Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the systematic juridical redefinition of the "right to the house" in BiH from the '90 and document the cultural attempt of displaced Sarajevans to cope with this ever-changing law which define their entitlement to the house and the burocratic procedure to privatize it.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to analyse the continuous juridical redefinition of the "right to house" in Bosnia-Herzegovina from the '90 until the present in tune with the very rapid shift across different political systems: socialist, ethno national-humanitarian and capitalist.

The legal change, ended with the generalized implementation of private property, has occurred in a so compressed time to make difficult for inhabitants to distinguish in practice between legal and illegal use of the house and to get oriented in the brand new burocratic procedure of privatisation necessary to legalize their position.

My presentation will explore briefly the huge amount of legal measures issued by local and international institutions but it will mainly document, with ethnographic data, how displaced persons, returning in previous social property buildings in Sarajevo try to culturally re-establish, in everyday practice, the blurred frontier between legal and illegal use of domestic and infra-domestic space.