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In April of 1992, war began in Bosnia. Sarajevo, site of the 1984 Winter Olympics, and, we were told, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, became a city under siege. For all of the people of Bosnia, life shifted in unimaginable ways in a matter of hours, days, or weeks. An immediate exodus began from Bosnia, and people who had never anticipated leaving their country became refugees, dependent upon a world system of resettlement for displaced persons. This book relates the experiences of a hundred Bosnian families who came to Utica, a town in upstate New York. Bosnians in Utica came here as refugees - ginning in 1993, having ?ed from the wars of succession in the former Yugoslavia. Our study evolved over several years as a result of our interests in the war in Bosnia and the massive ?ow of refugees that it precipitated. We began work on the project in the late 1990s as we set out to learn about the war and to explore refugee experiences of displacement, transit, and resettlement. Our intent is to portray the experience of Bosnian refugees in one American city and to capture, in their words, in as much detail as possible their adjustment to a new community and a new culture.
Bosnian Refugees in Chicago: Gender, Performance, and Post-War Economies studies refugee migration through the experiences of survivors of the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia as they rebuild home, family, and social lives in the wake of their displacement. Ana Croegaert explores post-1970s Yugoslav-era socialism, American neoliberal capitalism, and anti-Muslim geopolitics to examine women’s varied perspectives on their postwar lives in the United States. Based on more than a decade of fieldwork, Croegaert takes readers into staged performances, coffee rituals, protests, memorials, homes, and non-governmental organizations to shine a light on the pressures women contend with in their efforts to make a living and to narrate their wartime injuries. Ultimately, Croegaert argues that refugee women insist on understanding their wartime losses as simultaneously social and material, a form of personhood she labels “injured life.” At a time of mass displacement and heated political debates concerning refugees, Croegaert provides an engaging portrait of a lively and diverse group of women whose opinions on citizenship and belonging are needed now more than ever.
This book is a first attempt to analytically study and discuss the Bosnian community of Rochester. It is focused on the lives and experiences of a sample of 100 Bosnian families living in Rochester, most of whom have successfully adjusted to a new environment, while facing many religious, cultural, and linguistic challenges. According to the testimony of many Bosnian refugees residing in Rochester, New York, as refugees and newcomers to the city, they faced many challenges including: the language barrier, cultural differences, isolation, fear of being different and not accepted, fear of losing their ethnic and religious identity, prejudice, discrimination, and uncertainty of the future for their children. They also had to overcome inhumane treatment, deportation, grieving, trauma, revenge, forced labor, rape, destruction of cultural and religious monuments, illegal detention, starvation, loss of family members and more. The majority of the participants in this research are Bosnian refugees who fled Bosnia as teenagers or young adults. As such, they were old enough to have formed personal connections to their home culture, religion and language, yet young enough to master and adapt to the systems of an American life. This group must shoulder the burden of fostering solidarity, trust, cultural and religious appreciation among Bosnians in America while simultaneously having to prove their loyalty to their families and their home country. All of this while still facing personal challenges with their older parents, who live either in Bosnia or with them in Rochester. In addition, they face challenges with their own children, who have no memories of living in Bosnia and do not see their religion, language and culture through their parents' lens.
The tragedy of war does not end when the soldiers put down their guns. Among the after-effects, the dislocation and relocation of civilians often loom large. The aftermath of the Bosnian conflicts has left many refugees needing to establish new lives, often in radically different cultures. In Uprooted and Unwanted, Barbara Franz offers a cogent look at how these refugees have fared in two representative cities—Vienna and New York City. Between 1991 and 2001, some 30,000 Bosnian refugees settled in Austria, and 120,000 found their way to the United States. Franz focuses on the strategies, skills, and informal networks used by Bosnian refugees, particularly women, to adapt to official policies and administrative practices in their host societies. Her analysis concludes that historically inaccurate ideas on how to deal with displaced persons have led to policies in both Europe and North America that have adversely affected those whose lives have been devastated by war.
The Bosnian Diaspora: Integration in Transnational Communities provides an extensive exploration of a major post-conflict European Diaspora, presenting the latest trans-national comparative studies drawn from the US, Australia and countries across Europe, to explore post-crisis interactions among Bosnians and the impact of post-conflict related migration. Examining the common features of the Diaspora this volume addresses the influence of global anti-Muslim rhetoric on the Bosnian Diaspora's self-identification and refugees' relationships to their home country.
Two lives. Two worlds apart. One deeply compelling story set in both Bosnia and the United States, spanning decades and generations, about the brutality of war and the trauma of everyday life after war, about hope and the ties that bind us together. Zara and her mother, Nadja, have a strained relationship. Nadja just doesn't understand Zara's creative passion for, and self-expression through, photography. And Zara doesn't know how to reach beyond their differences and connect to a closed-off mother who refuses to speak about her past in Bosnia. But when a bomb explodes as they're shopping in their local farmers' market in Rhode Island, Zara is left with PTSD--and her mother is left in a coma. Without the opportunity to get to know her mother, Zara is left with questions--not just about her mother, but about faith, religion, history, and her own path forward. As Zara tries to sort through her confusion, she meets Joseph, whose grandmother is also in the hospital, and whose exploration of religion and philosophy offer comfort and insight into Zara's own line of thinking. Told in chapters that alternate between Zara's present-day Providence, RI, and Nadja's own childhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, We Are All That's Left shows the ways in which, no matter the time and place, struggle and tragedy can give way to connection, healing and love. Praise for We Are All That's Left: * "A multilayered view of tragedy and its repercussions." --Publishers Weekly, *STARRED REVIEW* * "This complex, compelling story takes readers on a deep dive below the surface, exposing both the fragility of life and the redemptive bonds of love." --Booklist, *STARRED REVIEW* "This important and timely novel is a painful, lovely exploration of mending a mother-daughter relationship." --Kirkus Reviews
For displaced persons, memory and identity is performed, (re)constructed and (re)negotiated daily. Forced displacement radically reshapes identity, with results ranging from successful hybridization to feelings of permanent misplacement. This compelling and intimate description of places of pain and (be)longing that were lost during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as of survivors’ places of resettlement in Australia, Europe and North America, serves as a powerful illustration of the complex interplay between place, memory and identity. It is even more the case when those places have been vandalized, divided up, brutalized and scarred. However, as the author shows, these places of humiliation and suffering are also places of desire, with displaced survivors emulating their former homes in the far corners of the globe where they have resettled.
I Am a Refugee is a moving, personal story of a harrowing childhood journey in 1992 from war-torn Bosnia to Western Europe and finally to the United States. The suddenness with which life went from normal and happy to a terrifying nightmare no one could have anticipated is both heartbreaking and sobering. Refugees have been so much in the news recently, and this book helps bring their plight home in a way that cold facts never could.
This book traces the reverberations of genocide, forced displacement, and a legacy of loss in Bosnia and abroad.
A gripping portrait of refugees who forged a new life in the Rust Belt, the deep roots they’ve formed in their community, and their role in shaping its culture and prosperity. "This is an American tale that everyone should read. . . . The storytelling is so intimate and the characters feel so deeply real that you will know them like neighbors."—Jake Halpern, author of Welcome to the New World War, persecution, natural disasters, and climate change continue to drive millions around the world from their homes. In this “tender, intimate, and important book—a carefully reported rebuttal to the xenophobic narratives that define so much of modern American politics” (Sarah Stillman, staff writer, The New Yorker), journalist Susan Hartman follows 3 refugees over 8 years and tells the story of how they built new lives in the old manufacturing town of Utica, New York. Sadia, a Somali Bantu teenager, rebels against her mother; Ali, an Iraqi interpreter, creates a home with an American woman but is haunted by war; and Mersiha, a Bosnian baker, gambles everything to open a café. Along the way, Hartman “illuminates the humanity of these outsiders while demonstrating the crucial role immigrants play in the economy—and the soul—of the nation" (Los Angeles Times). The 3 newcomers are part of an extraordinary migration over the past 4 decades; thousands fleeing war and persecution have transformed Utica, opening small businesses, fixing up abandoned houses, and adding a spark of vitality to forlorn city streets. Utica is not alone. Other Rust Belt cities—including Buffalo, Dayton, and Detroit—have also welcomed refugees, hoping to jump-start their economies and attract a younger population. City of Refugees is a complex and poignant story of a small city but also of America—a country whose promise of safe harbor and opportunity is knotty and incomplete, but undeniably alive.