According to a recently published Gallup poll, Bosnia and Herzegovina scored −32% on the potential net migration index (PNMI).Footnote 1 This score ranked BiH at the bottom of the list of European countries, with only Kosovo ranking lower. The situation is even more alarming when looking at the indices for brain drain and youth migration, for which BiH scored −40% and −57%, respectively. These results ranked BiH at the bottom on an international scale, with El Salvador, Haiti, Liberia, and Sierra Leone scoring lower. Amidst such abysmal emigration prospects, there appears a truly puzzling phenomenon: voluntary return migration. I embarked on a journey to unravel the mystery of why people are coming back to a place that so many seem eager to escape? I was initially inspired to answer this and related questions after watching the “I want to go home” (Kenović, 2016) documentary in May 2016. While wrapping up my data analysis 3 years later, I was captivated by another documentary film produced by the same news organization. As the show notes state, “Disappearing” (Nestajanje),Footnote 2 tells the story of “young, highly educated people from Bosnia and Herzegovina who, despite their different backgrounds, find themselves on the same road. This road, unfortunately, takes them far from their home country, which didn’t give them a chance to realize their full potential.” Leaving BiH is the dominant trend, while deciding to come back, although highly interesting for theoretical purposes, deviates from that norm. In the years of working on this puzzle, I hope to have shed some light on its various facets and contributed to its better understanding. So, what can we learn from those who have taken the proverbial “road less traveled”? The focus of this chapter is to discuss the findings of my study and how they contribute to the current debates on relevant concepts.

7.1 Deciding to Return: The Diasporic “Homeland Orientation” Actualized

My study contributes to a better understanding of how the diasporic “homeland orientation” (Brubaker, 2005) is actualized. Brubaker (2005) identifies three key features of the diaspora concept: dispersion, orientation to homeland, and boundary maintenance. The physical actualization of the second criteria of Brubaker’s diaspora definition, i.e. return migration to the home state, remains relatively understudied (Olsson & King, 2008). Although “homeland orientation” (Brubaker, 2005) with an implied “return to the (imagined) homeland” has been a defining characteristic of diaspora since Safran (1991), there were some modifications in which the “homeland orientation” (Brubaker, 2005) did not necessarily imply physical return, but it rather involved “dense and continuous linkages across borders” (Faist, 2008). The “homing desire” characterizing diasporas is often in “creative tension” with “dispersal” (Brah, 1996) resulting in a form of mythical return, which defies the idea of “return migration as a clear-cut concept” (Carling et al., 2015, p. 3). The “mythical” element here is that the actual return of diaspora members to the state of origin is simple and straightforward. My findings confirm many previous studies of return migration, particularly to post-conflict societies, and further illustrate that actualizing the diasporic “homeland orientation” is in fact highly complex and deserving of focused scholarly attention.

To avoid a confusion of terms between diaspora and transnationalism, as well as to focus on return migration, I refer to my study participants mostly as returning diaspora members, or simply as returnees. They could, however, also be considered as transmigrants. Although most returnees have been forced to leave the home state through campaigns of ethnic cleansing and have indeed been “uprooted” (Glick-Schiller et al., 1995, p. 48), their frequent and active economic, social, political and cultural connections with the home state (Glick-Schiller et al., 1995) as well as their “dual lives” (Portes et al., 1999) make it possible to qualify them as transmigrants. Indeed, as seen from the discussion on the success of return, maintaining transnational ties is vital. As emphasized by Carling and Erdal (2014), the lines conceptually distinguishing between return migration and transnationalism are not entirely clear as the two affect each other from return intentions to actualization of return and from reintegration in the home state to the potential decision to re-emigrate. For example, there is a long-established link in the literature (Brown, 1997; Fokkema et al., 2013; Gubert, 2002; Carling & Erdal, 2014) between the transnational practice of remittance sending, as a form of facilitating reintegration and return migration. For all the listed reasons, my study participants could be qualified as transmigrants, yet the “state of flux” (Glick-Schiller et al., 1995) is not their primary identity and it is also not the focus of my study. My study focuses on their return to the home state and, in later analysis, particularly on their status as citizens of that state. Therefore, having acknowledged the importance of transnationalism for return migration, preference is given to the participants’ positioning as returnees.

More distinctions are needed beyond just “forced” and “voluntary” return (Carling et al., 2015). The returnees discussed in my study are “voluntary,” according to the definition presented in van Houte and Davids (2014), as each one of them had a legal alternative to stay in the host country when they decided to return. They truly fit the “decided” or “chosen” return as defined by Cassarino (2008), as they decided to go back with no “assistance from a public body” (p. 12). Thus, not only is there an “absence of force” (Black et al., 2004) required when considering voluntary return in the widest sense possible, but their return is voluntary in the narrowest sense as well, as it was also not assisted. Aging parents needing care did not compel their return, as the parents of my study participants either live independently or had passed away. For my study, “voluntariness” of return is understood in terms of Cassarino (2008) as “decidedness” or simply “free choice.” Participants in my study have decided or chosen to return. From a life-cycle perspective, the returnees are all of working age and still in the process of earning their retirement. Thus, they bear the full risk of their choice to return as the success of their return project determines their economic wellbeing. Any decision-making based on non-economic factors comes at a substantial opportunity cost.

The decision to return to a post-conflict society, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, when legal, economic, socio-cultural and other opportunities for a continued stay in the host state exist, is primarily driven by emotional factors. However, this decision is made possible only once a minimum of economic well-being is secured. A debatable point would be what that economic “minimum” would comprise. The returnee’s priority is securing a source of income necessary to cover their subjectively determined minimum economic needs in the home state. For many of the returnees, the possibility of attaining that minimum level of economic security came either as a business opportunity in the home state or as a job offer. Once the opportunity materialized, each participant could decide whether to pursue the higher risk option of return or to continue their safer life abroad. “Chosen” or “decided” return (Cassarino, 2008) to a post-conflict society is dominantly emotionally motivated, but it comes with an economic opportunity cost of remaining in the host state. The economic-emotional set of motivations was positioned against a background criticizing the reason-emotion dichotomy.Footnote 3 This criticism leads to further questioning of the “rationality” of strictly economic decision-making and, conversely, the “irrationality” of decisions based on non-economic/emotional factors alone. Although economic explanations form the dominant discourse on migration decision-making, there is a growing literature “challenging economism” (Halfacree, 2004, p. 242). For example, research on counter-urbanization is making use of the “cultural turn” in human geography to search for alternatives. The challenge to economistic thinking comes under the following broad banner: “Thinking a market economy through to the end, people would not have any family ties.” (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, p. 35 as cited in Halfacree, 2004, p. 246). Similarly, I suggest an alternative approach to return migration decision-making that aligns with the more general “affective turn” in social sciences.

The pull-push framework is useful in organizing the reasons for economic self-interest. A related key insight is that relations between labor and capital under global capitalism have very little variation from home to the host state. Although previously criticized for its relative reductivism and failure to conceptualize the full complexity of the decision to return, the paradigm of neoclassical economics with its emphasis on utility maximization, rational choice, the existence of differentials in capital/labor prices (wages, interest, and return) between various regions and the accompanying mobility of the factors of productions (King, 2012), is appropriate for explaining the reasons strictly related to economic self-interest. Push-pull models work within the paradigm of neoclassical economics to explain migratory movements at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels (Massey et al., 1998). On a macroeconomic level, labor will move from areas of lower to higher wages, driven by an uneven distribution of capital. In capital-intensive areas, labor will be scarce and wages high. The opposite is true of areas where capital is scarce. Migration will continue until general equilibrium is reached and prices of labor and capital in both sending and receiving areas are equalized. On a level of microeconomics, the individual “rational agent” decides to migrate based on price signals (wage differentials), perfectly available information, and a cost-benefit calculation (Sjaastad, 1962; Borjas, 1989). Explanations for economically self-interested reasons are found within the heavily criticized (see Arango, 2004 as cited in King, 2012) paradigm of neoclassical economics, push-pull models (see King, 1978 for an early list of push and pull factors), or its variations adapted for return migration as a repulsion-retention matrix (Carling et al., 2015).

Only working-age participants are included in my study, excluding non-employed students and retired individuals who earned pensions in a capital-intensive area. The reason for excluding such candidates from the sample is that their decision to return does not include the same level of risk. A person of working age who decides to return to a post-conflict society bears the full amount of financial risk this decision entails. Upon return, they are left with the challenge of not only providing for current living expenses but also earning for retirement in the home state. Having a viable pull factor, such as an opportunity for self-employment or a job offer, from the home state mitigates the level of risk and makes return possible. It is important, however, to create a strong demarcation between the necessity of a minimum economic requirement and the maximization of economic self-interest, as it is understood in neoclassical economics. Securing an economic minimum is a precondition to return, but maximization of economic self-interest means foregoing return and remaining in the host state. A push factor from the host state, such as loss of employment because of an economic recession, facilitates the decision to return as it makes it appear as carrying a lower level of risk relative to the situation of unemployment in the host state. Overall, awareness of relations between owners of capital and labor under conditions of global capitalism creates the conditions for the returnees to compare directly their situation in the home and host states.

Return migration to a post-conflict society, even when it is entirely voluntary, as well as deemed overall successful from the returnees’ viewpoint and thus presumably sustainable from a social perspective, still involves a complex process of reintegration (Olsson & King, 2008). My study adds to scholarship on the reintegration of voluntary returnees by examining a distinct set of challenges and reintegration strategies. I also add to the scholarly understanding of the sustainability of this type of return by looking at the returnees’ subjective evaluations of its success. Carling et al. (2015) summarize a frequent characterization of return as representing a “tension between the ‘good state’ abroad–with its transparent, democratic institutions–and the ‘good society’ back in the country of origin–with its strong social relations” (p. 21). While parts of this claim have certainly been confirmed by the findings of my study, other parts have been challenged. Social relations at ‘home’ have been scrutinized with the conclusion that they may not be as strong as envisaged by this useful dichotomy. As was amply shown, besides the comforting feelings associated with closeness to family and friends, the returnees’ social relations are strained with other phenomena characteristic of a post-conflict society, such as differing social perspectives on the acceptability of corruption or a dominant social narrative of victimization. The tension involving the ‘good state’-whether home or host–positions the returnees as citizens, and most often dual citizens of BiH and a state from which they have returned. This perspective takes citizenship, particularly its emotional dimension, as its primary focus, while the “deeper existential issues” (Carling et al., 2015, p. 1) associated with any and every migrants’ contemplation of return, evoke feelings of “belonging” (Carling et al., 2015, p. 1).

7.2 What Emotions Do the Returnees Feel as BiH Citizens?

Understanding the concept of “citizenship as feeling” relies on an in-depth exploration of political emotions. As was explained previously, the reason-emotion dichotomy has influenced the history of political thought and the social sciences, separating rationality and equating emotions with irrationality. The reason-emotion dichotomy has had an influence on contemporary political theory: utilitarianianism and rational-choice, Marxism, post-Kantian liberalism and communitarianism (Maiz, 2011). The foundational theory of emotions, formulated by James (1884) and Lange (1885) relies on the reason-emotion dichotomy (Cannon, 1927). It is also referred to as the mind-body dualism and it proposes that emotions are solely bodily responses to outside stimuli. This approach to emotions has been challenged by the “cognitive-appraisal” perspective, which views emotions as enabling rationality and as “important forms of knowledge and evaluative thought” (Nussbaum, 1995 as cited in Bleiker & Hutchinson, 2008, p. 124). In economics, Jon Elster draws on the findings of Damasio (1994) criticizing rational-choice models of behavior to conclude that emotions help us decide, and often help us make the best decisions (Elster, 1998). In sociology, voices calling for a reconceptualization of emotions as essentially rational, particularly for practical purposes (Barbalet, 2002) keep growing stronger. Following the “cognitive appraisal” perspective, emotions are not to be dismissed as “irrational” and, instead, need to be viewed as enabling rationality. In terms of democratic politics, perceiving emotions as stimulating social action leads to an examination of the role emotions play in “good citizenship” (Marcus, 2002).

To start a meaningful discussion on how individuals conceptualize citizenship, it is instructive to create connections to the beginnings of citizenship studies ranging back to classical liberal notions found in the work of T.H. Marshall (1950). Citizenship is conceived as a set of civil, political and social rights and “a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community” (Marshall, 1950, p. 28). Referring to the work of Stuart Hall and David Held, Yuval-Davis (2006) emphasizes that Marshall’s definition of citizenship does not mention the state directly. A key implication is that the “community” and the “state” coincide. As was amply proven in this study, with unconsolidated and post-conflict states, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, this is not the case. As Guzina (2007) shows, the assumed “community” and “state” overlap does not hold everywhere and at all times. In fact, this overlap is mainly a product of historical circumstances and therefore cannot be assumed. Inherent to the liberal conceptualization of citizenship is the notion of the ‘neutrality of the state.’ In this sense, cultural or any other particularities do not need to be considered because they can be satisfied by a ‘neutral state’ as they translate directly into a language of civil, social or political rights (Guzina, 2007). Again, this assumption is more easily satisfied in culturally and nationally homogenous societies (Guzina, 2007). Marshall’s work focuses on Britain, which simply cannot be taken as the only benchmark.

Another seminal work in citizenship studies, Brubaker’s Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, offers a powerful distinction in how citizenship is conceptualized–civic versus ethnic. In summary, Brubaker (1992) presents an argument rooted in historical institutionalism, wherein the state in France historically had a central role in nation-building. Thus, relations between citizens and the state reflected territory, leading to the jus soli or civic understanding of citizenship, based on membership and submission to common laws. In contrast, the historical context of the German state is such that it was founded by unification of a people of common, e.g. German, ethnic descent. The ethnic, or jus sanguinis understanding of citizenship thus underscores the significance of citizens sharing a common ethnicity, language, culture and history. As Džankić (2015) shows, the civic vs. ethnic dichotomy in understanding citizenship is also not entirely applicable to states such as Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Although the citizenship regime in BiH is formally conceived as a relationship between the individual and the state, as was demonstrated by Mujkić (2007), elevating collective above individual rights leads to an ethnicization of citizenship. Džankić (2015) summarizes the relationship between competing ethnicities and an unconsolidated, post-communist state as:

The group that claims ownership over the state will acquire a strong state-oriented identity based on the ethnic principle. In contrast, the identification of competing groups is more likely to be with their ethnic kin, or another kinstate, and thus citizenship in terms of such groups’ belonging to the state is much weaker. This implies that there is no clear dividing line between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ citizenship. (p. 7)

It can be argued that, in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, those BiH citizens who adopt the Bosniak ethnic and certainly the BiH civic identity have a stronger state-orientation, while the majority of Serb and Croat BiH citizens have weaker state-orientation and a stronger identification with their respective ethnic kin and kinstates. To study the particular conceptualization of citizenship in states such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Džankić (2015) introduces the notion of “post-ethnic citizenship” as the “capacity of individuals to be loyal to the state instead of to the ethnic kin in practicing citizenship; to show solidarity with all members of community and not only to the ethnic kinship group” (p. 43). As was shown in my study and confirming findings in Džankić (2015), “post-ethnic citizenship” remains to be a challenged concept in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

When analyzing the relations between national homelands, national minorities and nationalizing states, Džankić (2015) draws on models presented in Brubaker (1996) and its upgraded version in Smith (2002) to conclude that neither of these two models addresses the “difference between citizenship as an expression of the state’s identity and citizenship as an identity of individuals” (p. 27). Seen from one of three perspectives, Brubaker’s triadic nexus refers to the national minority as “caught between two mutually antagonistic nationalisms–those of the nationalizing states in which they live and those of the external national homeland to which they belong by ethnonational affinity though not by legal citizenship” (Brubaker, 1996, p. 6). Smith (2002) adds a fourth perspective to the nexus, by looking at the role of the international community in identity formation in Central and Eastern European states after the fall of communism. Smith (2002) asserts that, essential to a better understanding of nation building in the post-communist world are the processes of Euro-Atlantic integration and how they interact with the three layers of Brubaker’s nexus: nationalizing state, external homeland and national minorities. As Džankić (2015) argues, neither Brubaker (1996) nor Smith (2002) are fully adequate for looking at how individual citizens conceptualize citizenship. The important difference is between “how the state constructs its membership and how its citizens feel towards it” (Džankić, 2015, p. 27, emphasis mine).

My study aims to fill this gap by answering the question of how it feels to be a BiH citizen from an individual citizen’s perspective. My aim was to contribute to the literature on emotional citizenship by examining how a range of distinct emotions constitute the experience of “citizenship as feeling.” With a citizenship like that of Bosnia, the main benefit of using the individual citizen’s perspective is escaping the trap of the ethnicization of citizenship. My study participants are citizens with universally understood, complex, human emotions expressed in relation to their citizenship and varying from fear, anger, love, disappointment, nostalgia, to hope and various others. Wherever relevant for analysis, their religion or ethnicity is noted, but my goal throughout the study was to focus on the individual citizen and thus avoid rarifying ethnic differences by an overemphasis on structures. A highly nuanced disentangling of place-belongingness produces a language that includes ethnicity and religion, but also goes beyond these two dominant categories. This stated goal is especially relevant for the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina where the Dayton Peace Agreement includes discriminatory provisions elevating collective rights of “constituent peoples”: Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, and Others above the rights of individual citizens. Whether Bosniak, Croat, Serb, or “Other” my study participants are primarily viewed as BiH citizens. Whether Bosniak, Croat, Serb, or “Other” what they feel as BiH citizens is placed in the universally understood language of human emotions.

However, the reason certain emotions and not others constitute citizenship is context-dependent and historically rooted. This approach follows other similar studies, such as Brown (2014) and Aguilar (1996), that contextualize the connection between citizenship and emotions, while turning to two very different historical and institutional contexts to provide explanations. Brown (2014) looks at how the German national feeling is dominated by shame because of the legacy of the Holocaust and the Nazi-era. Aguilar (1996) explores transnational shame of the “Filipino as maid” image in Singapore and the “potential inferiority of co-nationals, on the ‘weaknesses’ of the ‘race’ that one carries ‘in the blood’ (Aguilar, 1996, p. 123). Although these two studies present directly incomparable contexts, they both argue that the connection between citizenship and a specific emotion, in this case shame, is rooted in a particular historical context and institutional setup.

My argument is that the individual emotions constituting the emotional dimension of BiH citizenship originate from the historical context of the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the nature of state-formation produced by the Dayton Peace Agreement. The Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) ended a horrific war and, although envisaged as a consociational power-sharing arrangement, in reality legalized genocide and ethnic cleansing, recognized a de facto division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The DPA established an inefficient administrative structure and public sector not conducive to economic development and growth. As a result, economic insecurity is prevalent among BiH citizens. For a country of 3.5 million people, the DPA BiH Constitution envisages fourteen parliaments (state, entity, and cantonal) with thirteen governments and close to two hundred government ministries. The incredibly complicated and dysfunctional public administration created by the Dayton Peace Agreement straddles, burdens and suffocates an economy of only USD 7585 per capita GDP (World Bank, 2023). The inefficiencies of the BiH state structure make room for ample corruption, racketeering and intimidation to thrive. Under such circumstances, it is oligarchic political power and not the rule of law that determines the livelihood and wellbeing of each BiH citizen, independent from his or her ethnic, religious and even socio-economic background.

7.3 Return Migration as a Search for Home and Belonging

Scholarly literature on the meaning of home is vast and covers several disciplines: political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, human geography, architecture, philosophy and history (for example, see Mallett, 2004; Jacobson, 2012; Boccagni et al., 2018). As some authors point out, “while being overwhelming by now, it [the literature on home] also tends to be dispersed and parcelized” (Boccagni et al., 2018, p. 1). To provide for greater integration in conceptual understanding and consistency, the focus of my study is chosen to be the nexus between home and migration (Boccagni et al., 2018). In this sense, home has a daily, vernacular meaning with multidimensional conceptual significance. The literature on migration and the search for home looks at home as a set of relations with family, friends, and roots (Jackson, 2016; Blunt & Dowling, 2006; Lam & Yeoh, 2004; Taylor, 2009), home as relationship with place (Tuan, 2001; Erkmen, 2015; Rapport, 1997) or home as connection to a particular time (Howes & Hammett, 2016). In either the relational, spatial or temporal conceptual understanding of home, home implies “an attribution of a sense of security, familiarity and control to particular settings over all others” (Boccagni, 2017, p. 1). As was illustrated in my study, the feeling of safety/security is identified as dominant for the returnees to “feel at home.”

Questioning the “portability of home” is looking at home, as “first and foremost, a special kind of place” (Easthope, 2004, p. 135). Home, as human geographers have argued, is most properly understood as a “sense of place, “ with the important difference made between space and place. There are at least two different ways of looking at differentiating space and place: human geography and cultural history. From the perspective of geographer Yi-Fuan Tuan, while space is an abstract bastion of freedom, place is imbued with security (Tuan, 2001). Seen from this angle, an abstract space becomes a place as it attains “definition and meaning” (Tuan, 2001, p. 136). “What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value” (Tuan, 1977, p. 6, as cited in Isomaa et al., 2013, p. xii). As Easthope (2004) asserts, to extend and deepen the notion of the “sense of place,” Tuan coins the term “topophilia” to discuss “the affective bond between people and place” (p. 129). In contrast, the cultural historian Michel de Certeau associates himself with Foucault’s idea of space as a “network of power,” but also acknowledges the “daily acts and meaning that emerge in the various uses of space” (Isomaa et al., 2013, p. xii). For de Certeau, the distinction between space and place invokes a difference between place as physical entity and space as a social construct (Pedersen, 2003, p. 6). “In short, space is a practiced place. Thus, the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers” (de Certeau, 1984, p. 117).

My study uses Tuan’s notion of the “sense of place” to understand home as place, which is consistent with security being a key feature of home. In Tuan’s differentiation between space and place, not only is space more abstract than place but also, “from the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of space and vice versa” (Tuan, 1977, p. 6 as cited in Isomaa et al., 2013, p. xii). Seen as place, home takes a variety of forms for the returnees. The returnees “feel at home” in their physical house, their city or town, the entire region of the former Yugoslavia, and most problematized of all, the entire territory of the BiH state. As Easthope (2004) asserts:

A person’s sense of place can provide them with a sense of belonging and of comfort. It can be a wonderful thing to share with people from other areas and other cultures. It can also be defended (in some cases literally) to the death if it is seen to be threatened (p. 131–132).

It is this “dark side of topophilia [and sense of place] as manifested in the naturalization of the nation-state” (Duncan & Duncan, 2001 p. 41) that is the main subject of discussion when problematizing the “domopolitics” (Walters, 2004) of feeling at home on the entire territory of the BiH state, the possibility of “framing the state as home” (Boccagni, 2017, p. 95).

The analytical framework used to explore belonging distinguishes between place-belongingness and the politics of belonging (Antonsich, 2010). The distinction between the two types of belonging is clarified by Mas Giralt (2015). Place-belongingness relates to “personal emotions of feeling in place” (p. 4), while the politics of belonging refers to whether society, either in formal or informal ways, acknowledges the person as “being in place” (p. 4). Place-belongingness refers to the internal, while the politics of belonging relate to an externally determined understanding of belonging. Antonsich (2010) understands place-belongingness as defined by the feeling of security, and feeling “at home”. Similarly to Boccagni (2017), Antonsich (2010) looks at home as a “symbolic place of familiarity, comfort, security, and emotional attachment” (p. 646). Putting the three concepts together, place belongingness implies feeling “at home, “ which means feeling safe and secure. The politics of belonging refers to a boundary making process of creating an “us” and a “them,” i.e. providing external definitions of the criteria of belonging, resulting in outcomes of who gets to be considered “inside” the political community and who gets left outside (Yuval-Davis, 2006).

My study aims to contribute to the literature on home and belonging by examining existing analytical frameworks and introducing new categories. The main starting point for conceptualizing home was Boccagni (2017) three criteria defining home: security, familiarity and control. Within this analytical framework, home was viewed through the lens of spatiality, temporality and a set of social relations, particularly family relations. When examining place belongingness, my study adds categories of analysis to the existing five aspects identified by Antonsich (2010): “auto-biographical, relational, cultural, economic and legal” (p. 647). My data analysis reveals the seven relevant categories to be: relational, ethnic, religious, linguistic, landscape, economic, and civic belonging (place-belongingness). There are some overlaps between the categorization presented in Antonsich (2010) and my own, but to draw better conclusions in a case such as Bosnia, it is useful to distinguish between, for example, ethnic, religious and linguistic belonging, as opposed to conflating them under the more generic “cultural” category. Disaggregating cultural belonging into ethnic, religious and linguistic whilst comparing these three to civic, which corresponds to legal in Antonsich (2010) also allows for a greater variety of individual combinations. For example, a more nuanced understanding of belonging encompasses several returnees who are expressly Muslim in terms of their religious belonging. They declare their BiH civic belonging and also reject all ethnic belonging. Their linguistic belonging is expressly Bosnian, which they recognize to be the same language as Croatian and Serbian.

The “myth of return” can be conceptualized in at least two different ways. On one level, the “myth of return” refers to the “psychological, cultural and political processes through which migrants sustain the idea of future return even as it becomes increasingly unlikely” (Carling et al., 2015, p. 3). Migrants while living abroad often continue to nurture their “homeland orientation” even as their actual connections with the host state grow stronger and those with the home state weaker, making physical return less and less possible or even attractive. As Antonsich (2010) points out, this type of “myth of return” results in a “neither here nor there” state for the migrants, a continuous “longing to belong” (Probyn, 1996; Ilcan, 2002), a constant source of tension characteristic of diasporas around the world (Ilcan, 2002). In this sense, home becomes “a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination” (Brah, 1996), a place of intense yearning to which the displaced “long to belong” (Probyn, 1996; Ilcan, 2002), but never actually return, as their settlement in the host country becomes a permanent reality. A second way of thinking about the “myth of return” is to perceive the idea of “return migration as a clear-cut concept” (Carling et al., 2015, p. 3) as mythical. The “mythical” element here is that the physical return of diaspora members to the home state is simple and straightforward.

My study adds to the scholarly understanding of the “myth of return” by demonstrating how the physical return of diaspora members to their homeland is anything but simple and straightforward. In fact, the return “home” is fraught with obstacles, challenges, adaptive development of strategies for overcoming these obstacles with continuous evaluation and re-evaluation of the success of return and the subsequent consideration of the possibilities for continued residence in the home state or further re-emigration. Also, similar to the first understanding of the “myth of return,” even when they do return, my study participants are often left in a neither here nor there position, excluded from belonging both in the home and host state. At other times, my study participants find themselves in a both here and there position with multiple transnational belonging becoming instrumental to the sustainability and success of their return project.

7.4 Feeling Safe/Secure, Citizenship, Home and Belonging

Results of my study add to scholarship on “citizenship as lived experience” (Nyers, 2007), “citizenship as practice” (Wood, 2013), “citizenship as feeling” (Jackson, 2016), and ultimately emotional/affective/intimate citizenship (Ahmed, 2016; Fortier, 2010; Ho, 2009; Howes & Hammett, 2016; Jackson, 2016; Johnson, 2010; Magat, 1999; Mookherjee, 2005; Wood, 2013). Although these concepts have been developed with contributions from feminist scholars, geographers, social psychologists, and anthropologists, a thorough analysis of the theoretical connections between citizenship and emotions is still in its initial stages. Also, an analysis of the actual, distinct emotions comprising home, belonging and the emotional dimension of citizenship, is missing. So far, the emotional dimension of citizenship has been theorized by geography scholars, such as Ho (2009) and Jackson (2016), by using the concepts of home and belonging. Unlike previous studies on emotional citizenship, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who decided to return to the home state, do not associate their feeling of “being at home” and their sense of belonging directly to their BiH citizenship. In other words, the emotional dimension of BiH citizenship is not conceptualized as home and belonging. The main explanation for why the returnees do not conceptualize the emotional dimension of citizenship as home and belonging is because the citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an unconsolidated, fragmented state and a post-conflict society, does not make the respondents feel secure. In other words, when asked what it feels like to be a BiH citizen, the returnees do not invoke the notions of home and belonging, mainly because the feeling of “being at home” and “belonging” requires the key component of security/safety. Security is derived from the second, pragmatic citizenship, as well as various dimensions of home and belonging, but not from the BiH citizenship.

Although the opposition is not stark and directly binary, there is an illuminating contrast between emotional and pragmatic citizenship. As discussed by Mavroudi (2008), the second or ‘pragmatic’ citizenship is obtained in order to benefit economically and socially or to increase security. Other scholars (Ong, 1999; Waters, 2003; Magat, 1999; Aguilar, 1999) interchangeably use the terms instrumental, flexible or practical citizenship to refer to the acquisition of the host state’s citizenship in order to gain certain benefits, security being the most important one. The pragmatic citizenship allows “formal membership that enables one to benefit from certain privileges bestowed by the state alone,” producing what Magat (1999) refers to as “passport identity” (p. 137). The strategically acquired second passport has pragmatic value, but not a strong emotional dimension (Mavroudi, 2008). Home state citizenship is the primary source of identity, belonging and emotional attachment, while the second citizenship provides security (Skulte-Ouaiss, 2013). However, emotional and pragmatic citizenships are not in direct opposition to each other, because the dual citizenship situation could also result in dual or multiple belonging with de-territorialized attachment (Mavroudi, 2008).

The conceptual model (see Fig. 6.2) explains and formalizes the key insight that the feeling of safety/security is derived from the returnees’ pragmatic citizenship, their conceptualization of home, understood as family, place or time and the various place-belongingness: relational, ethnic, religious, linguistic, economic, and landscape. “Feeling at home” for all citizens of BiH on the entire territory of the state of BiH to a small extent provides the possibility for the emotional dimension of BiH citizenship to be conceptualized as home. However, direct and indirect consequences of the 1992–95 war impede this proposition. Similarly, there is a weak possibility for civic belonging to create the link between the emotional dimension of BiH citizenship and belonging. Challenges in developing sustainable civic belonging that would supersede other forms, such as ethnic and religious belonging, come both internally, from “place-belongingness” (Antonsich, 2010) and externally, from the “politics of belonging” (Yuval-Davis, 2006).

7.5 What Does the Future Hold?

The Dayton Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina sets up Europe’s “most complex state” (Džankić, 2015, p. 526) and violates basic human rights, as repeated ECtHR rulings show. However, within the DPA setup, does BiH remain to be a “normal” state? As Štiks (2011) asserts, it is common practice for analysts and commentators of the BiH Constitution to emphasize its curiously inefficient and “abnormal” structure. However, an important premise to this argument is that “a more or less ethnically, culturally or linguistically homogenous and unitary nation-state is “normal“ and therefore the norm” (Štiks, 2011, p. 255). However, Bosnia and Herzegovina was never a nation-state, and as Sarajlić (2010) shows, there is a severe tension between the idiosyncrasies of the BiH historical development and standards set by the European nation-state. Most post-communist countries, including former Yugoslav states, that declared independence after the Cold War are nation-states with a “core ethnic group” (Štiks, 2011, p. 245). So, if we are to assume that a nation-state is the “norm” then Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a “normal” state. However, this assumption certainly cannot remain unchallenged. Komel (2008), by referring to Hannah Arendt’s criticism of the nation-state questions the “normalcy” of nation-states as such, where ethnic and religious uniformity demands a “stain of violence” (p. 142) with haunting echoes all the way to the Srebrenica genocide and other types of “ethnic cleansing” committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

Komel (2008) draws an interesting parallel between the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, further elucidating the nation-state dilemma as it applies to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He argues it is perhaps not by accident that the nation-state system dates back to the Westphalian Peace Treaty, which ended a century of religious warfare in Central Europe. The organizing principle of cuius regio, eius religio (Whose realm, his religion) adopted by the Westphalian system establishes a direct link between religion and territory at a time in history when religious and national belonging were virtually inseparable. Komel (2008) examines how the current crisis of citizenship in the European nation-state, through the “loss of national identity” due to newly established supranational arrangements such as the European Union, is in fact not a crisis of the state, but one of the nation. To resolve this tension, Komel (2008) calls for a pan-European “secularization”, not only on the level of separating Church and state, but for the modern European context, on the level of separation between the nation and the state, citizenship and ethnic belonging. Seen through this lens, it is not appropriate to compare directly the citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina with one of a regular, “normal” European state, such as France, Germany or Slovenia, because Bosnia was never and still is not an ethnically, culturally or religiously homogenous society. Not fitting the Eurocentric vision of a nation-state. As Štiks (2011) reminds us that historically, it is through “violence against civilians, expulsions, and ultimately mass killings” (p. 262) that the traditional European nation-state has been created.

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass atrocities should not and cannot be the path towards state formation, not post WWII, after the horrors of the Holocaust, and following the international community’s stated commitment towards “Never again!” However, there is an intense battle between professed European values, as expressed by rulings of the ECtHR, and realities on the ground in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These daily realities are dominated by ethno-national oligarchies furthering secessionist agendas, and, unfortunately, an increasingly appeasing attitude towards them, by individual European governments, the EU, and other international actors, including the United States. On December 15, 2022, Bosnia and Herzegovina was officially granted EU candidate status. The BiH Constitution needs to change according to rulings of the ECtHR in order for BiH to join the EU, however, these changes cannot come with the cost of renewed violence. “Politics of belonging” need to change, to create an inclusive polity, encompassing everybody, all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet, these changes require domestic and international political will. If seen as a small, insignificant country in the hinterlands of Europe, BiH, with all its troubles, can easily be dismissed and ignored. But Bosnia is also an open wound, a dire warning, and a haunting question for the modern nation state, itself under pressure from ethnic, racial, and religious diversification due to increasing migratory flows and changing demographics. What path to take towards a more peaceful and democratic future for the citizen, any citizen? This question is as relevant to Bosnia, as it is to any other modern European nation state.