Original scientific paper
Twenty-five years later: The impact of war and forcible displacement on collective identities of Semberians and refugees in Bijeljina
Maja Pupovac
; Department of Balkan, Slavonic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki
Abstract
Studying this topic with a significant time distance of two and a half
decades, this paper addresses the question of how war and forcible
displacement affected the collective identities of Serb residents of Bijeljina, a city in the northeast of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In particular,
the paper examines the relationship between the local population
and formerly internally displaced persons (IDPs) – Semberians (the
native population of the region Semberia, with Bijeljina as its largest
city) and refugees (population that is largely internally displaced and
moved into Bijeljina during the war of the 1990s), as well as how this
relationship influenced the creation, modification and development
of their collective identities. The paper aims to highlight the wide
array of identities that exist within the Serb ethnic group and within
this particular micro-community, which plays a significant role in
the integration process of former IDPs, and their understanding of
themselves and others. As the case of Bijeljina exemplifies, the war
and the forcible displacement of the population in Bosnia and Herzegovina have not only created strong divisions between different
ethnic groups, but also within the same ethnic group. While some of
these divisions persist only at the level of a stereotypical representation
of the ‘other’, others have the potential to create significant
social divisions between different groups of population, not only in
the Bijeljinan micro-community, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a
whole.
Keywords
Bosnia and Herzegovin; , Bijeljina; internally displaced persons; collective identities; refugees
Hrčak ID:
238210
URI
Publication date:
23.5.2020.
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