Losing, Creating and Re-creating Home and Belonging

Ibričević, Aida

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-58347-6_5

Aida Ibričević ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8500-4382²

Part of the book series: IMISCOE Research Series ((IMIS))

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Abstract

So far, geography scholars have theorized the emotional dimension of citizenship as home and belonging, while relevant scholarly literature treats both concepts as complex and multi-dimensional. This chapter aims to contribute to this literature by exploring the returnees’ understanding of home and belonging. The life experience of my study participants makes this exploration particularly interesting, as its simplified version includes at least three phases: the initial loss of home in BiH, followed by an effort at homemaking in the host state, and ending with an attempt to re-create their home upon return. Along these three stages, the returnees experience various types of belonging, exclusion from belonging both at home and abroad, as well as in-betweenness and multiple belonging. Throughout the process of loss, building and re-building of home and the associated types of belonging, the returnees experience specific emotions, which create links to the overarching concept of emotional citizenship. Expressly, this chapter answers the research questions: What do ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ mean to the returnees? What do they associate these concepts with? Which specific emotions do they convey?

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So far, geography scholars have theorized the emotional dimension of citizenship to be as conceptualized as home and belonging, while relevant scholarly literature treats both concepts as complex and multi-dimensional. This chapter aims to contribute to this literature by exploring the returnees’ understanding of home and belonging. The life experience of my study participants makes this exploration particularly interesting, as its simplified version includes at least three phases: the initial loss of home in BiH, followed by an effort at homemaking in the host state, and ending with an attempt to re-create their home upon return. Along these three stages, the returnees experience various types of belonging, exclusion from belonging both at home and abroad, as well as in-betweenness and multiple belonging. Throughout the process of loss, building and re-building of home and the associated types of belonging, the returnees experience specific emotions, which create links to the overarching concept of emotional citizenship. Expressly, this chapter answers the research questions: What do ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ mean to the returnees? What do they associate these concepts with? Which specific emotions do they convey?

The first section of the chapter looks at the returnees’ conceptualization of home within family relations, various time periods, and particular places. The possibility of “feeling at home” on the entire territory of the BiH state is investigated in-depth. How study participants understand belonging is explored next. Because of its pronounced ethnic and religious plurality, Bosnia and Herzegovina presents a unique learning opportunity to develop a more nuanced and substantiated conceptual understanding of belonging. The returnees’ diversity of belonging due to life abroad adds further possibilities for enhanced interpretation of belonging. Relational, ethnic, religious, linguistic, landscape, and economic types of belonging are identified and analyzed. Particular attention is given to civic belonging and its importance for citizenship. Parallel to “feeling at home” on the entire territory of the BiH state, civic belonging is challenged from various directions. The following section examines how the process of boundary-making often excludes the returnees from belonging both at home and abroad, leaving them in a “neither here nor there” position. In contrast, the position of “both here and there” signifies an “in-betweenness,” where the returnees exhibit multiple belonging and the transnational space becomes an arena for political, economic, cultural and other types of action. The final section of the chapter presents a summary of empirical results.

5.1 Home as Family, Time, and Place

5.1.1 Family as Home

The “family as home” at times refers to the nuclear family only, i.e. spouse and children for married respondents. For example, Admir used to feel as if his parents and brother provided him with the feeling of “being at home”. However, ever since he got married, his wife and son give this meaning to his life.

Admir::: And after so many years I would relate my sense of home mostly to my family. I have a feeling that my family is my home wherever that may be.

Author::: Are you talking about your mom and dad?
Admir::: Well, firstly my wife and child. Now, they are my family. I feel that, even if I lived at the other end of the planet, I would be happy if my family were with me. Yes, that is most important to me. I like everything else. I am happy to be where I am, but so much has happened in my life…I have changed so many living environments…Although I have a strong bond to Sarajevo and BiH, still my strongest bond is to my family.

It is important to note that the spouse and children refer to the “family as home” for happily married participants. Adnan compares how his “family as home” has changed from the time he was growing up in his parents’ house, to his first marriage, which ended in divorce, to his currently harmonious family life with his wife and their children.

Adnan::: This is the most beautiful feeling in existence, when I come home. The feeling is of safety, peace, calm, and a stillness, marked by a constant desire to keep coming back, because there you are yourself. My first marriage was unsuccessful and I know the difference between wanting and not wanting to come home. Do you understand? Now, I want to come home. Wherever I go, I just want to come back home to our bed, to having coffee together, to our happiness.

Author::: Do you feel you could build a home with your current wife and children anywhere in the world?
Adnan::: Yes, yes! The emotions I just described are strictly related to the four walls encompassing the home. I could build that place with my family anywhere in the world. For example, I really don’t know why that is the case, but I whenever I go to Zenica and stay at my parents’ home for a couple of nights, I don’t feel at home. I don’t feel that their house is my home any longer, because my wife and children are not there. The rituals, our rituals are not there. My bed is not there and after two or 3 days I want to go back home, back to my home. The house I described is the place where I was born and where I grew up, but my family is not there and I no longer feel at home. The same thing happens to my wife when she visits her family in Istanbul. I guess this is only normal.

As was seen from the stories of Admir and Adnan, the “family as home” seems to depend on the marital status of the person, but it also exists with people who are neither married nor with children.

For single people, “family as home” refers to being close to their parents, as well as closeness to extended family members. For Nervan, his feeling of being at home is connected to the place where his parents live.

Nervan::: Yes, the only place I feel at home is the house here, but only because my parents are here. Recently, anytime I came home I felt less and less happy about it. I only keep coming back because my parents are here. I am happy to be going back to my parents, but not happy about coming back to this place.

Author::: So, your parents could be anywhere else in the world and you would feel happy and at home with them?
Nervan::: Yes, that is exactly what I mean. I am not connected to the place, but only to the people, my family.

In some cases, the extended family, including aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins is taken to embody the concept of “family as home”. Being surrounded by his extended family members gives Vedad a feeling of comfort and security, of “being at home.”

Vedad::: For me, a very important experience was growing up in a big family home. My childhood was filled with the warmth of all my family members including my aunts, uncles, and cousins. This is how I want my children to grow up–surrounded by the warmth of a supportive family. Recreating that experience would have been very, very difficult abroad. You simply cannot move your entire extended family to live with you in a foreign country. The childhood set up in such a strong family environment provides the best foundation for life. It is an anchor for anything else that happens later in life.

Author::: Would you say that the feeling of security and comfort you mentioned previously is provided to you by your extended family?
Vedad::: Yes, that is true. That way, a person feels surrounded by his own.

In Vedad’s case, the extended family provides the social context he associates with home, one in which he grew up and one which he wants for his children to grow up in. His and others’ conceptualization of “family as home” points to a distinction made within the wider literature on the migration-home nexus between home as a “product” and home as a “process.”

Its popular usage [of home] seems to involve its being used in lieu of house or dwelling, possibly because it is “warmer”. This creates one of the major problems with its usage, since it is also used to describe certain mental states. There is thus conflation between its use to refer to a product (the thing) and a process (a mental state or positive evaluation). These need to be distinguished clearly, and the current confusion is another major general problem. The mental states seem to involve an affective core, feelings of security, control, being at ease and relaxed, are related to ownership and to family, kinship, comfort, friendship, laughter, and other positive attributes; it involves personalization, owned objects, and taking possession (Rapoport, 1995, p. 29).

In the sense described above, “family as home” can be understood as a process or a mental state. The “mental state” could imply a happy marital life with a spouse and children, one’s parents or extended family recreating the childhood experience for the next generation. Particularly relevant for the returnees, who have moved from one place to the next is the role family life plays in the continuing process of home-making (Boccagni, 2017) and “emplacement of home” (Allen, 2008). Ultimately, as the stories of Admir and Adnan show and as the migration-home literature also confirms (Boccagni, 2017), the understanding of “family as home” leads to the “portability” (p. 12) of home itself. In Adnan’s words, “family as home” can be summarized as: “I could build that place [home] with my family anywhere in the world.”

Although the phenomenological approach to home (Antonsich, 2010) almost universally attributes security as its defining dimension, home here does not simply refer to the “domestic(ated) material space” (Antonsich, 2010, p. 646), often criticized by feminist scholars for re-enforcing patriarchal power relations. Home as a “gendered concept” was revealed when the returnees discussed feeling happy and free at home. For Marija, “being at home” is about joy and happiness in the daily routine of child rearing and family life. However, she emphasizes the repetitive aspects of her home life. As the wife and mother, she said that most of the household chores are her responsibility, so she also feels some of the burden of home life.

Author::: What does home feel like to you?
Marija::: I am at home. I take the children to daycare and school. Then I go to the office and I pick up the kids after work. I prepare lunch and rest a bit afterwards. After that, we do homework together. That is what home feels like to me. It is a routine. It’s a comfortable, safe routine, but still, it is a routine, repeating itself day after day. Well, it is peaceful (laughter). Peace, calmness, happiness, and joy with the children.

Gavrilo, a divorcee discusses feeling free as “being at home.” He associates this feeling to his house and the more general “outside”.

Author::: What does home feel like to you?
Gavrilo::: Joy, freedom, safety.

Author::: Where do you get the sense of freedom?
Gavrilo::: Anywhere. In my house and outside. If something happens to me on the road, I know that there won’t be any problems, because people here help each other out.

Joy, happiness and freedom are the feelings both Marija and Gavrilo associate with being at home, however, they have different attitudes towards them. As the home-maker, Marija places her emphasis on repetition and the routine aspects of home, while Gavrilo’s focus is on freedom, echoing the analysis presented in Henderson (2011) where she points to Simone de Beauvoir’s distinction between immanence vs. transcendence and Hannah Arendt’s labor vs. work. As de Beauvoir would predict, the home represents an anchor for the man who is left to pursue transcendent activities, while the woman is left to the immanent tasks of home keeping, including taking care of the children.

5.1.2 Temporal Understanding of Home—Home in Time

Nostalgia is associated with conceptualizing home in the past. For Amir, a Bosniak minority returnee to Prijedor, the familiar scents from his childhood make him feel at home.

Amir::: Hmmm….all the emotions come rushing through. This is where I went to elementary school and on the way to school there was a cookie factory, now owned by Kraš. The smell of cookies early in the morning on the way to school tells me that this is where I belong. Of course, cookies can be found anywhere around the world, but this smell brings me back to my childhood, brings me back home.

I asked Sanela how is it she feels more at home in Banja Luka than in Sarajevo when she was forcefully expelled from Banja Luka and when Banja Luka has transformed in the meantime. She answered by discussing her feelings of being at home in the Banja Luka of her childhood.

Sanela::: I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to go in, because I feel that my childhood is locked inside of me. I have no desire to enter that apartment anymore, because I don’t feel it to be mine anymore. That is not my home anymore. When I go inside there, the old furniture will not be there and it won’t look like my apartment. There will be nothing but walls and those walls do not make that place my home. I feel that way [at home] in the past. In the past.

Author::: What feelings do you have when you think of your home in the past?
Sanela::: I definitely feel nostalgic for it all. I had the most beautiful childhood, actually perfect. That is where I feel at home–in Banja Luka of my childhood. Right now, in the present, I have no home, so it almost doesn’t matter to me where is that I am located. Since Banja Luka, the way it was in 1987 is gone for good, I could be in Zimbabwe.

Due to Bosnia’s painful recent history, some returnees, such as Vlado, express a direct desire to consciously break with the past.

Vlado::: When I came back to my family’s village estate I threw out about 99% of the things that were lying around–the ancient plow or other belongings of my ancestors. I thought about restoring all these objects, some with historical value, but, instead, I piled them up and set them of fire. This is old energy and carries a certain spirit. I need to live my life. I need to live life and not build an ethnographic museum. These types of things are why wars are fought, because people value objects more than they value each other. All of that is just frustrating to me. All I could do is bow down to my ancestors’ heritage with gratitude, thanking them for all they have left behind, but also firmly deciding that I need to live my life independently.

As discussed by scholars from different disciplines, home has a strong temporal dimension. For example, for Howes and Hammett (2016), “home is also constructed in relation to temporality through the grounding of these emotional connections to the past, present and future in social and material, visual and audible everyday practices” (p. 22). The idealized past is often seen as a peaceful harbor, a place of nostalgic escape from present hardships, often in reference to childhood, to which there is no actual return (Lam & Yeoh, 2004). The “temporal home”, as discussed by Taylor (2009), refers to the refugee’s place in time as much as in space. Stories of either Amir’s “idealized past”, Vlado’s conscious desire to create a break with the past and Sanela’s “temporal home,” which seems independent from the spatial dimension of home, which “could be in Zimbabwe” seem to illustrate these theoretical points. In fact, all three stories point to a displacement in both time and space.

[M]igration involves not only a spatial dislocation, but also a temporal dislocation: the “past” becomes associated with a home that it is impossible to inhabit, and be inhabited by, in the present. The question then of being at home or leaving home is always a question of memory, of the discontinuity between past and present. (Ahmed, 1999, p. 343)

Perhaps the awareness of the dual time-space displacement, leads some returnees to fight the tendency of recreating home in the past and relying on memory to do so.

As a result, some returnees actively reject any notions of feeling at home in the past, whether it is to wax nostalgic for it or to denounce it. Instead, they favor feeling at home which is firmly anchored in the here and now. Adnan feels at home with his wife and children only in their current station in life, where they are together.

Adnan::: No, no, no, I do not like that at all. We never talk about the past. This might be even too much. I don’t like looking at old photographs, watching my old soccer matches, even scoring important goals. For example, I never even watched my wedding video. These kinds of things simply do not make me happy.

Emir is aware of problems with feeling at home in the past, by witnessing the behavior patterns of his friends. Instead, he finds his home in the present.

Emir::: Many of my friends remain locked in a cage made up of memories of the past. They are stuck in the past, in some days which were better or different from what we have today. I do not have this feeling. I escaped the prison of the past by going abroad and travelling. So, I lost this feeling. I have friends who have stayed exactly the way they were before the war or during the war. They are trapped in a closed system.

Author::: What does this mean? Are they stuck in the eighties, the good old days of the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, the glory days of 1984?
Emir::: Well, there is certainly that, but more importantly people are just stuck in the period of 1992–95. The war.

Conceptualizing home in the past comes with a set of problems both on a personal and a collective level. Adnan, who had a successful international career as a soccer player does not want to “live in the past” because he feels that this will take away from his present career and family life. Emir feels his friends keep reliving the war, thus making it impossible to create a more peaceful present and future.

5.1.3 Spatial Understanding of Home—Home as Place

Those returnees who view their physical house as their home are also prone to exclude other types of home. Vlado discusses the house he built on his family estate as making him “feel at home.” While discussing his physical house as home, he excludes other parts of Trebinje or BiH as making him feel at home.

Vlado::: I only feel at home on my estate. Wherever I go, I come back eagerly, because in my little heaven I feel that my heart is in its place and I feel at ease with myself. There is no distraction. I feel safe, centered, in my right place. There are no dilemmas because everything is familiar. Interestingly, I do not have this feeling in the house where I was born. I only have it at the village estate, in the house that I built myself. In front of this house there is a salvia bush dispersing its fragrance into the air, giving the place a smell, one I have known since I was a child.

Mahir spent most of his adult life moving from one country to the next, one rented apartment to the next. For him, even his own couch would start the feeling of being at home. Owning an apartment in BiH is what completed the feeling.

Mahir::: For a very long time, I used to say that I would feel at home when I buy my first couch–a couch, a TV set, and a glass bowl in which to throw the house keys. So, that was the feeling I was seeking–this glass bowl for the keys and my last name written on the front door of the apartment.

Arif connects feeling at home in his physical house to the experience of being once forced to leave that house.

Arif::: Well, this is very simple. If you have been expelled from your home for so many years and when you finally come back, you realize you are here again and that you have an enormous feeling of security. If we are talking about feeling at home, then this relates to my house, to the garden around my house.

Mostar, Anastasija’s native city, has transformed because of the war. Consequently, she does not feel at home anywhere else in the city or the country, except for her prewar family apartment.

Anastasija::: You see, the only remaining thing is this apartment, and that is why I invited you over here. What I mean to say is that this is the only place where I feel like I belong, from the entire country. It is only when I park my car down here (gesturing towards the parking lot in front of the building); when I pass through the corridor between the two buildings and I walk into my apartment that I feel at home. Only here.

The physical house is often viewed as the exclusive home, and in some cases, the returnees feel at home in other very specific and relatively small places. As substituting for the lack of security provided by the state of BiH. Emir, feels at home in his village home in the mountain of Romanija, outside of Sarajevo.

Emir::: Really, I have no desire of living in Sarajevo or any other city. I would not want to live in Zenica, Paris, or Helsinki.

Author::: You would not want to live in an urban environment?
Emir::: At this point in my life I would certainly not want that, particularly not in Sarajevo. If I had to choose between Helsinki, Ljubljana and Sarajevo, I would choose between the first two. I would not want to live in Sarajevo. Even as a citizen of this state, I do not have a state supporting me. There is no state here [in Bosnia and Herzegovina]. There is no such thing here.

When analyzing the data and surveying the relevant scholarly literature, the feeling of “being at home” has been found to be primarily characterized by security. Such as with conceptualizing home as only the physical house or another relatively small place, where one feels safe.

Similarly, if the city or town is expressed as the place where the returnees feel at home other cities or towns in BiH are excluded. Amir was expelled as a non-Serb from Prijedor together with his family. He found refuge in Turkey and returned to Prijedor with his Turkish wife and their two children. Although he is a minority returnee in the RS, he prefers this status to moving to another city where he would be part of the ethnic majority.

Author::: You can’t feel at home even in Sarajevo?
Amir::: No, not really. I mean, the people and the place all of that is nice. It’s nice for a visit, let’s say 2 or 3 days, but to feel at home…no, not really.

Author::: Do you feel at home in Prijedor?
Amir::: Yes, of course. This is how I feel here.

Author::: You would not consider moving to Sarajevo or somewhere else?
Amir::: I don’t know. I had a job offer in Sarajevo, but I politely thanked the people. I mean I was very thankful, but I simply don’t feel like I belong in Sarajevo. Of course, Sarajevo is the capital of my country, but it is also a big city and the reason I came back was to be here, close to nature.

Although Sanela, who was born and raised in Banja Luka now lives in Sarajevo, she still feels most at home in her native Banja Luka, a city from which she was expelled as a non-Serb in 1992.

Sanela::: Actually, I feel much more at home in Banja Luka than anywhere else. Although, even there…. Although, the feeling I have there is strange, very strange. I mean, I spent 10 days or close to 2 weeks in Banja Luka. I guess that this was the longest I had stayed in Banja Luka in recent times. Usually, I go there for 2 or 3 days. I was born and raised in Banja Luka. I lived there for 11 years. Let’s say I am walking down a street and I think to myself, my aunt used to live there. That is where my grandmother had her hair done. Over there is where I went to school. Now, when I go there and tell people about how things used to be in Banja Luka it could easily seem that I have gone mad. I mean, I have no proof that any of these things actually existed, that these people lived here and how it really used to be.

Author::: As if it never happened?
Sanela::: Yes! And I now look at this school and remember the playground where I used to play as a child, but it all seems as part of a dream. It is no longer there.

In addition to security, Boccagni (2017) adds familiarity to be the second “basic attribute” (p. 7) of home:

(2) Familiarity: both in an emotional sense, pointing to intimacy and comfort, and in a cognitive one, standing for orientation in space, stability, routine, continuity or even permanence–all implicit expectations that are not easy to reconcile with increasingly mobile life courses. The frequent connections between home and notions such as household, kinship, or neighborhood are telling of the centrality of this factor (p. 7)

For both Sanela and Amir, their native cities and towns (Banja Luka and Prijedor, respectively) are home to them, not necessarily because they feel safer in the place from which they were once forcefully expelled, but because these places are more familiar to them. Banja Luka and Prijedor are more familiar to them than is Sarajevo, although they are part of the ethnic majority in Sarajevo and, because of ethnic cleansing campaigns of the 1992–95 war, are now ethnic minorities in Republika Srpska. This point is further illustrated when examining the dividing lines drawn by internal displacement.

Not feeling at home in cities and towns of BiH, outside one’s own birthplace is also the result of internal displacement. Bakir is Badema’s father, who returned from Germany to Srebrenica together with his wife and five daughters. He is critical of fellow Bosniaks who prefer living in Bosniak-majority areas of the Federation of BiH (such as Vogošća or Tuzla) instead of returning to their native Srebrenica.

Bakir::: Well, when I look at all these returnees here, I see they are waiting around for some aid package or something. They say that Mladić^{Footnote 1} expelled them to Vogošća, Tuzla and that they need to stay there until the road over here is fixed. How come that in the past, we used to carry everything on our backs and on horseback. I know every rock of these mountain paths, but now, now they say how they need asphalt roads. Their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers were born here and now they say that Srebrenica or the villages around Srebrenica are not good enough for them. I mean Mladić committed horrible evil, evil that can never be fixed. But, these women^{Footnote 2}…they just continued with it.

Author::: What do you mean?
Bakir::: Because they left this place here [the Srebrenica area]. They can spend their retirement pension here too. Whether they buy their bread in Sarajevo or in Srebrenica, what difference does it make? They just continued with Mladić’s genocide. For example, the Prophet Muhammad, p.b.u.h., after spending 12 years in Medina came back to his home in Mecca. People should go back to their homes, whether they are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim. They [the women of Srebrenica] should come back to Srebrenica. Do you think that those from Vogošća or Baščaršija are happy that they now live in Bratunac or Srebrenica?!

Author::: Are you now referring to the Serbs?
Bakir::: Yes, I am talking about the Serbs. They can never love Srebrenica as much as they love Sarajevo.

Bakir is critical of Bosniak women who have not returned to Srebrenica to the point of accusing them of “continuing with Mladić’s genocide,” as their failure to return to Republika Srpska has solidified results of ethnic cleansing campaigns against non-Serbs. Interestingly, he uses the same standard to judge the Serbs, who have voluntarily (see Armakolas, 2007 for further clarification) left Sarajevo and moved to Republika Srpska so that they could be part of an ethnic majority. To a large extent, the findings of Armakolas (2007) echo what Bakir seems to say about the “displaced sense of place” (p. 89) of Sarajevan Serbs who now live in rural parts of Republika Srpska.

On the other hand, the constant invocation by Sarajevan Serbs of their former urban identity can be seen as an attempt to create a boundary between themselves and the local population. Among young people this is usually expressed through complaints about the backwardness of local people, their lack of style, or their funny preferences when it comes to entertainment. Socializing, going out and dating mostly with ‘their own’ people is one consequence of this. A hesitant acceptance or denial of locality, of local culture and people, maintains a dis-placed sense of place. (Armakolas, 2007, p. 89)

Although the case of Bosniak returnees to Republika Srpska and Bosnian Serb returnees to the Federation of BiH cannot be directly compared because of the radically different nature of their initial departure, what can be observed is an interplay of both security and familiarity, as the defining characteristics of home.

Regardless of whether the returnee is part of the ethnic majority, the native town provides a feeling of home. As a Croat from Jajce, Marija did not feel at home in the Croat-dominated parts of Mostar, which she perceives as overly nationalistic.

Author::: Do you feel at home throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Marija::: Well, I would not say so. I mean I feel at home here in my environment, but let’s say I go to Sarajevo. That is already a change in my environment.

Author::: Are there some aspects in these other places which make you feel uncomfortable?
Marija::: Well, I am not sure what I could point to, but I believe everything could be much more progressive and advanced. For example, I spent a long time in Mostar and the nationalism there is so strongly pronounced that I really didn’t feel comfortable. We here [in Jajce] grew up in a mixed setting and ethnic co-existence is normal for us. However, over there [in Mostar], living together seems impossible, and this makes me feel uncomfortable. I cannot identify with such nationalistic tensions and the atmosphere makes me feel like I simply do not belong.

Marija feels at home in her native town of Jajce, which is more ethnically mixed, while she distinctly did not feel at home as part of an ethnic majority, while she was a student in Mostar. A description of events leading up to the Croatian National Congress of 2000 provided by Grandits (2007) could serve as contextual background to Marija’s experiences:

With the help of the media under its control, the HDZ tried to discredit non-HDZ Croat candidates by revealing ‘true’ details of their pasts, such as their failure to observe the Catholic faith or to join the HVO during the war, their readiness to cooperate with non-Croat parties, or their own financial misdeeds. Epithets such as ‘communists’, ‘traitors’ and ‘Judases’ were systematically sprayed on opposition campaign posters (Grandits, 2007, p. 117).

Both Marija’s story and Grandits (2007) analysis of ethnic loyalty and political factionalism among BiH Croats go beyond the often simplifying and reductive thinking based on ethnic allegiances alone.

To complicate the “Bosnian mosaic” (Bougarel et al., 2007) besides the various dimensions of inter-ethnic conflict, the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina also had an episode of Bosniak intra-ethnic fighting. As Ramet explains:

Clashes between Serbs and non-Serbs in Bosnia actually began in August 1991, but it was not until the following April that the Serbian assault on Bosnia-Herzegovina began in earnest. By October, if not before, the Croatian army was engaging in collaborative behavior with Serbian forces…The war eventually became a four sided conflict, with Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, Bosnian forces loyal to the elected government of Alija Izetbegović and forces loyal to Fikret Abdić, self-declared head of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, variously fighting or in collaboration with each other (Ramet, 2002, p. 573).

Fikret Abdić’s declaration of “autonomy” of an area of North Western Bosnia centered in the town of Velika Kladuša resulted in bitter clashes between his supporters and the Fifth Corpus of the BiH Army, loyal to the elected government of Alija Izetbegović in Sarajevo. Elmir grew up in Velika Kladuša; lived and worked in Germany; returned to BiH and now divides his time between Sarajevo and Velika Kladuša. I asked him whether he feels more at home in Sarajevo or his birthplace.

Elmir::: Well, I more or less moved to Sarajevo with my family, some 5 years ago. So, in the past, when I used to say ‘I am going home’, I meant this to be Kladuša. Now, when I talk about home, I mean this to be Sarajevo. This is a little strange, but my family is now in Sarajevo, my children.

Author::: How do you feel when you go to Kladuša now?
Elmir::: Actually, I was referring more to my family when we talked about home. Kladuša, I mean I definitely feel the best in Kladuša. I mean my ancestors were buried there. So…

Although Elmir was initially hesitant to discuss Velika Kladuša as his “home” with full awareness of the painful history of the “Autonomy Movement,” he later retreated to “feeling best in Kladuša,” as the place of greatest familiarity, if for no other reason, the immutable fact of his ancestors being buried there.

The entire region of the former Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists, is referred to as home in almost the same number of occasions as the current state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. When I asked Hrvoje about why he considers all the former Yugoslavia to make him feel at home, he emphasized the similarities between people of various ethnicities living in the region.

Hrvoje::: Well, I think this is all about our genetic makeup. Yes, I guess there is nothing else but our genetics. Although we might think we are so different in the Balkans and even though some countries, like Slovenia and Croatia, might consider themselves to be outside of the Balkans, still, this geographic area is one whole–a natural bridge. All the former Yugoslavia is included and as much as we consider ourselves to differ from each other, in fact, we are all very similar.

Similarly, Gavrilo sees more similarities between people of diverse ethnicities in the region, contrasting them to people he encountered while living abroad.

Gavrilo::: It is about all the peoples inhabiting the Balkans. I will just give you one example. Go anywhere you like throughout the Balkans and try hitchhiking. Every third car will stop to pick you up. Go to Italy and try doing the same thing. You could stand there for an entire week and nobody would bother to stop (laughter).

While similarities between the various ethnicities of the former Yugoslavia certainly exist, those same similarities are also present in the current state of BiH, so turning to whether the state of BiH is felt as home by different ethnicities and the challenges this notion presents seems to be more relevant.

5.1.4 State Territory as Place: Is it Possible to “Feel at Home” on the Entire BiH State Territory?

The idea of “feeling at home” on the entire territory of a deeply divided state with an intensely traumatic recent history comes with several different challenges for all BiH citizens, including the returnees. In fact, only a very few of the returnees talked without reservation about feeling at home in all different parts Bosnia and Herzegovina, while most problematized the notion from different angles. Damir is a Bosniak from Sanski Most and one of a few returnees who say that they feel equally at home in different parts of BiH.

Damir::: This means that I do not have a feeling that somebody would give me dirty looks or would make insulting remarks, regardless of where I might be, regardless of any ethnic divisions: I could be in Pale or Mostar, I don’t experience any problems. I simply do not care about any of the ethnic barriers.

Author::: Do you feel “at home”, having coffee in Foča,^{Footnote 3} for example?
Damir::: Yes, I feel ‘rahat^{Footnote 4}’ (laughter).

Gavrilo, a Serb from Nevesinje, also feels at home in different parts of BiH, regardless of the various ethnic divisions. I asked him whether he feels “at home” in BiH and he answered positively and enthusiastically!

Gavrilo::: Yes! I feel that way all over the country, throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The general challenge of feeling “at home” in public spaces, and particularly a relatively large space, such as the territory of a state, poses the question of how can “a special relationship with place” (Boccagni, 2017, p. 89) be established? As Boccagni (2017) suggests: “The political, here, lies in the unequally distributed potential to attach a sense of security, familiarity and control to outer living environments such as streets, parks, shops, “hangout” and recreational facilities and so forth; and possibly, in the most radical sense, to claim a place as one’s own home” (p. 89). Damir and Gavrilo are the two rare cases of returnees who say they feel equally “at home” in different parts of BiH, while the more typical response is that in BiH it is close to impossible to attach security, familiarity and control to areas of the country which have been “cleansed” of one’s ethnic kin with constant reminders of recent history, such as open and public celebrations of convicted war criminals.^{Footnote 5}

The main reason it is difficult for citizens of different ethnicities to “feel at home” on the entire territory of BiH comes as a direct result of the war. Alma lives in Vrace, a Sarajevo neighborhood close to the inter-entity border with Republika Srpska. Although the area she describes is practically in her neighborhood, it has changed because of ethnic cleansing to where she, as a non-Serb, does not feel at home while walking around.

Alma::: I mean, I could not say that I feel at home in all parts of BiH. I definitely could not say that. I look at Bosnia and Herzegovina like scattered pieces of a colorful kaleidoscope. I love the individual pieces, but I cannot really think of it as one whole country. Well, since we are divided in two…I cross the hill to go to East Sarajevo, where I have my dear friends and I walk down a street called Serbian Heroes Street (Ulica srpskih heroja), or another one called St. Vitus Day^{Footnote 6} Street (Vidovdanska ulica).

Author::: How do you feel as you walk down these streets?
Alma::: Very strange, because after all aren’t we in Bosnia and Herzegovina? The names of these streets are more Serb-sounding than the names of streets in Belgrade.

Alma’s experience of “not feeling at home” while walking around public spaces in East Sarajevo^{Footnote 7} has a significant background in public policies of exclusion (Palmberger, 2012) practiced in various parts of BiH, at various intensities. Palmberger (2012) focuses on the renaming of public spaces such as city streets, parks, squares, airports and in entire towns in the Croat-dominated West Mostar, but finds similar tendencies throughout BiH. The goal of postwar “national screening” (Palmberger, 2012, p. 3) of street names is twofold:

First it eradicates the old name and thereby aims to “de-commemorate” the event/person/place that was previously remembered and in a second step, by renaming, it establishes a new commemorative space (Azaryahu, 1997). In the case of West Mostar, the de-commemoration concerns the socialist past while the new commemorative space is dedicated to Croat national history.

Palmberger’s analysis concerns specifically the Croat-dominated West Mostar, but her conclusions analogously extend to Serb-dominated or Bosniak-dominated areas of BiH. She concludes that the renaming of streets in West Mostar to make them more Croat-sounding is “a policy of exclusion that unequivocally signals the non-Croat population that this part of the city is no longer their home” (p. 24).

Feeling at home in all of BiH is also challenging as an indirect result of the war. Undoubtedly, the majority Bosniak areas of BiH have also changed with some of these changes happening directly after the war^{Footnote 8} and some happening because of globalization and increasing global migratory flows. Siniša, a Serb from Trebinje was made not to feel at home in Sarajevo, while he was visiting with his wife.

Author::

Do you feel that way [feel “at home”] in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Siniša::

Well, I can say that I do, more or less, although I don’t really feel at home in some places in the country. Aaam, I think I can understand that other people might have similar feelings in different environments. Perhaps if somebody is surrounded by Serb people in the center of Serbdom and even though we Serbs are a hospitable people and always welcoming, still I could understand that somebody who is not Serb could feel a bit strange. We congregate around our churches and have our customs. I felt a bit like that the other day in Sarajevo. I could even show you a photo I took.

We were sitting in a café and at one moment we noticed that everybody around us was Arab or Middle Eastern. All the women were wearing black burkas. Although I respect everybody this scene was completely foreign to me. I mean if we were in an Arab country, I would expect it, but not here [in Sarajevo]. I did not feel threatened or scared, but I just felt totally foreign. I felt like a foreigner, a foreigner.

Author::: You did not feel at home?
Siniša::: At that moment I did not. My wife and I took a selfie in that café so that we could remember the scene with covered women everywhere around us. It looked like we were in the Emirates. I don’t mean to denigrate anybody, it’s just that I felt so strange in that situation.

Siniša was describing his experience of visiting the Sarajevo City Center, the biggest shopping mall in BiH, financed by Saudi investors with an approximate cost of EURO 57 million.^{Footnote 9} This building in downtown Sarajevo is part of ongoing real estate investment projects throughout BiH, such as the controversial “Buroj Ozone” mountain resort, funded by investors from Saudia Arabia and other Gulf States.^{Footnote 10} In an interview^{Footnote 11} for a Sarajevo-based news portal, Professor Esad Duraković, a renowned scholar of Arabic studies at the University of Sarajevo, expressed concern, criticizing the BiH authorities’ encouragement of such investment projects as they could “hurt the delicate religious balance in Bosnia.” His greatest concern was regarding the possibility for additional fueling of Bosnian Serb ambitions for secession as “they will not want to live in ‘Muslimstan.’” (Depo.ba, 2016) In Boccagni’s (2017) theoretical construct of home as being determined by security, familiarity and control, the case of Arab real estate purchases in BiH are primarily endangering the elements of familiarity and control. The investment projects are bringing with them cultural, social and religious practices, which are almost equally unfamiliar to either Bosniaks, Croats or Serbs, while the local population, be they Serb, Croat, or Bosniak does not feel that they control the process. Ultimately, the “hurt delicate religious balance,” could lead to a security threat.

Closely connected to feeling at home in all of BiH are the contrasting perceptions returnees have of BiH as a state, ranging from an impassioned opinion characterizing the BiH state as a national home to a disengaged stance relativizing its importance. When I asked Arif about the continued statehood of BiH, he felt strongly and directly connected it to his own physical existence and the national survival of the Bosniak people.

Arif::: What would have happened if the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not survive as a state during the war? What would have happened to all the Bosnian and Herzegovinian people? Some would be buried in mass grave sites, while others would be scattered all around the world. Within a 100 years they would all assimilate and cease to exist as a people.

While some participants view the continued statehood of BiH to be a matter of their own physical existence, others are much more nonchalant. Lejla, also a Bosniak and a yoga teacher, is emotionally indifferent towards the state of BiH and does not view it as her home. Instead, she chooses India, as her “spiritual home”.

Lejla::: As far as considering the state as my home, I have no such feelings for Bosnia and Herzegovina. I need to be honest about this. Actually, I do have some similar feelings for India, which I consider to be my spiritual home.

Relating the concept of home to the homeland, nation, and national identity has been studied widely (see MacPherson, 2004; Barrington et al., 2003). For MacPherson (2004) home is the “cornerstone of national identity” (p. 92) and Barrington et al. (2003) underline the importance of territoriality, understood as home and homeland, for the development of national identity. Arif’s views might be theorized within an established and strong relationship between home, homeland and national identity. On the other hand, Lejla’s view could be placed within a general criticism of conflating the concepts of home, nation, homeland and finally the state, as the conflation leads to the production of the “neurotic citizen” (Isin, 2004) whose stable home is placed in service of the homeland and “homeland security.” To a large extent, the second view is consistent with criticism of conceptualizing the state as home and as “domopolitics” (Walters, 2004).

5.2 Disentangling Belonging

5.2.1 Relational Belonging and Neighborliness

Relational belonging often supersedes ethnic belonging among the returnees. Selim, a Bosniak returnee to Banja Luka finds a greater sense of belonging with his prewar neighbors, other Serb residents of Banja Luka, than with members of his own ethnicity from other parts of BiH.

Selim::: I felt wonderful when I came back. I could not believe how nicely everybody treated me. Of course, this was true for people who were born and raised in Banja Luka. The butchers who committed all the war crimes were not from this city. They came from outside. They were outsiders.

Author::: When you came back, could you recognize anybody from wartime?
Selim::: No! No! I could not recognize one Serb who did some evil to me. Not even one. Although, you need to realize the horrors that Banja Luka went through. But, if you look at the Serbs, the local Serbs had terrible problems from those Serbs who came here from Knin. They had terrible problems.

Author::: What kind of problems?
Selim::: All kinds of problems. They have completely different mentalities. For example, guests of all different nationalities come to my restaurant, but the Knin Serbs and the local Serbs simply cannot stand each other. There is so much animosity between them.

Author::: Do Knin Serbs live here?
Selim::: Sure. They are around here too. The Serbs who grew up with me and who went to school with me tell me about the problems they have had with them. They have no common ground. Their mentalities are completely different, while the mentalities of the Bosniak from Banja Luka and the Serbs from Banja Luka are much closer together. The same is true for me. I will always find ways to talk to a Serb from Banja Luka easier than to a Bosniak from Sarajevo.

Building and fostering relational belonging is essential to the returnees’ sense of wellbeing. Nusret, a Bosniak returnee to Prijedor, relies on his neighbors Serbs and Bosniaks in Prijedor for support and assistance, not looking to authorities in Sarajevo for protection.

Nusret::: We created a local community for ourselves here. That is what we did and believe me, my neighbor, who takes care of just two cows and feeds his family in that way is more important to me than the president of the country. Believe me that this is how it is.

Mahir compares his wellbeing in Sarajevo, where he found relational belonging among his friends, to his relative social isolation abroad.

Mahir::: Yesterday, I was going to a movie screening at the Sarajevo Film Festival with friends from America, Israel, France, Croatia, literally from all over….from Switzerland. There were seven or eight of us together and we were walking through the city together. While walking from the National Theater to the Hotel “Europe”, I said hello to 15 or 16 people. That could never, ever have happen to me in either Brussels or Budapest. I felt wonderful. I felt like I was a part of something.

There exist a number of scholarly works (see for example Sorabji, 2008; Helms, 2010; Henig, 2012) examining relational belonging or neighborliness (komšiluk) in BiH and giving it centrality in formulating explanations of social relations—past and present. In How Generations Remember: Conflicting Histories and Shared Memories in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina, Monika Palmberger presents a succinct understanding of relational belonging in BiH (Palmberger, 2016):

A central discourse about people’s coexistence (suživot) is the concept of komšiluk (neighbourliness). If people speak about komšiluk when narrating the past, they are usually referring to the good pre-war neighbourliness. Even if Sorabji (2008) rightly reminds us that the concept of komšiluk cannot be reduced to cross-ethno-national relations, in discourses about the past it is usually referred to in this meaning. Komšiluk is then a way to express what was and what no longer is, and to emphasise today’s corrupt relations between Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. Pre-war komšiluk is narrated as the art of being neighbourly regardless of national affiliation (although the Roma are usually excluded in this discourse), meaning neighbours who help each other out (for example, during illness) but who also celebrate festivities together and share daily practices, such as drinking coffee with one another (see Helms, 2010; Stefansson, 2010).

Although, as Palmberger (2016) explains, the concept of neighbourliness is much more associated with discourses of BiH’s pre-war past, the stories of Selim, Nusret and Mahir seem to suggest that some remnant of the good komšiluk is also a part of the BiH present.

5.2.2 Ethnic Belonging: Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and “Others”

Although ethnic belonging is declared among all three ethnic groups, it is more pronounced with the Serbs and Croats than with the Bosniak. Although Vlado rejected declaring himself as part of any ethnic group within the demographic information section of the interview, also asking me to categorize him as a “nomad” and an “extraterrestrial”, soon within the in-depth part our conversation, he openly discussed his relation with his ethnic group, the Serbs.

Vlado::: There were periods of time, some 5or 6 years, when I did not really go to Trebinje or to Serbia. This was during my twenties, from age 22, maybe even earlier to age 27 or so, I hardly went there at all. But even during that time, there was always a link. I always felt that this is where I belong, to those people.

Author::: To the Serbs?
Vlado::: Yes! I had this aspect more pronounced, I mean this is something sub-conscious. I mean, this is all about feeling in one’s own place, in the right place. For example, when I go to Sarajevo, regardless of how much I try and how hard I work on self-improvement, I cannot accept the way things are over there. I just don’t feel like I belong. I can understand people who were born in Trebinje and now live in Sweden. They also feel out of place, because their Trebinje, the Trebinje they knew [pre-war Trebinje], is no longer there.

Hrvoje, a Bosnian Croat, discusses his ethnic belonging as a dual citizen of Croatia and BiH.

Hrvoje::: You see, whenever I am abroad, I never declare myself as a Croat or a citizen of Croatia, regardless of the fact that I travel with my Croatian passport and that all my business dealings are related to the Croatian passport. However, my Croatian passport includes my address in Sarajevo and states Sarajevo as my city of birth. What this means is that I have not given up anything and I do not want to give up on anything, because this place [Bosnia and Herzegovina] is mine too. This is the place where I was born and where I live. Also, within our family we always thought of ourselves as Croat. It has always been like that with us.

Although a majority of the participants were in some way associated with Islam as a religion and some self-identify as Bosniak, not even one provided any sort of elaboration of his or her Bosniak ethnic belonging. Instead of the returnees’ discussion of Bosniak ethnic belonging, see for example Helms (2013) for a succinct explanation of differences between the terms Bosnian, Bosniak (also spelled as Bosniac) and Muslim.

5.2.3 Religious Belonging: Monotheistic Traditions with Fluidity and Change

Although the returnees acknowledge the difficulties of developing strong civic belonging in Bosnia and Herzegovina, many of them insist on its importance and contrast it to religious and ethnic belonging. Both Alija and Nervan are most closely associated with the Bosnian Muslims in terms of religious belonging and the Bosniak in ethnic terms, but they both express their preference for civic belonging.

Alija::: As I told you before, my main sense of belonging is civic and I do not identify with religion very much. I also do not identify with any of the ethnic peoples. This means that the only way that I can feel that I belong to this state is if it is truly a country for all its peoples.^{Footnote 12}

Nervan::: In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are always those who defend ethnic interests. I don’t want anybody to defend my ethnic interests. I want my civic interests to be defended. People who simply want to be citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are in a definite minority. Therefore, I told earlier how I want to leave this country. You cannot be a citizen here!

As was discussed previously, a number of returnees expressed their civic belonging, however, several points need to be emphasized. First, the returnees expressing Bosnian-Herzegovinian civic belonging are mostly in some way associated either with the Bosniak ethnicity or with Muslim religious belonging, which is consistent with claims made by Helms (2013). Second, civic belonging is always contrasted to ethnic and religious belonging.

Religious belonging in some cases takes precedence over ethnic belonging. From a religious perspective, Bakir rejects the ethnic categorization because he feels it severs him off from other Muslims. Religious belonging is most important to him, so he rejects the ethnic category of Bosniak.

Bakir::: BiH citizenship is important to me as a religious person. I am Muslim, a Bosnian Muslim. I am not Bosniak.

Salih favors religious belonging over ethnic categorization because he feels that this division would strengthen civic belonging in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this respect, emphasis would be placed on a shared civic BiH belonging, with three distinct religions.

Salih::: Why are there Serbs and Croats in this country? They did not used to exist here. This was a country inhabited by three religions: Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim.

In contrasting Bakir’s and Salih’s views another aspect of the ethnic-religious-civic triad is revealed. For Bakir, his religious belonging (Muslim) takes precedence over ethnic belonging (Bosniak), as ethnic belonging is not encouraged by the universality of Islam as a faith. For Salih, the most important type of belonging is civic (Bosnian and Herzegovian), followed by religious belonging (Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox) with disdain towards ethnic belonging (Bosniak, Croat and Serb) as ethnic allegiances weaken BiH as a state.

The differences between Muslim religious, Bosniak ethnic, and BiH civic belonging are most visible in relation to Turkey, as a host state. Both Amir and Nervan consider themselves to be BiH citizens first, thus rejecting ethnic categorization. Also, both Amir and Nervan declare Islam to be their religion. Amir, who considers himself a moderate Muslim felt a sense of religious belonging while he lived in Turkey.

Amir::: I feel as a foreigner anywhere outside BiH. This is a simple fact. However, while I was in Turkey, I did not feel different in terms of my religion. I would sometimes go to Friday prayers and this was acceptable behavior in Turkey. If I were in some Western country, I would probably be labeled an Islamic terrorist or something like that. In Turkey I did not feel any of that.

Nervan problematizes both the Bosniak ethnic belonging and the tendencies to Islamize it in Turkey.

Nervan::: OK, this was supposed to be an association of Bosnian students and it was later translated to Turkish as Bosniak students, Genc Bosnaklar Dernegi (GBD).^{Footnote 13} So, it was not translated as Bosnalilar, but instead as Bosnaklar. For example, why did they have Bayram celebrations? I mean, how could you have a Bayram celebration and expect Croats or Serbs to attend? Also, how could you put together the Bosniak who pray five times a day and those who don’t care at all about religion? Personally, I would come to a Bayram celebration and I would not drink, although normally I drink alcohol. I came to one such celebration organized by GBD and I was shocked to see that men were sitting separate from women! That was never the case in Bosnia. We never used to segregate males and females in that way. This was horrible, just horrible.

Due to the Ottoman historical legacy in the Balkans, the most nuanced perspectives on both being Muslim as a religious belonging and on being Bosniak as an ethnic belonging are probably offered by returnees from Turkey. In providing explanations on how the Ottoman historical legacy has been interpreted in Balkan national historiographies, Schad (2015) turns to the analysis presented by Fikret Adanır, who concludes that the post WWII historiographies of the Ottoman Balkans are dominated by the “national view on history” (Schad, 2015, p. 9), according to which the “Ottoman past is generally perceived as a dark chapter, as the “Turkish yoke”, responsible for the Balkans’ backwardness and underdevelopment” (p. 9). As a result, the popular perception of Turkishness in the Balkans becomes fueled by the “notion of the Turk and Islam as the threatening Other” (Jezernik, 2010 as cited in Schad, 2015, p. 9). Obviously, such stereotypical images of Turks, Turkishness, Islam and the Ottoman legacy have the most significant ramifications for the Bosniak in BiH, as the notions Bosniak, Bosnian and Muslim, within Serbian nationalist mythology is often simply conflated as “Turk,” (see Boose, 2002). Thus, I would argue that the returnees from Turkey who identify as either Bosniak, Bosnian or Muslim had a unique opportunity of rediscovery of both how the generalized national Balkan historiographies have formed their views of their own ethnic, civic or religious belonging, and how these stereotypical notions are contrasted to their lived experience of study, life and work in the present-day Turkish Republic.

Levels of religiosity among returnees of all three major religious denominations in BiH vary from practicing and devout to culturally observant to non-observant. For some returnees, the general level of religiosity is too low in BiH, while others believe that the secular system is under-threat because of an ever-increasing influence of religion. Both Mehmed and Sanela are Muslim, with varying degrees of religiosity. Mehmed feels like he does not belong to the overly secular establishment in BiH.

Mehmed::: Although you might be speaking to somebody who considers himself a Muslim, still that person might not be practicing certain aspects of the faith. For example, there are some special days, outside of Ramadan, which I also fast, but this person has never heard of them. So, this makes me feel like I do not belong. I mean, this person identifies as a Muslim, but has no idea what is it that I am talking about.

Author::: And in this respect you felt different as compared to the rest of Australian society?
Mehmed::: No, no, I am talking about Bosnia!

Author::: You also feel that way in BiH?
Mehmed::: Yes, in BiH. There are lots of people in BiH who do not practice the religion. For example, there are some people who observe the Friday prayers, but many of them do not. The same is true for fasting during Ramadan. I always need to ask my boss, who is not a practicing Muslim, for permission to attend Friday prayers. I mean, this is difficult for me. My brother, he lives in Qatar and there, Friday is not a working day.

Sanela, albeit nominally Muslim, does not consider religion to be a part of her life and disagrees with the role of religion, namely Islam, in BiH public life.

Sanela::: When I first came I remember being shocked by how religious people are here. I do not remember it being that way before the war. I left BiH when I was 11 years old, but still I was mature enough to remember…When I first came back this was a huge shock to me. I felt like I did not belong because everywhere I turn I would see religious practice: in politics, in the media and in each aspect of daily life. It makes me feel like I do not belong. This country is going in the wrong direction, where religion has become so public, too much of a public issue. Religion should be something private!

Author::: Have you noticed some of your neighbors, colleagues, or acquaintances judging the way you dress or some other aspect of your lifestyle?
Sanela:: Yes, yes, yes! All of the time. Many of my friends really surprised me by hiding from their husbands that they drink alcohol. They got married to a man and lied about their drinking habits?!? They just don’t want their husbands to know. Also, nobody drinks during Ramadan, but they get completely wasted for Bayram. Why would these people be judging me?!?

To situate the debate on secularism in BiH, it is important to note that religious belonging is set against a historical legacy of communism, officially discouraging religious practice. Gavrilo, an Orthodox Christian, who considers his faith to be the most important part of his life, is resentful of the communist legacy.

Gavrilo::: Nothing makes me happier than seeing a person practicing his or her religion, regardless which religion. This person upholds moral norms and understands the difference between good and evil. This person will not harm me, because no religion propagates evil-doing. The greatest evil was in this atheism, communism! That was the greatest of all evils. The people one needs to fear the most are those who do not believe in anything.

Hrvoje a Catholic Christian presents a different view of the communist legacy in relation to religious belonging. He believes that Yugoslav communism allowed ample space for religious practice, while the current emphasis on religious freedom in actuality promotes the politicization of religious belonging.

Hrvoje::: I always proudly say that, ethnically, we are Croats and that our religion is Catholicism and all the rest of it. I mean, my father was a member of the Communist Party and I was also a member of the Communist Party, but my mother used to go to church every Sunday. There was no problem with that. In the past, only true believers used to go to church or the mosque, but nowadays, they go to win political favors. All of this modern church and mosque going is just hypocrisy. I don’t go and I will not go, because I cannot stand the surrounding hypocrites. I cannot stand their hypocrisy.

Finally, to conclude the discussion on differing levels of religiosity among the returnees, it can be observed that because of either influences at home or abroad, religious belonging among the returnees is fluid and changing, between different religions and within one religion. After spending a considerable number of years in a religiously monolithic environment in Serbia and Montenegro, Anastasija, an Orthodox Christian, discovered that her sense of religious belonging lies in the mixing of religious traditions, as in her native Mostar.

Anastasija::: I remember it was summer, hot, windows were wide open and after a day spent with my friends, family, neighbors, I was lying on my bed summing up all the events of the day. All of sudden, the sound of the ezan, the hoca calling to prayer! That was the sound of belonging for me, the sound of my city. My building is right next to the mosque and for me this was the sound of familiarity. The hocas were not screaming at 100 dB as they do now. When I heard that ezan, I thought to myself–this is where I was born and raised. I lived here.

When Amir left BiH for Turkey, he was a practicing Muslim, however, his attitude towards the role of Islam in his life changed considerably after returning from Turkey.

Amir::: Before the war, yes, I was schooled in religion. I attended the ‘mekteb’ and music school right after. I was raised in a practicing Muslim family.

Author::: So what happened after your time in Turkey?
Amir::: Well, I can’t say that this was just the effect of living in Izmir for such a long time, but simply life made a couple of turns and I started changing my perspective. My perspective has changed, but I cannot say that I ever felt as a foreigner in Turkey in respect to my religion.

Amir’s experience of a decreased level of religiosity after living in Turkey could seem counter-intuitive, however it does not come as a surprise to a reader informed on how the Ottoman legacy has been portrayed within national Balkan historiographies and the stark difference of actual life in the Turkish Republic.

5.2.4 Linguistic Belonging: Do We Speak a Common Language?

Linguistic belonging is essential to the returnees and has been one of the main features of their life abroad. Alija discusses the importance of using the Bosnian language at home with his family members, while living in Holland.

Alija::: Yes! We expressed our ethnic belonging even while we lived in Holland. At home we always used our language. Our parents insisted on this point, mainly because they did not want us to forget and they wanted us to keep our sense of belonging. My sister and I continued to speak our language to each other.

Adnan, whose wife is Turkish, values the importance of keeping both Turkish and Bosnian alive in their home. His wife also speaks Bosnian, and they used to speak Bosnian at home while they lived in Istanbul. Now that he has returned with his family to BiH, they speak Turkish at home so that the children could retain their bilingualism.

Adnan::: Aaah, I don’t have such prejudices about language use at home. At home we mainly use Turkish. I speak to my wife in Turkish because I don’t want to forget the language and also for the children to keep it up, too. By living here [in Bosnia], the children use Bosnian all the time. I consider it an advantage that they are bilingual. Now, I usually speak to the children in Bosnian. I speak to my wife in Turkish. They speak Turkish between each other and they speak Bosnian and English with their friends.

Linguistic belonging is among the most important sub-categories under the general umbrella of cultural belonging (Buonfino & Thomson, 2007), as it can instill a communal sense between people, who “not only merely understand what you say but also what you mean” (Ignatieff, 1994, p. 7, emphasis added). This is true for the returnees, such as Alija and Adnan, particularly while they were living in the host state. During the time they lived in the host state, the common language, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian^{Footnote 14} was an important anchor of belonging, which felt as an “element of intimacy” (hooks, 2009, p. 24 as cited in Antonsich, 2010, p. 648). However, as Antonsich (2010) asserts, aside from providing a safe feeling inherent in place-belongingness, language can and is often used in the politics of belonging to separate “us” from “them”. This certainly is how language is used in BiH.

Although linguistic belonging is essential to the returnees, even naming the language(s) of BiH is problematic. Emir, whose mother is Serb and whose wife is Finnish, discusses their use of language at home. He is ambivalent about naming the “mother tongue”.

Emir::: I simply always speak to the children in our language, the Bosnian language, or whatever this language is called.

Author::: How do you call it?
Emir::: Our language. The mother tongue. Bosnian. I mean I don’t have a problem calling it Bosnian although that is the greatest problem. This too is a political issue, which brings us back to the circus of our political system.

Naming the common language either Bosnian, Serbian or Croatian and how the language is used in all official correspondence is a highly politicized issue with an assortment of consequences from the somewhat comical, but costly “translations” of identical texts (see Pisker, 2018) to the more severe examples, such as practices of direct segregation in education. The most extreme example of using language as the politics of belonging to separate “us” from “them” (Antonsich, 2010) in BiH comes as “two schools under one roof.” This phenomenon refers to schools in several ethnically mixed Bosniak-Croat towns and cities in FBiH where students of both ethnicities attend the same school, but are ethnically segregated in classes using different languages (Bosnian and Croatian) and different educational curricula. The phenomenon has been characterized as the “most visible example of discrimination in education” by a recently published OSCE report, used to “justify practices that enforce the segregation of students based on ethno-national affiliation” (BiH Report of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur as cited in OSCE, 2018, p. 5). Similar types of linguistic-based discrimination are also practiced in Republika Srpska. Amir, a non-Serb minority returnee to Prijedor, discusses the political significance of labeling the Bosnian language in schools of Republika Srpska.

Amir::: My daughter completed the second grade of elementary school last year.

Author::: And all the teaching was conducted in Bosnian?
Amir::: Of course, of course, but her report card does not say Bosnian. It says ‘language of the Bosniak people.’ That is how it is in Republika Srpska. That is what the law says, the law Mr. Mile^{Footnote 15} got passed here.

Amir does not identify as Bosniak (rejecting ethnic belonging), although he is Muslim (accepting religious belonging). His preferred self-identification is the civic belonging of Bosnian-Herzegovinian and he insists on calling his native language Bosnian, however, the RS authorities do not recognize the Bosnian language in official education. Instead, the term “language of the Bosniak people” is used in transcripts. The explanation given by Serb authorities in the RS for the disputed name of the language is the “perfidious attempt by ethnic Bosniaks to impose their language as the dominant one in Bosnia” (Pisker, 2018).

5.2.5 Landscape Belonging—An Emotional Attachment to the Natural Environment

Regardless of ethnic background, the returnees discussed their emotional attachment to the natural environment of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Siniša discussed his love for the general geographical terrain of the Balkan region.

Siniša::: When I look around myself, I can just say how much I love these mountains, these rivers, forests, and the entire environment. I feel a great sense of belonging to this geography.

Bakir is more specific in his elaboration of toponyms in his native Srebrenica and the surrounding hills.

Bakir::: Srebrenica has many first and last names. Each tiny spot around Srebrenica has its own name. If you wish, I could list some of them. For example, there is Black trash, Eye water, White water, Živko’s hill, Gamber’s place, Lamiz’s hill….Gamber and Lamiz, these are Bogomil names. There is Golden water, Jovo’s hill…There is also Slaughter stream, yes that is its exact name! It is also sometimes called Slaughtered stream. There is a legend of how a man was slaughtered at the top of the stream, which is how it was named. Even the land registry lists it under this name—Slaughtered stream.

For Amir, the natural environment is part of his family history, filled with memories of times spent together with family members.

Amir::: Everything here reminds me of my history: the fruit trees I planted with my father before the war. There is a cherry tree over there and an apple tree in the other corner. Our house was destroyed during the war, but at least the trees remained. My father and I cut these trees together, we pruned them and took care of them. Now, look at them now—they are all grown up.

Landscape belonging is often expressed as a preference of country living compared to city life and as attachment to land. Badema explains her belonging to the natural environment of Srebrenica through her love for the landscape.

Badema::: This is because I was raised here. It is simply not the same thing to grow up on city asphalt and in nature. The city streets have no feelings, while a tree, a tree is alive. The tree is a living, breathing body. I feel I belong here, in this natural environment.

Author::: You said that this tree is a living, breathing body. What does this mean to you?
Badema::: Since I love art, I get inspired from nature. I believe that every living thing is worthy. I learned how to be empathetic from nature. I respect this flower. I stand in fascination of that tree over there. I thank God for its existence.

For Gavrilo, the thought of somebody else tilling his land in Nevesinje was unbearable to the extent of motivating his return to BiH.

Gavrilo::: I don’t know. I will tell you of a dream I had, better say a nightmare. I woke up in anguish, covered in sweat as I dreamt that somebody else was tilling my land. That was an incredible feeling. I woke up in terror. I stood out of bed and went for a walk outside, just to calm myself down. It was horrendous how I felt. This happened while I was still in Italy. Memories of working the land together with my grandfather flooded my psyche followed by the smell of earth in springtime. That is when I decided: ‘I can’t go on like this. I am going back.’

I found striking parallels between the stories of Gavrilo, Badema, Siniša, Bakir and Amir, who discussed their sense of belonging to the landscape of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the narratives of home of exiled Cypriots in the work of Taylor (2009). Throughout data analysis regarding home and belonging care was taken to treat these two concepts separately, to maximize explanatory power and increase analytical rigor. Here, Taylor (2009) discusses the natural environment of Cyprus as “home,” while Gavrilo’s, Badema’s, Siniša’s, Bakir’s and Amir’s reflections are conceptualized as “landscape belonging.” To sort out any possible confusion between the two perspectives and create a basis for comparison, emotional attachment to the natural environment is stressed as the common denominator in both cases. As Taylor (2009) notes,

In the Cypriot context, home is not just seen as the house but also the fields, orchards, farmland, and cemetery where ancestors are buried (Zetter, 1998: 309). Originating largely in rural communities, Cypriots have a relationship to the material home, which goes beyond the economic value of crops and rather determines the colour, taste and smell of home. The close relationship with the land brought about by working on it, being surrounded by it and being sustained by its produce means that material aspects of home feature strongly in Cypriot refugee narratives (p. 16).

Taylor (2009) is also clear in distinguishing between finding home and safety in materiality beyond the physical house, which I refer to here as landscape belonging and its misuse expressed in ethno-nationalist discourses equating “soil” and “nation.”

5.2.6 Economic Belonging—Having a Stake in the Domestic Economy

Preferring domestically produced goods over imports is a channel for the returnees to show economic belonging. Senad from Sarajevo actively participates in the “Buy Domestic” campaigns making a point of transcending ethnic boundaries by favoring a product from Banja Luka over a foreign-produced good.

Senad::: I am an economic patriot, which means I buy domestic. Whenever I can, I buy goods and services produced domestically. I believe this to be important for the development of our economy. Even much more advanced countries also cherish the “buy domestic” campaigns, even regardless of the European Union. I will always prefer buying jam made in Banja Luka over a similar product made in Turkey or Macedonia. Through the tax system, VAT and other taxation, the income from the domestically produced product stays within our borders and leads to the betterment of our economy.

Author::: What is the dominant emotion you feel when deciding to buy a more expensive domestic product?
Senad::: Well, this is not an emotion, really. This is my economic decision. This is my contribution to local patriotism. If we want to get something long term, we need to make an investment. This is an economic decision.

Author::: How do you justify it being an economic decision?
Senad::: If you want to make long-term gains, which would be visible through higher standards of production and stronger local production, you need to make an investment. Perhaps we will pay a slightly higher price for similar quality, but we will invest in those long-term gains. Also, it is a question of belonging.

Draško from Derventa discusses the same subject from a slightly different angle. He also believes that buying domestically produced goods stimulates the economy, but, interestingly, he first turns to a good produced in Banja Luka and secondly gives an example from Sarajevo.

Draško::: In Switzerland, they always emphasize buying Swiss products. This is very important to them and everybody takes part. We should buy our own products, anytime that this is possible. Why should we be drinking Heineken, when we could drink Nektar, or another locally produced beer?

Author::: Where is Nektar from?
Draško::: They are from Banja Luka. We could also drink Sarajevo Beer or another domestic brand. The same is true for wines, the meat industry and any other.

Economic belonging is also expressed in the returnees’ willingness and conscientiousness as taxpayers. When I asked Mahir about how he feels when paying his taxes, he was enthusiastic and discussed tax payments in terms of civic duty.

Mahir::: I feel fine about it. I feel fine paying taxes. Any time I have coffee in a café, I ask for the receipt, just to make sure that taxes are paid. I am one of those people who would rather have the waiter spit in their drink than allow him to sell the drink paying no taxes on it. So, I always ask for the receipt. Any time I spend, let’s say 80 KM on a night out, I think to myself ‘this is great, at least some 10–12 KM went to the state budget.

After leaving a successful career in Switzerland, Husein started manufacturing shirts in Maglaj. His business plan was set by conditions particular to his native town. His economic decisions were based on and constrained by what he could do in Maglaj. The decision to start his own business was determined by what was feasible in this place.

Husein::: At that time, I was in a dilemma of what I could do? What could be the first step I could take to help the local population, my friends, my local community and to find my happiness in doing so? My conclusion was that, unfortunately, the least profitable, cheapest branch of the textile industry, in prior existence in the area of Doboj, Maglaj, Tešanj and Žepče, would still be the best field for me to start my business.

Whether it is making consumer choices based on factors other than the price/quality ratio, starting a business adapted to the needs of the local economy, or tax payments that reflect one’s sense of civic duty, economic embeddedness is recognized within the literature as important in order “to make a person feel that s/he has a stake in the future of the place where s/he lives” (Jayaweera and Choudhury 2008, 107; Sporton and Valentine 2007, 12–13 as cited in Antonsich, 2010, p. 648, emphasis added).

5.2.7 Civic Belonging: Can Citizenship Be the Main Expression of an Individual’s Identity in BiH?

Although returnees often discuss their civic belonging and talk about themselves primarily as citizens of BiH, their civic belonging is defined mostly in relation to their own ethnic belonging. Anastasija discusses being a Bosnian and Herzegovinian, but also points out that ethnically she is a Serb.

Anastasija::: The young man who came to us from the Census Bureau was shocked when we declared ourselves as Bosnian and Herzegovinian, because he knew we were Serbs. Let’s say 10 years ago, I actually believed that this change towards a civic option could actually happen, but now…For example, when the BiH soccer team plays against any other country and particularly when they play against Serbia, nobody here believes me I cheer for BiH. Nobody would believe me, that I, as a Serb, support the team of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Similarly, Gavrilo expresses his civic belonging to BiH, but quickly moves to his ethnic belonging of being a Serb.

Gavrilo::: I mean, I am not ashamed to say that I am Bosnian or that I am Herzegovinian or that I am a Serb from Herzegovina. This is what I think and I don’t want to escape this identity.

Author::: When you say that you are a ‘Serb from Herzegovina’, what does this mean to you?
Gavrilo::: Are you referring to my sense of belonging? What I associate with that is this geographic area, these rocks, and stones, nothing else.

In the demographic part of the interview, Marija, a dual citizen of BiH and Croatia, self-identified as a Bosnian Croat. She championed her civic, BiH, belonging in the in-depth part of our conversation.

Marija::: As for the question of ethnic belonging, unlike many others, I consider myself first and foremost a citizen of BiH. I am Bosnian, because I was born here.

As the perspectives of Anastasija, Gavrilo and Marija show, civic belonging also exists among returnees, who ethnically align themselves with either the Serbs or Croats, however, civic belonging is almost always expressed in relation to their ethnic belonging. Keeping in mind the description of Bosnian-Herzegovinian provided in Helms (2013), Anastasija’s, Gavrilo’s and Marija’s BiH civic belonging falls either into the category of “geographic area,” “affiliation to a multiethnic polity, support for the existence of the state, non- or anti-nationalist orientation” (p. 35).

Civic belonging is also defined in relation to the ethnic belonging of others. Sanela declares herself as a Bosnian and Herzegovinian, and is frustrated with the nationalism of others, whether Bosniak, Croat, or Serb.

Sanela::: Well, it is very important that one belongs, that you are who you are. I mean, you cannot escape that and you should not escape it. Also, it is important to not take this belonging for granted; I mean it’s important to keep building a better country, so that you have more reasons to be proud. I reject just saying things like ‘I am Bosnian, and that is how things are.’ I want this place to be better! So, I can say that I am frustrated somewhat with this belonging, because I sometimes feel that I don’t belong to Bosnia. It is not the country I once used to know.

Author::: When do you feel this frustration the most?
Sanela::: I feel it most with some nationalistic stupidities.

Author::: Could you give some specific examples?
Sanela::: For example, two schools under one roof. I mean, I work with students, with distributing scholarships. Through our scholarship programs we try to instill the feeling that they are all Bosnian and Herzegovinian first and then they can also have types of belonging. But, but, the hatred…it’s impossible!

Author::: Inter-ethnic hatred?
Sanela:: Yes, inter-ethnic! I simply cannot accept that. This is foreign to me and this is not the way I was raised. Regardless of what has happened to my family, my parents never, ever allowed me to speak ill of Serbs or Croats.

As was already discussed, civic belonging is noticeably more pronounced with returnees, who might reject Bosniak ethnic categorization, but have some, even just cultural identification with Islam. Sanela’s perspective on civic belonging includes a frustration with nationalism and a strong pro-BiH state attitude.

The returnees who self-identify primarily as Bosnian and Herzegovinian, thus rejecting ethnic categories discussed the importance of building and developing civic belonging, however, many others questioned its sustainability. Siniša is doubtful about the development of a strong sense of civic belonging in BiH.

Siniša::: I mean ordinary people, such as myself, my friends, business associates, and others, we simply don’t make these kinds of distinctions. We don’t make these [ethnic] distinctions between people, but when you watch the news or read the newspapers, although I try to stay away from all of that as much as possible, still you can notice that there really is no realistic togetherness in this country. I guess all ethnic groups in BiH have strong roots within their own traditions.

Alma, who works with children, tries to instill a sense of civic belonging in her kindergarten’s educational activities discussed the challenges of singing the national anthem with the children, as it, due to political disagreements, does not have any lyrics. Instead, Alma teaches a commercial song, popular in the former Yugoslavia, called “My Country.^{Footnote 16}”

Alma::: In the kindergarten, we work so hard with the children on this point. That is why I told you that we sang “My country” with them. We also went to the National Museum to see the tombstones (stećak). Recently, there was an exhibit by Nasiha Kapidžić-Hadžić and the girls were fascinated by her poetry. We had a gentleman from the National Archives visit us to explain to the children how newspapers were made 100 years ago. We also teach the children about our folklore, folkloric traditions of all ethnicities.

In her efforts as a kindergarten educator, Alma is trying to facilitate what Kolstø (2006) calls “learning national identity.” As he explains:

Like any other identity, national identity has to be learnt. Important instruments in any learning process are various kinds of audiovisual aids, and so also in the school of national identity construction. That is why national symbols flags, coats of arms, national anthems play such a crucial role in nation building and nation-maintenance. (p. 676)

According to Kolstø (2006) learning national identity is systematically conducted in states around the world, however, two examples stand apart as “particularly explicit strategies for patriotism-training by means of national symbols” (p. 676). The first such example comes from a statement published by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party in 1996 entitled ‘Teach the General Public and Especially the Young to Love the National Flag. A second example he gives is the National Anthem’ Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, conducted in schools throughout the U.S. every morning during the entire school year. Viewed from this perspective, how can Alma’s efforts at “teaching national identity” succeed when all she has at her disposal as “audiovisual aids” (Kolstø, 2006, p. 676) are a national anthem with no lyrics, a flag with no endogenous significance, or a commercial song originally written for a country that no longer exists?

5.3 Outsiders Here and Outsiders There: Boundary Making and the Politics of Belonging

With the returnees, the process of boundary-making, focused on creating lines of separation between an “us” and a “them” (Crowley, 1999; Yuval-Davis, 2006), runs parallel in both the host and home states. To construct clear dividing lines between place-belongingness and the politics of belonging expressed through processes of boundary-making is to view the former as stemming from the individual internally, while the latter as placed upon the individual externally. Mas Giralt (2015) effectively summarizes the difference, where place-belongingness relates to “personal emotions of feeling in place” (p. 4) and the politics of belonging provide answers to whether society, formally or informally, perceives the person as “being in place” (p. 4). The common requirements of belonging formulated by the politics of belonging are different at home from those abroad, but these requirements exist in both spaces and my study participants are often left outside of the “us” category both at home and abroad. As data analysis reveals, the returnees are often left feeling as “outsiders here and outsiders there” along differently set boundaries, but nevertheless outside.

5.3.1 Boundary Making at Home

The dominant boundary the returnees feel in BiH is the boundary of ethnicity, however, also noticeable are intra-ethnic boundaries, either based on a legacy of intra-ethnic conflict or on regional differences. When discussing ethnic boundaries, participants in my study, like many other citizens of BiH often kept referring back to ethnic relations within Yugoslavia. For Elvis, ethnic boundaries in Yugoslav Prijedor were simply non-existent, while they are heavily present within the current situation.

Elvis::: Yes, yes. I discovered this in Prijedor. I’ll repeat it here, Prijedor is the city of my birth, where I was raised and where people, my fellow citizens, used to know me and my family. What happens to me now when walking down a street, out of the thousand people I encounter, perhaps I’ll recognize four or five familiar faces. It seems as the rest of the population landed here from space. You just feel like an outsider. You go to the police station, the municipality, social security office, the bank, or any other institution and you don’t know anybody working there. Prijedor is a small town, and in the past, everybody knew each other. Now, this is not the case. How can somebody from Bosansko Grahovo, who came to live here after the war, understand our way of life, what we had before the war? He can’t! The only thing this person sees is your ethnicity and nothing else. Your first and last name.

Other participants, like Hrvoje, although nostalgic for much less obvious ethnic boundaries in the former Yugoslavia, acknowledge their implicit existence.

Hrvoje::: Although, even in our previous system, the education facilities knew about this issue. It was not public, but still some distinctions were made. If you go back in time and look at, for example, how elementary school functions were allotted, you will see who was the class president…who was the minute taker and who was the class hygienist. You will notice a pattern across classes and see that there are three different groups. The students did not know about this, but the school administrators took this into account and you could see that the Croats, Muslims, Roma or some other groups had to be represented. Again, I would like to emphasize that this was not done publicly, as it is in our current system. That is a major difference.

Elvis, a Bosniak citizen of prewar Prijedor, feels othered and excluded from belonging to the Serb-dominated postwar Prijedor, while a Serb from the rural area of Bosansko Grahovo is included. Elvis is nostalgic for the Yugoslav times of “brotherhood and unity” when ethnic boundaries did not seem to exist, while Hrvoje is more skeptical of the Yugoslav past. Elmir was born and raised in Velika Kladuša, the center of Fikret Abdić’s “Autonomy Movement” and the site of major intra-Bosniak conflict between the forces loyal to Abdić and those allied with Alija Izetbegović, headquartered in Sarajevo during the 1992–95 war. Elmir now lives with his wife and children in Sarajevo, while the rest of his family remained in Velika Kladuša. I asked him about his sense of belonging to either Sarajevo or Velika Kladuša.

Author::: You said that you have many friends in Velika Kladuša.
Elmir::: Yes!

Author::: Are their opinions divided regarding autonomy?
Elmir::: Well, what can we say about that? Twenty years have passed and these topics have faded for most people. I mean, there are people who have much to gain by keeping them alive, but most ordinary people have forgotten about all those unfortunate events. No, no, this is not a problem anymore. It used to be, up until some 5 or 6 years ago. Not anymore. This is in the past. I mean if somebody lost a close family member or friend during the conflict, of course they feel rage and resentment towards the current political setup. But, this is true for all groups throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region. We have no alternative but to live together. The economy connects all of us.

Regional differences also produce intra-ethnic boundaries. Marija, a Croat from Jajce in the Bosnian part of BiH, did not feel the existence of intra-ethnic boundaries while she lived in Germany, but felt them in Mostar among other Croats in BiH.

Marija::: While we were in Germany we were all refugees. The children attending my elementary school were mostly foreigners. So, I did not feel as a second-rate citizen in Germany. But, I went to university in Mostar, on the Croat side of the city. I always considered myself Bosnian and there I felt a bit like a second-rate citizen, because they were all Herzegovinian. Ethnicity was very important there, much more important than abroad. Actually, I never felt it abroad.

Author::: Never abroad?
Marija::: Well, exactly. While we were abroad, we were all simply foreigners: Afghanis, Bosnians, Croats. You could feel more as a foreigner in Mostar, because there it is important to be Herzegovinian to be a Croat. I came from Bosnia, and that is how they referred to me down there [in Mostar]. They called me ‘Bosnian’ and this distinction was very pronounced. The distinction between Herzegovinian and Bosnians was clear. They are really very primitive down there [in Mostar].

Ethnic boundaries in BiH are also strongly felt by the returnees. As can be expected, ethnic boundaries have, as Bougarel et al. (2007) contend, become “more pervasive and rigid after war and ethnic cleansing” (p. 20). However, in examining the full complexities of BiH society, it is necessary to move “beyond ethnicity” (Bougarel et al., 2007).

Depending on the circumstances, war related categories can undermine, override, reinforce, or complicate ethno-national identifications, even rendering them all but irrelevant (Bougarel et al., 2007, p. 21)

The intra-ethnic boundaries based on memory of intra-ethnic conflict and regional differences are both examples that “complicate ethno-national identifications,” while the boundaries set by internal displacement not only serve as additional illustrations of intra-ethnic divisions but also as deepening the “long-standing conflict between the urban, marked by ‘culture’ and ‘Europeanness’, and the rural associated with ‘non-culture’ and ‘backwardness’ (Bougarel et al., 2007, p. 22)

One of the strongest boundaries for the returnees is the boundary set by internal displacement. Going back to the time he and his family were forcefully expelled from their home in Foča, together with other non-Serb residents, Admir has felt the boundary of displacement, whether at home or abroad.

Admir::: Ever since I was 12 years old, I was labeled a refugee. I was expelled from my home in Foča and I came to Sarajevo. While in Sarajevo, I lived in several neighborhoods, moving around all the time. Finally, I moved to the U.S. and there I lived in a couple of different cities. That is how it is for me–constantly on the move. I mean, ever since I was twelve, I have been a refugee, living with a permanent feeling of not-belonging.

Feeling excluded has become the norm for Admir, whether in the home or host state, yet the boundary of internal displacement seems the most counter-intuitive. He was expelled from Foča as a non-Serb, thus violently experiencing the ethnic boundary. Upon settling in Sarajevo, he experienced the boundary of internal displacement, although he was now part of the ethnic majority.

In fact, internal displacement has created much resentment in BiH, which the returnees also feel. When I asked Badema, who returned to Srebrenica from Germany and now studies and works in Sarajevo, to compare her sense of belonging to Srebrenica and Sarajevo, she was determined in her answer.

Badema::: Oh, I completely belong here [in Srebrenica]. I never, ever felt Sarajevan! I never felt as a true Sarajevo woman.

Author::: What does ‘being a true Sarajevo woman’ mean to you?
Badema::: Being a true Sarajevo woman? First, there are very few real Sarajevans living in Sarajevo today. I am talking about the educated, emancipated people who understand many different things. There are many uneducated people in Sarajevo today. I will give you some examples from my generation. Being a Sarajevo woman to them means you behave exactly the same as everybody else. For example, they are all blonde. They all have iPhones, low cut jeans, etc. These are just some banal examples, but they are telling. I mean this is all so stupid and I hate it. I am so irritated by their constant divisions, between those who are from Sarajevo and those who are from outside. Even within Sarajevo, they make distinctions between those from Nedžarići^{Footnote 17} and those from Čaršija.

Author::: How do you view such divisions?
Badema::: With a dose of pity. Actually, with a dose of disgust. Really! Literally. I cannot understand that people need to separate themselves as ‘those from Čengić Vila’ and ‘those from Dobrinja’!? It is just silly. Funny. Stupid. Pointless. That is exactly what it is–pointless!

Both Badema and Admir feel the boundary of internal displacement, but their attitudes towards it are different. While Admir accepts his position as a “permanent feeling of not-belonging” and continues to live in Bosniak-dominated Sarajevo, not returning to his native Foča. Badema returned to Srebrenica and adopted a more cosmopolitan outlook ridiculing the pettiness of boundaries imposed in Sarajevo.

Badema, a Bosniak minority returnee to Srebrenica feels more excluded from belonging in the Bosniak-dominated capital of Sarajevo. This conclusion might appear paradoxical only to the “foreigners” (Stefansson, 2007).

Foreigners entering Sarajevo are therefore likely to be in for a surprise if they expect the local population to subscribe to the popular notion of a ‘civil war’ that was fought between antagonistic ethno-religious communities (narodi), carrying out brutal ethnic cleansing fueled by an ancient history of communal hatred in this unruly and conflict-ridden Balkan region. While not dismissing the ‘ethnic’ explanation altogether, Sarajlije^{Footnote 18} tend to portray the siege and the shelling of Sarajevo as a war that village or mountain people waged against the urban population and its refined style. Similarly, the central social cleavages in post-war Sarajevo seem to be those separating Sarajlije from newcomers, urban from rural people, returning refugees from those who stayed behind, and the economic elite from the lower classes, all of which, in today’s Sarajevo, often amounts to an internal conflict among Bosniacs, and not between the Bosniac, Bosnian-Serb and Bosnian-Croat parts of the population (Stefansson, 2007, p. 65, emphasis added)

Besides the social cleavages listed above, Stefansson (2007) correctly refers to the “popular imagination” (p. 61), which ascribes higher levels of wealth, cosmopolitanism, ‘Europeanness’ and lower levels of religiosity to urban Sarajevans. These are the “imagined” attributes, which create the boundary between the Sarajevans and the “more or less rural, poor, primitive, traditional, religiously radical and ‘non-cultured’” (Stefansson, 2007, p. 61), the internally displaced such as Admir and Badema.

Participants in my study feel labeled as “returnees” by their compatriots. Anastasija considers the “returnee” boundary to have had a deeply negative effect on her life.

Anastasija::: I came back here as a citizen of Mostar. I neither left Mostar as a Serb, nor did I return as a Serb. I left as a woman from Mostar and that is how I returned. But, the entire system here treated me as a returnee. A returnee.

Author::: What does being ‘a returnee’ mean to you?
Anastasija::: It is very bad. Very bad, Aida. Being “a returnee” means that you are directly placed into a kind of second-rate category. The immediate questions are: ‘Where were you in ’92, in ’93?’ The comments that follow are something like: ‘So, you left us during hard times, and now you are back..’ and so on. How do they know how we left? Who are they to judge us? The whole thing makes me so mad, but ‘returnee’, that is what returnee means…It means second-class.

Damir, who returned to Sanski Most directly after the war ended, feels that the situation has improved regarding the “returnee” boundary.

Damir::: It is much better now. Yes, in the past it was really very difficult. Right after the war, as soon as you would say that you are a returnee, the automatic question was ‘So, where were you during our hard times??’ Being a returnee from Germany in Sanski Most really was not an easy thing to be. It was not easy.

The feeling shared by Damir and Anastasija, has been documented extensively within the literature on post-war return and particularly scholarly works on return to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As early as Bovenkerk (1974) it was recognized that the stayees in the home state do not readily accept the returnees, in some cases showing direct mistrust, enmity and envy towards them (Koser & Black, 1999; Kibreab, 2002; Stefansson, 2004). Anders Stefansson’s work on the particular animosity towards returnees in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been widely cited (see Pedersen, 2003; Şirin, 2008; Kuschminder, 2017) and the point he makes is that the strained relations between the stayees and the returnees result from a lack of mutual understanding and the stayees’ belief of having a “monopoly of suffering” (Stefansson, 2004). Maček (2000) makes a similar point when discussing the relationship between stayees and returnees in the BiH case also adding the “symbolic capital” (p. 45) asserted by the stayees when a pragmatic choice of staying in BiH during the war, for example, to protect possessions or due to fear of starting anew abroad, gets transformed into a moral choice. From this perspective, the stayees gain moral ground for a judgmental attitude towards the returnees, summarized within a moralizing question directed at the returnees: “Where were you when it was the worst of all?” (Stefansson, 2004).

Unlike the BiH case, Pedersen (2003) does not find the same level of vitriol and resentment hurled at returnees in the case of return after the war in Lebanon. In a footnote comparing the BiH case to Lebanon, Pedersen (2003) concludes:

I believe that this difference between our findings is related to the fact that the Lebanese civil war ended six years before the war in Bosnia, and that people in Lebanon have gained more distance to the war than people in Bosnia. It seems that social relations change over time as society is reconstructed. (p. 59)

Although this conclusion seems quite reasonable, I must disappoint to draw on the examples of my study participants, such as Damir and Aleksandra, who still occasionally get asked the same old question: “Where were you when it was the worst of all?” Pedersen (2003) reports the experience of her study participant, Fuat M. who, upon coming back to post-war Beirut meets his old friends and colleagues who were happy to see him and to revive their old friendships. After a while, they would tell him “You have changed”. “Of course,” he replied, “and so have you”. Keeping in mind Damir’s optimism and his witnessing of some positive changes during the past two decades, still it seems that the returnees in BiH have a long way to go before attaining the level of relaxed societal acceptance, as observed in post-war Lebanon.

5.3.2 Boundary Making Abroad

Boundary making abroad at the level of religion is most dominant among the Muslim returnees, regardless of the level of their religiosity. Vedad, who does not consider Islam to have a prominent role in his life and to a large extent is a non-practicing Muslim, discusses the Islamophobia he experienced while living in Germany.

Vedad::: Since I worked as a physical therapist, I was in constant contact with people. I mean in the hospital, patients, colleagues, and others. They all knew that I am a Muslim from Bosnia and there was talk behind my back, about this and that. Most of it was not exactly nice to hear. I would often say that I am Muslim, a European Muslim. I mean, I would do this intentionally. In response, they would be amazed… ‘How could you be Muslim?’ They would ask.

Author::: So, what was their perception of Muslims?
Vedad::: They had so many prejudices about this. I mean, I understand them [people in Germany] too. They see their streets full of Arabs, the ones who could not make it in their own societies and then came to live in Germany. The husband walks 10 meters in front of the wife, who is covered from head to toe with 10 children at her side. Their view of Islam is shaped by what they see on their streets and the propaganda from their media. Very quickly, you can notice how homogenous their own [the German] society really is, centered around Catholicism and Evangelism. I am very interested in religions and I got to know their religion better than the Germans themselves. Coming from Bosnia, this is normal to me. We always used to celebrate both Christmases and Bayrams together with our neighbors. Multiculturalism is nothing new to me. But it is to them [the Germans]. They believe whatever their media tell them. There was a point when I just felt tired from feeling like a terrorist, you know. It is exhausting. When somebody asked me once how it feels to be back in Bosnia, I said that I finally feel relieved that I no longer feel as a terrorist.

Vedad’s story seems to be consistent with research presented in Valenta and Ramet (2011), where Bosniaks were found to keep a low profile when it comes to public display of their religiosity (Kalčić & Gombač, 2011); to self-identify as atheists, cosmopolitans or Europeans (Coughlan, 2011; Mišković, 2011) or to place additional emphasis on their “European Islamic” heritage. As Valenta and Ramet (2011) point out, the “European Islamic” focus comes as the “migrants’ response to global political tensions which contribute to anti-Muslim discourse and Western Islamophobia” (p. 19).

Boundary-making around socio-economic status affected the study participants profoundly. Lejla talks about her experience of baby-sitting in an upper-class family in the U.S.

Lejla::: So, I came to a household of actual multimillionaires and they literally treated me as a piece of garbage. I mean, I came there with the knowledge of four different languages and whatnot, but this was not respected one little bit! They saw themselves as above me and I immediately understood that this is going to be an issue of discrimination. Fortunately for me, I was always a fighter and I would not stand being placed in such a position, not for one minute! I would not allow for somebody to disrespect me. This family was not right for me and I left them very quickly.

Class boundaries as observed in the U.S. were shocking to Lejla, who grew up in Yugoslav-styled socialist self-management (see Horvat, 1969) with very slight class differences and lived through the war in BiH, which furthered her beliefs in solidarity and the importance of community. She resisted “being placed” in an inferior position due to her socio-economic status, firstly leaving the original family and ultimately the U.S., where she experienced this type of exclusion.

There is a noticeable difference in how the entire region of the former Yugoslavia factored in boundary-making in European countries compared to the U.S. Vlado discusses the discrimination people from different parts of the former Yugoslavia experience in Switzerland.

Vlado::: There [in Switzerland] you feel differently. I mean they [the Swiss] do not distinguish between Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, this and that. We are all ex-Yugoslavs to them. To them, we are more or less like the Turks in Germany. We, all of us, are just a bunch of ‘Yugos’ to them. I was pretty lucky because my last name does not end in a ‘vić’, so they could never directly put me in the Yugo category automatically. My last name sounds sort of Italian, so the discrimination was always delayed in my case. It took them a while to figure out my background. The people whose last names end in ‘vić’ got discriminated against right up front, with job applications, apartment searches, their children taking high school entrance exams–any place, really!

Ervin compares the European experience to that in the U.S. to conclude that the dominant variable of discrimination in the U.S. is race.

Ervin::: I never felt as a second-class citizen over there [in the U.S.], while there are so many examples of people feeling that way in European countries. In case their last names are not Schmitt or Francois, they have no business living there. That is simply not true in the U.S. The main divisions in America are along racial lines, not ethnic. These [ethnic] divisions have been pretty much erased in the U.S. The system works with no problems. You are accepted based on what you can do, what you know and the quality of your character. Other than that, nobody really cares.

While I am not aware of scholarly works directly comparing the experience of BiH-originated refugees and migrants in Switzerland and the U.S., there is research confirming and situating individual claims made by Vlado and Ervin. For example, Behloul (2011) discusses how in 1969, immigrants in Switzerland were positively or negatively perceived depending on whether they originated from Western or Southern Europe, with Italians being the most negatively perceived group in 1969. In the decades that followed, particularly with intensified migration from the former Yugoslavia because of the wars of the 1990s, the ‘Jugos’ became the most unpopular group (Hoffman-Nowotny, 2001; Wimmer, 2004; Behloul, 2011). Regarding the status of the Bosnian diaspora in the U.S., Mišković (2011) asserts that they could be “simultaneously placed within the normalized race (i.e. whites) and a targeted, negatively profiled community which is often racialized (i.e. Muslims).” That most Bosnian refugees in the United States are Muslims presents a puzzle to such discourse, which is recognized in the words of a Bosnian in St. Louis who summarized it as: “right skin color, wrong religion” (Martin, 2008 as cited in Mišković, 2011, p. 235). In other words, although Mišković (2011) underlines how the Bosnian diaspora in the U.S. has benefitted from “white power and privilege”, still she acknowledges the “racial/ethnic/religious” ambiguity.

Coming from the region of the former Yugoslavia is a factor in boundary-making abroad. I asked Nusret whether he ever felt like he did not belong, or as a second-class citizen, an outsider, while he lived and worked in Switzerland. He elaborated on the various dimensions of discrimination he experienced during his time in Switzerland.

Nusret::: They do not even hide this, but you need to know the language very well in order to understand what this is about. Actually, I also understand their point of view. It seems normal that people will love their own more than the others. It seems pretty normal. However, what I cannot accept is that, as a worker, I know I contributed much more than the Swiss. The Swiss guy was not worth half of me, but he was always paid double of what I was paid. Well, this is exactly what made me return! I do not want to be mistreated anymore. Believe me, even my children felt this. Whenever they went to the playground, the Swiss kids would not play with them. They are only children, but somebody, some adult instructed them they should not play with my children. I swear. It happened a thousand times. Even in kindergarten, my little girl was not part of the school play. When I looked at the other children who were excluded, there was a Tamil kid from Sri Lanka and a Black kid from some African country. When you look at the kids who were not in the play, it was only the foreigners. Do you need a better example of discrimination than this?!

Author::: How did you feel as a father?
Nusret::: Hmm…the only goal I have for my children is for them to get the best education. My little girl is not so little anymore. She is 25 and graduating this year with a M.Sc. degree in Architecture from the University of Graz in Austria.

For example, Behloul (2011) discusses the history of Bosniak migration to Switzerland as beginning in the 1960s and continuing in the 1970s as part of migrant quotas. Bosniaks came to Switzerland as labor migrants and were virtually non-distinguishable from Croats, Serb and other ethnicities coming from the SFRY. These immigrants met in “Yugoslav clubs” (p. 310) and until the 1980s had no separate ethnic, cultural or even religious infrastructure. It is this historical legacy, which still places the ex-Yugoslavs into one broad category and the boundary, which often includes direct and indirect discrimination, is drawn based on coming from the region of the former Yugoslavia.

5.4 The “Myth of Return”: Being “in Between” and Multiple Belonging

Ideas inherent in the “myth of return” are perhaps best formulated in the wise words of Heraclitus: “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Alma discusses her own sense of loss and attempt at recreating meaning for her twice-lost homeland.

Alma::: From the people I know who have left BiH, lived somewhere abroad and then came back, I can say that we have all lost our homeland at least twice. We went to live abroad and returned, thinking that we were coming back home. When we came back, we discovered that the country is no longer the place we used to know. This was not our homeland. That is what happened to us. But, I really don’t mind it anymore. I have gotten used to it.

When discussing the temporal dimension of home, there always exists a tense relationship between imagining the memories of home and the “reality” of the physical places to which these memories connect (Boccagni, 2017). The difference between the “ideal” and the “real” of past home(land) exists for all, but “may get still wider for international migrants, because of their extended detachment from the material bases of home” (Boccagni, 2017, p. 73). Widening the gap even further are both the conditions of war, which have entirely devastated the material bases of home, and the forced nature of the migrants’ departure from home. These two factors together create what Alma referred to as “twice losing our homeland”, once when forced to leave and the second time upon return with the realization that the homeland has been irreparably disfigured by war.

While an actual return home could be a philosophical impossibility characteristic of the general human condition, the particular nature of the returnees’ life experience situates them in an “in-between” position, which could be viewed as “neither here nor there,” thus stressing a loss of belonging. However, it is also possible to position the returnees as belonging “both here and there, “expressing gain—a dual belonging to the home and host states. Alija, a dual BiH, and Dutch citizen, feels a sense of belonging to both countries.

Alija::: In Holland we lived in a small town close to Amsterdam, with mainly Dutch people living there. I was only friends with the Dutch. We went to school together, played tennis and everything else. I definitely felt accepted in that society. Now, I cannot say that I belonged 100%, but this is really about living in two different worlds and being yourself at the same time. Sometimes, I also felt a bit stuck in between. I felt confused. If somebody were to ask me how is it I feel, I would say that I am Bosnian, but also Dutch.

A dual citizen of Switzerland and BiH, Vlado feels a greater sense of belonging to Switzerland when back home in Trebinje, BiH.

Vlado::: I had an experience with some people from Switzerland, who came to visit Trebinje. I belong to a mountaineering society and we go hiking every weekend. The Swiss guys wanted to join me and my childhood friends for a hike up mountain Leotar, above Trebinje. As we were walking up I kept asking myself questions about who I felt closer to–to the Trebinje guys or to the Swiss? When we came to the top, instinctively I joined the Swiss by hanging the Swiss flag on top of that mountain. It was a strange realization. I was at home in Trebinje, with my own, feeling more Swiss than ever before in my life.

Conversely, for Ervin, a dual US, and BiH citizen, it is important to keep his Bosnian identity while in the U.S.

Ervin::: Everybody in Sarajevo knows me as Jack. This was my nickname even before the war, before going to America. I mean, everybody who knows me in Sarajevo, except for my mom and sister, called me Jack. Nobody even knows my real name [in Sarajevo]. This is because I did a pretty good job imitating Jack Nicholson, and that is how I got the nickname. The nickname stuck with me and for my entire social life in Sarajevo, people knew me by ‘Jack,’ my nickname. In Sarajevo, everybody knew me as Jack, but in the U.S. I felt it was wrong to introduce myself to people using this nickname. I felt it was wrong because the name has a completely different connotation in the American context. I always introduce myself as Ervin in the U.S. I would just feel so stupid referring to myself as Jack in America, because I do not want to sound like an Americanized Bosnian. So, my Bosnian identity is very important to me, even in the U.S.

Author::: Do you feel you belong both here and there?
Ervin::: Absolutely, absolutely! Anytime my plane lands either here or there, I automatically feel at home. I feel at home in both places.

The migration studies literature (see Ehrkamp & Leitner, 2006) is replete with empirical studies demonstrating the existence of dual and multiple belonging in contemporary migrants, expressed through “complex webs of mobilities and belonging” (Howes & Hammett, 2016, p. 21). These complex relationships often blur the lines between rights derived from citizenship and individual identities. According to Kastoryano (2000), “engaging in transnational practices may result in an institutional expression of multiple belonging, where the country of origin becomes a source of identity, the country of residence a source of rights, and the emerging transnational space, a space of political action combining the two or more countries” (p. 309). Although Kastoryano (2000) refers to migrants residing in the host state, this perspective might be customized for the returnees to say that the country of “pragmatic citizenship” becomes a “source of rights.”

Because of multiple belonging, i.e. belonging both here and there, the transnational space becomes an arena for political, economic and other types of action. The in-betweenness of the returnees becomes a useful survival strategy, making it possible for the returnees to remain in the home state, while maintaining transnational ties becomes key to making their return to BiH a success. When I asked Hrvoje about his in-betweenness, he presented it as a pragmatic response to the level of risk associated with returning to BiH.

Author::: Do you ever feel you belong here and there, somewhere in between?
Hrvoje::: Well, absolutely! I guess this also depends on your personal views. I definitely am somewhere in between. Why? Well, because this is a good position to be in. I am always one foot in and one foot out. There is always a backup plan. Due to our political situation, this is necessary. Certainly not because of the people, but because of the economic and political situation, there always needs to be a Plan B.

In response to a question comparing the citizenships of Switzerland and BiH, Husein elaborated on the benefits of being a citizen of both countries.

Husein::: Aaah, I am happy with what both citizenships offer. How could I say anything negative? I produce and work in Bosnia and sell in Switzerland. How could I be any happier?

The “in-betweenness” of Hrvoje and Husein, dual BiH-Croatia and BiH-Switzerland citizens respectively, with strong commercial and other types of ties with the host states made their return to BiH possible in the first place, as well as sustainable long-term. This finding has been recognized in the literature as paradoxical, because it is in fact the citizenship of the host state that enables return to the home state, since it provides “transnational mobility back to the destination country and serves as a safety valve in case of unsuccessful return” (Mortensen, 2014 as cited in Carling & Erdal, 2014, p. 4). Cassarino (2008) looks at how transnational ties among “migrants, who are anchored (socially, culturally and physically) neither in their place of origin nor in their place of destination” (Al-Ali & Koser, 2003, p. 4) lead to the “gradual deterritorialization of citizenship” (p. 263). Carling and Erdal (2014) emphasize the importance of transnationalism for the economic sustainability of return, while Black & Castaldo (2009) argue that “the networks, contacts and wider experiences that migrants gain abroad” are even more significant for a successful outcome of return than their investment of financial capital.

5.5 Conclusion

Confirming already established relational, temporal, and spatial conceptualizations of home from previous scholarly debates, home or the feeling of “being at home” for the returnees is found in family relations, various time periods, and particular places. When home is found within the nuclear or extended family, the concept can be interpreted as a “mental state,” and “a process” (Rapoport, 1995) and leads to an understanding of home as “portable” (Boccagni, 2017). Within “family as home,” data analysis reveals home to be a “gendered concept” with some differences in how it is perceived by male and female returnees. The temporal dimension of home is at times found in a nostalgic longing either for childhood memories or recollections of life in Yugoslavia. In other cases, home is found only in the here and now. Home in time is conceptualized as an “idealized past” (Lam & Yeoh, 2004) or a conscious desire to break away from burdens of the past. Common to conceptualizing home as family and a particular time period is the “portability” (Boccagni, 2017) of home—either through social relations or memory. When home is primarily conceptualized as place, the “sense of place” can refer to the physical house, the native town or city, a neighborhood, and even the entire Balkan region. Recognizing the ethnic minority versus ethnic majority status and comparing it “sense of place” often leads to a “displaced sense of place” (Armakolas, 2007), whether looking at Sarajevo Serbs now living in rural parts of Republika Srpska or Banja Luka Bosniaks now living in Sarajevo. Losing ethnic diversity because of warfare and population movements of the 1990s leads to the most problematized notion of “feeling at home” on the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Regardless of whether the feeling of “being at home” is found in the family, place or time, to feel “at home” for the returnees means to feel safe and secure, which is often conflated with feeling comfortable, satisfied and relaxed.

Similarly to the multi-dimensional understanding of home, the returnees exhibit various types of place-belongingness (Antonsich, 2010). Disentangling the different types of place-belongingness is key to understanding how the categories of ethnicity, religion, language, economic contribution, civic participation and other types of social relations interact with each other. Simplifying the diversity of Bosnia to just three ethnicities, which coincide with three religions, where the Bosnian Serbs are Orthodox Christian, the Bosnian Croats are Roman Catholic and the Bosniak are Muslim is reductive and inaccurate, as many other combinations are possible. For example, there are members of all three ethnic groups who identify with some other religion, who are agnostic, or atheistic-actively rejecting any religion. Also, there are citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina who belong to different ethnic groups, such as the Roma or the Jews, or who do not want to declare their belonging to any ethnic group, but see themselves solely as citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Of course, ethnicity and religion are important when trying to understand Bosnia, but they are certainly not the only relevant categories. To disentangle belonging, what is important to recognize is that place-belongingness, as defined by Antonsich (2010) is primarily characterized by a feeling of safety, or as Ignatieff (1994) puts it, “Where you belong is where you are safe and where you are safe is where you belong” (p. 25).

The feeling of safety and security can be found in various types of place-belongingness at different times more or less pronounced, and often competing with each other. Adding to the classification found in Antonsich (2010), my data analysis has revealed seven distinct types of place-belongingness among the returnees: relational, ethnic, religious, linguistic, landscape, economic and civic. Relational belonging is most frequently observed, and it refers to finding belonging in social relations, such as neighbors, friends, classmates or other social organizations, independent of family members, one’s own ethnicity or religious community. Ethnic belonging pertains to one’s identification of membership in an ethnic group in BiH and religious belonging refers to the self-identification of membership in a religious community. Linguistic belonging is expressed through the use of a shared language with three different names: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Landscape belonging discusses the emotional attachment people feel towards the geographic terrain and natural environment of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Economic belonging refers to economic decision-making influenced by an affective bond to the home state. Finally, civic belonging denotes prioritizing one’s citizenship status, being a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, over other types of belonging.

The main boundary of belonging the returnees face in BiH is their ethnicity. Ethnicity, as a boundary set by the politics of belonging, is markedly different from ethnic belonging, in the same way that any aspect of place-belongingness differs from the politics of belonging (Crowley, 1999; Yuval-Davis, 2006). For example, a person might or might not identify with the Bosniak ethnic group, however, most times, in the eyes of society, even his or her first or last name will place them firmly within this ethnic boundary. As expected, the ethnic boundary is most pronounced in cases of minority return. It is important to mention that ethnic boundaries are not completely clear cut, simply as Bosniak, Croat or Serb, as there also exist intra-ethnic boundaries, because of wartime tensions, such as the autonomy movement led by Fikret Abdić or because of regional differences, for example Croats from Bosnia as compared to Croats from Herzegovina. Internal displacement is also a significant boundary which cuts across ethnicity. Finally, being labeled as the “returnee” by the local population is a boundary that also cuts across different ethnicities. The phenomenon of the “returnee” in BiH (Stefansson, 2004), characterized by betrayal, cowardice and resentment by the stayee population, is so engrained that it holds a particular place in return migration literature (see for example, Pedersen, 2003; Şirin, 2008; Kuschminder, 2017).

Study participants are also painfully aware of boundary-making abroad. When discussing boundary-making abroad, the returnees of Muslim faith often invoked the Islamophobia they faced, particularly in countries of Western Europe. They discussed other boundaries, such as race, which distinguishes them vis-à-vis most other Muslims living in countries of Western Europe. It is also important to note that religion, and not necessarily the level of religiosity, was the basis of boundary-making. What this means in practice is suffering the effects of Islamophobia reported by people who do not identify as practicing Muslims, but who nevertheless see themselves as culturally Muslim. Coming from a legacy of Yugoslav-styled communism, boundary-making, particularly in the U.S. on the level of class differences, was also significant in discussions. Returnees who had experiences with living in both Western Europe and the U.S. compared how they were excluded from common belonging based on ethnicity and religion in Western Europe and included in the U.S. because of their race. Benefitting from “white power and privilege” in the U.S. was also reported in other studies of Bosnian diaspora (see Valenta & Ramet, 2011). Ironically, ethnicity that appears most significant for boundary-making at home becomes virtually erased abroad, since regardless of their ethnicity, while living abroad, the study participants were labeled simply as “ex-Yugoslavs or Yugos.” This is particularly true in countries of Western Europe, which have a history of reliance on a steady supply of gastarbeiter labor coming from the former Yugoslav region.

When considering exclusionary boundary making at home and abroad, the returnees are often left “neither here nor there.” However, this position can be transformed into an in-betweenness of “both here and there” with multiple belonging and developed transnational ties. The transnational “in between” space then becomes instrumental for both the success and the sustainability of return.

Notes

1.
“Mladić“ refers to General Ratko Mladić, Chief of General Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and a convicted war criminal, found guilty by the ICTY for committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
2.
„these women“refers to Bosniak women who, after surviving the genocide in Srebrenica, continued to live in Bosniak-majority areas in the FBiH.
3.
Foča is a town in Eastern Bosnia, now located in Republika Srpska. The town was almost entirely „ethnically cleansed“ from its Bosniak inhabitants during the 1992–95 war.
4.
Damir seems to have purposively used the Turkish-origin word „rahat,“ meaning „peaceful and comfortable“ to talk about his imagined experience of having coffee in Foča.
5.
For most recent examples, see Delauney, G. (2016, March 24). Mixed reaction to Radovan Karadzic verdict in Bosnia. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35897367 discussing billboards erected throughout Republika Srpska with pictures of Radovan Karadžić entitled „Serbian Hero“in reaction to the ICTY verdict declaring him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and convicting him to lifetime imprisonment.
6.
St. Vitus Day is a Serbian religious and national holiday and an important date in Serbian national history.
7.
East Sarajevo comprises suburban municipalities of Sarajevo (East Ilidža, East New Sarajevo, East Old Town, RS section of Pale, RS section of Sokolac and Trnovo), now located in Republika Srpska. East Sarajevo is the official capital of Republika Srpska, although its administrative center is in Banja Luka. East Sarajevo was previously called Serb Sarajevo (Srpsko Sarajevo), but the name was changed due to a decision of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As Feldman (2005) observes, the Constitutional Court of BiH had found that the National Assembly of Republika Srpska had “renamed various cities and towns in the territory of RS in that presented them as having an exclusively Serb identity, violated the constitutional rights of the other two constituent peoples of BiH to collective equality and the right of all citizens to be free of discrimination, taken together with the right of refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes of origin and the right of all citizens to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of the state” (p. 649).
8.
See Robinson et al. (2001) on the work of an administrative commission appointed by the Sarajevo Canton government directly after the war to rename streets and other public spaces in Sarajevo. Also, see Robinson and Pobrić (2006) for an analysis of the protests in Sarajevo at the SDA proposal to change the name of Sarajevo’s main street from Marshall Tito to Alija Izetbegović street. Due to these city-wide demonstrations and a decision of the OHR, the main street in Sarajevo is still called Marshall Tito’s street (Ulica Maršala Tita).
9.
von der Brelie, H. (2018, April 27). Foreign influence taking over Bosnia and Herzegovina? Euronews. Retrieved from https://www.euronews.com/2018/04/26/insiders-foreign-influence-taking-over-bosnia-and-herzegovina
10.
For details see: Sito-Sucic, D. (2016, August 21). Gulf tourism frenzy in Bosnia delights business, polarizes locals. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bosnia-arabs-investment/gulf-tourism-frenzy-in-bosnia-delights-business-polarizes-locals-idUSKCN10W08L
11.
See Depo.ba. (2016, August 11). Esad Duraković: Arab settlements in BiH are part of a project endangering the state’s survival. Retrieved from https://novi.ba/clanak/86224/esad-durakovic-naseljavanje-arapa-u-bih-je-projekat-koji-ugrozava-opstanak-drzave
12.
The term Alija uses is “narod,” which is rather difficult to translate directly into English. To a large extent, I share Palmberger’s ambivalence (see Palmberger, 2012; Palmberger, 2016) when translating narod as either people or nation, since the term is used to describe group identities, alternatively: ‘nation’ or ‘national identity,’ as well as ‘ethnicity’ or ‘ethnic identity’.
13.
Genc Bosnaklar Dernegi is an association of Bosniak-origin students studying at universities in Turkey.
14.
According to the Declaration on the Common Language, Bosnian, Croatia, Montenegrin and Serbian are a common language with four different names, but without significant linguistic differences to distinguish them as separate languages. The basis of the Declaration was Language and Nationalism, the scholarly work of the Croatian linguist Snježana Kordić, as well as four academic conferences held during 2016 in Split, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Podgorica. Since May 2017, linguists, journalists, academics and thousands of citizens across the former Yugoslavia signed the Declaration (Ilić, 2017). The full text of the Declaration on the Common Language can be retrieved from http://jezicinacionalizmi.com/deklaracija/
15.
“Mr. Mile” refers to Milorad Dodik, the current President of Republika Srpska.
16.
The song “My Country” is a patriotic song written and performed in the mid 1970s, with lyrics discussing the love one feels for one’s country and its natural beauties. The lyrics are neutral in the sense that there is no direct mention of the name of the country, so in that sense it could be re-purposed. Originally, it was devoted to the Yugoslav guest workers (gastarbaiter) leaving Yugoslavia as labor migrants. The song was performed by the Ambassadors, a popular Sarajevo-based band. It was also one of Josip Broz Tito’s favorite songs, often performed at official state ceremonies in Yugoslavia.
17.
Nedžarići, Čaršija, Čengić Vila and Dobrinja are different neighborhoods and quarters of Sarajevo.
18.
Sarajlije is a Bosnian term for the citizens of Sarajevo.

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Ibričević, A. (2024). Losing, Creating and Re-creating Home and Belonging. In: Decided Return Migration. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58347-6_5

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