Original scientific paper
Return and Reintegration of Minority Refugees: The Complexity of the Serbian Returnees Experiences in the Town of Glina
Viktor Koska
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This paper explores the reintegration challenges Serbian refugees face as they attempt to return to local Croatian communities. It provides a comparison between the modes of cooperation, levels of trust and social networks that existed before the war in the 1990s with those that have developed upon their return. Furthermore, this paper explores the returnees’ perceptions of public institutions, and more specifically their incentives for return and integration. Reintegration cannot be understood as a singular process that results in one absolute returnee experience. Rather, this study will analyse reintegration as a set of complex processes, decisions and perceptions resulting from varying conditions and experiences. In order to successfully evaluate these experiences, this paper will focus on ‘practical categories’, and how they gain or lose meaning in public and private environments. Utilizing this approach, this paper will argue that the setting to which a Serbian refugee returned affected his or her experience, producing both feelings of inclusion and exclusion.
Keywords
return; reintegration; minority returnees; town Glina; Brubaker; ethnicity as category
Hrčak ID:
39939
URI
Publication date:
7.7.2009.
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