Paper short abstract:

More than a decade after the end of the war on the Balkans, the majority of Bosnian refugees and internally displaced persons decided to stay in their receiving countries/towns constructing new places of belonging, where ‘home’ and belonging emerge as multi-located and contested sites, having manifold consequences on social relationships.

Paper long abstract:

In recent writings about migration and questions of belonging, belonging is often linked to concepts of transformations of home and identity, where people operate strategically and relationally in shaping their senses of belonging. Belonging is thus characterized by having a double dimension: it is expressed through lived experiences ("being", intersected with hegemonic regulations of identity) and through the emotional level of imagination, desire and nostalgia ("longing", often seen as a relationship to the past). Home in this sense, also has a double dimension: first of all it is an actual, concrete place of lived experiences but it is also a "metaphorical space of personal attachment" (Armbruster 2002). But sometimes home can also be a place which does not belong to the people or a place they cannot return to. Based on ethnographich research among Bosnian refugees and IDP's in Copenhagen, Vienna and Sarajevo I would like to discuss how memories of the war-related experiences are deployed and negotiated to re-establish a sense of belonging in national and transnational context. What does belonging mean for persons who have violently been driven out of their country/hometown? How strong is the identification with the place of origin? Where do they belong? In order to answer these questions, special attention will also be paid on different strategies of place-making people use to (re)connect to and (re)localize themselves within a particular place or community within a new social context and on implications this has on everyday lives and social relationships among them.