In 2024, she defended her thesis at ENS-PSL entitled “It was Peugeot that brought us here”: Yugoslavian migration to Belfort-Montbéliard from the 1960s to the present day,” under the supervision of Claire Zalc. Her research focuses on the history of labor, the working classes, and migration and circulation (people, objects, knowledge) between France and (post-)Yugoslavia, through the analysis of trajectories and state policies between the two countries.
PROJECT STATEMENT
Collections in motion. Objects, people, and knowledge between France and Yugoslavia in the second half of the 20th century
Yugoslav migration to France in the 1960s and 1970s is usually presented as “economic” following the bilateral Franco-Yugoslav agreement of January 25, 1965. It has been little studied in France and is at the heart of issues of recruitment by employers, surveillance, and state protection. Starting with the case of Belfort-Montbéliard, where Yugoslavs constituted one of the main immigrant nationalities in the 1960s and 1970s, my research analyzes the long-term trajectories of a generation of people who migrated to France mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. The aim is to understand the condition of workers and immigrants in the workplace and, more broadly, in the social interactions that took place in the industrial basin of Belfort-Montbéliard and on a transnational scale. The Peugeot company in Sochaux plays a central role because it was unique in targeting its recruitment in Yugoslavia from 1966 onwards. Starting from career paths marked by multiple activities and mobility, my research also proposes to re-examine the emblematic site of Sochaux in the light of an economic history that places it within a vast industrial territory, including small and medium-sized enterprises, many of which are dependent on the automotive site. Individuals’ career paths were then faced with a double disappearance with the breakup of Yugoslavia and the process of deindustrialization.
At the same time, I am conducting postdoctoral research at the Mucem and EHESS on Colette Jankovic (1898-1981) and Dusan Jankovic (1894-1950), an ethnologist and artist couple who were responsible for the acquisition between 1947 and 1981 of six thousand objects from Yugoslavia relating to work, domestic life, and beliefs.
Website: https://cetobac.ehess.fr/membres/juliette-ronsin
