Fixing national subjects in the 1920s southern Balkans: Also an international practice

ABSTRACT The momentous transition from empire to nation‐state in the early 20th century entailed a challenge for European states to produce “national” subjects–citizens. Scholars examining how diverse populations were incorporated into national projects have typically taken the nation‐state's territorial boundaries as analytical boundaries and have rarely considered nation‐building comparatively or investigated the creation of national subjects as an international practice. Taking the case of the League of Nation's supervision of the Greco–Bulgarian Convention Concerning Reciprocal and Voluntary Emigration in the 1920s, I explore collaboration between international and national agents in disambiguating multistranded affiliations of certain subjects in pursuit of homogeneous nation‐states. [international institutions, nation‐building, supervision, subjects, migration, borders, minorities]