Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:54:09.348Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

When the “People” Leave: On the Limits of Nationalist (Bio)Politics in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2020

Larisa Kurtović Open the ORCID record for Larisa Kurtović [Opens in a new window]
Larisa Kurtović*
Affiliation:
School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the social and political effects produced by the most recent wave of emigration in postwar Bosnia, widely understood to be the result of continued political instability and economic decline that followed the 1992–95 war. Drawing on ethnographic research in a deindustrialized Bosnian town and analysis of popular discourses seeking to make sense of this new wave of departures, I show how the phenomenon of postwar exit impacts those staying behind and inspires new forms of reflection that link past histories of violence to more recent forms of dispossession. The emergence of such forms of historical consciousness reveals that postwar migration is haunted both by the memory of wartime expulsions and ethnic cleansing, as well as by the often-unacknowledged violence of postwar economic restructuring glossed as the postsocialist transition. In asking what happens to nationalist regimes, as well as scholarship on nationalist politics, when the “people” leave, I demonstrate the need to analyze the ongoing out-migration both in terms of Bosnia’s historical specificity and global political-economic dynamics. In so doing, I show how absences created by these departures create new vantage points that bring to light and expose unsettling political configurations left behind by the Bosnian war.

Keywords

Bosnia-Herzegovinanationalist politicslabor migrationemptinessethnic cleansing
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 49 , Issue 5 , September 2021 , pp. 873 - 892
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ådnanes, Marian. 2004. “Exit and/or Voice? Youth and Post-Communist Citizenship in Bulgaria.” Political Psychology 25 (5): 795–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Catherine. 2012. “Prosperity without Security: The Precarity of Interpreters in Postsocialist, Postconflict Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Slavic Review 71 (4): 849–872.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin-Edwards, Marin. 2006. “Patterns of Migration in the Balkans.” MMO Working Paper No. 9. Mediterranean Migration Observatory.Google Scholar
Baučić, Ivo. 1973. Radnici u inozemstvu prema popisu stanovništva Jugoslavije 1971. Zagreb: Studies of the Institute of Geography University of Zagreb.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren Gail. 2008. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bille, Mikkel, Hastrup, Frida, and Sørensen, Tim Flohr, eds. 2010. An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bougarel, Xavier, Helms, Elissa, and Duijzings, Ger. 2007. The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-War Society. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Boračić-Mršo, Selma. 2019. “Za šest godina BiH napustilo više od pola miliona ljudi.” Radio Slobodna Evropa, September 2, 2019. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/odlasci-iz-bih/30142260.html. (Accessed November 16, 2019.)Google Scholar
Brković, Čarna. 2017. Managing Ambiguity: How Clientelism, Citizenship, and Power Shape Personhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina. New York: Berghahn Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunnbauer, Ulf. 2016. Globalizing Southeastern Europe: Emigrants, America, and the State since the Late Nineteenth Century. Lanham: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Buden, Boris, and Dokuzović, Lina. 2018. They’ll Never Walk Alone:the Life and Afterlife of Gastarbeiters. Wien: Transversal Texts.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 2011. Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. Cultures of History. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Croegaert, Ana. 2011. “Who Has Time for Ćejf? Postsocialist Migration and Slow Coffee in Neoliberal Chicago.” American Anthropologist 113 (3): 463–477.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Croegaert, Ana. 2018. “Cars, Coffee, and ‘The Crisis’: Balkan Migration in Precarious Times.” In Everyday Life in the Balkans, edited by Montgomery, David W., 133–144. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Čapo-Zmegač, Jasna. 2011. Strangers Either Way: The Lives of Croatian Refugees in Their New Home (European Anthropology in Translation). New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, Ann. 2012. Depression: A Public Feeling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Dawdy, Shannon Lee. 2010. “Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity.” Current Anthropology 51 (6): 761–793.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denich, Bette S. 1976. “Urbanization and Women’s Roles in Yugoslavia.” Anthropological Quarterly 49 (1): 11–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driessen, Miriam. 2018. “Rural Voids.” Public Culture 30 (1): 61–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, Elizabeth. 2004. Privatizing Poland : Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Dunn, Elizabeth C. 2017. No Path Home: Humanitarian Camps and the Grief of Displacement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dzenovska, Dace. 2013. “The Great Departure: Rethinking National(ist) Common Sense.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (2): 201–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dzenovska, Dace. 2014. “Bordering Encounters, Sociality and Distribution of the Ability to Live a ‘Normal Life.’ ” Social Anthropology 22 (3): 271–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dzenovska, Dace. 2018. “Emptiness and Its Futures.” Focaal 80: 16–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eastmond, Marita. 2006. “Transnational Returns and Reconstruction in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina.” International Migration 44 (3): 141–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edensor, Tim. 2005. “The Ghosts of Industrial Ruins: Ordering and Disordering Memory in Excessive Space.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23 (6): 829–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El-Shaarawi, Nadia, and Razsa, Maple. 2019. “Movements upon Movements: Refugee and Activist Struggles to Open the Balkan Route to Europe.” History and Anthropology 30 (1): 91–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehervary, Krisztina. 2009. “Goods and States: The Political Logic of State-Socialist Material Culture.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51 (2): 426–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76. Edited by Bertani, Mauro, Fontana, Alessandro, and Ewald, François. Translated by Macey, David. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Andrew C. 2020. International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy: Encounters in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordillo, Gastón. 2014. Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Jessica. 2011. “On the Road to Normal: Negotiating Agency and State Sovereignty in Postsocialist Serbia.” American Anthropologist 113 (1): 88–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadžimusić, Aida. 2019. “Iseljavanje stanovništva-(ne)rješivi problem a bh. vlast.” N1, January 25, 2019. http://ba.n1info.com/documents/1292299/comments/Vijesti/Iseljavanje-stanovnistva-ne-rjesivi-problem-za-bh.-vlast.html. (Accessed November 16, 2019.)Google Scholar
Halilovich, Hariz. 2015. Places of Pain: Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-Local Identities in Bosnian War-Torn Communities. Space and Place 10. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Halpern, Joel. 1987. “Yugoslav Migration and Employment in Western Europe.” In Migrants in Europe: The Role of Family, Labor, and Politics, edited by Buechler, Hans. C. and Buechler, Judith-Maria, 91–115. New York: Greenwood Press, 91–115.Google Scholar
Hawrylyshyn, Oli. 1977. “Ethnic Affinity and Migration Flows in Postwar Yugoslavia.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 26 (1): 93–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, Robert M. 1999. Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. 2004 [1970]. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Helms, Elissa. 2010. “The Gender of Coffee: Women and Reconciliation Initiatives in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina” Focaal 57: 17–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hockenos, Paul. 2003. Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvat, Srećko, and Štiks, Igor, eds. 2015. Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics after Yugoslavia. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Hromadžić, Azra. 2013. “Discourses of Trans-Ethnic Narod in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Nationalities Papers 41 (2): 259–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hromadžić, Azra. 2015. Citizens of an Empty Nation: Youth and State-Making in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Ethnography of Political Violence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hromadžić, Azra. 2016. “Affective Labour: Work, Love, and Care for the Elderly in Bihać.” In Negotiating Social Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Semiperipheral Entanglements, edited by Jansen, Stef, Brković, Čarna, and Čelebičić, Vanja, 79–93. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hromadžić, Azra. 2018. “Streets, Scum and People: Discourses of (in)Civility in Postwar Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Anthropological Theory 18 (2/3): 326–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hromadžić, Azra. 2019. “Uninvited Citizens: Violence, Spatiality and Urban Ruination in Postwar and Postsocialist Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 4 (2/3): 114–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huseinović, Samir. 2019. “Egzodus iz Bosne i Hercegovine.” Deutche Welle, July 5, 2019. https://www.dw.com/hr/egzodus-iz-bosne-i-hercegovine/a-49490471. (Accessed November 16, 2019.)Google Scholar
Institute for Social Research. 2013. Migration from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Sarajevo: Faculty of Political Science, University of Sarajevo, and the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees.Google Scholar
Jansen, Stef. 2006. “The Privatisation of Home and Hope: Return, Reforms and the Foreign Intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Dialectical Anthropology 30 (3): 177–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Stef. 2007. “Troubled Locations: Return, the Life Course, and Transformations of ‘Home’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Focaal 2007 (49): 15–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Stef. 2011. “Refuchess: Locating Bosniac Repatriates after the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Population, Space and Place 17 (2): 140–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Stef. 2015. Yearnings in the Meantime Normal Lives and the State in a Sarajevo Apartment Complex. New York: Berghahn Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Stef, Brković, Čarna, and Čelebičić, Vanja, eds. 2016. Negotiating Social Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Semiperipheral Entanglements. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Stef, and Helms, Elissa. 2009. “The White Plague: National-Demographic Rhetoric and Its Gendered Resonance after the Post-Yugoslav Wars.” In Gender Dynamics and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, edited by Eifler, Christine and Seifert, Ruth, 219–243. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Jašarević, Larisa. 2017. Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Dana N. 2019. “‘If You Look at the Sky You Step in Sh*t’: Horizons of Possibility and Migration from Serbia.” Social Anthropology 27 (4): 655–670.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judah, Tim. 2019. “Bye-Bye, Balkans: A Region in the Critical Demographic Decline.” Balkan Insight, October 14, 2019. https://balkaninsight.com/2019/10/14/bye-bye-balkans-a-region-in-critical-demographic-decline/. (Accessed November 16, 2019.)Google Scholar
Kačapor-Džihić, Zehra, and Oruč, Nermin. 2012. “Social Impact of Emigration and Rural-Urban Migration in Central and Eastern Europe. Final Country Report: Bosnia and Herzegovina.” European Commission DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.Google Scholar
Kadušić, Alma, and Suljić, Alija. 2018. “Migration and Demographic Changes: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina.” European Journal of Geography 9 (4): 75–86.Google Scholar
Kajmović, Amer. 2019. “Zapanjujući podaci: Novi pokazatelji otkrivaju koliko u BiH zaista ima stanovnika,” Oslobodjenje, January 28, 2019. https://www.oslobodjenje.ba/vijesti/bih/zapanjujuci-podaci-novi-pokazatelji-otkrivaju-koliko-u-bih-zaista-ima-stanovnika-429025. (Accessed March 12, 2019.)Google Scholar
Kaminić, Đenana. 2017 “HNK: Sve manje prvačića, sve više ljudi odlazi iz BiH.” N1 BiH, August 14, 2017. Available at: http://ba.n1info.com/Vijesti/a179655/HNK-Sve-manje-prvacica-sve-vise-ljudi-odlazi-iz-BiH.html. (Accessed March 15, 2019.)Google Scholar
Kosiński, Leszek A. 1978. “Yugoslavia and International Migration.” Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne Des Slavistes 20 (3): 314–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurtović, Larisa, and Hromadžić, Azra. 2017. “Cannibal States, Empty Bellies: Protest, History and Political Imagination in Post-Dayton Bosnia.” Critique of Anthropology 37 (3): 262–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurtović, Larisa. 2011. “What Is a Nationalist? Some Thoughts on the Question from Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Anthropology of East Europe Review 29 (2): 242–253.Google Scholar
Kurtović, Larisa. 2016. “Future Conditional: Precarious Lives, Strange Loyalties and Ambivalent Subjects of Dayton BiH.” In Negotiating Social Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Semiperipheral Entanglements, edited by Jansen, Stef, Brković, Čarna, and Čelebičić, Vanja, 142–156. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kurtović, Larisa. 2018. “Conjuring ‘the People’: The 2013 Babylution Protests and Desire for Political Transformation in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Focaal 80: 43–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Normand, Brigitte. 2016. “The Gastarbajteri as a Transnational Yugoslav Working Class.” In Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism, edited by Archer, Rory, Duda, Igor, and Stubbs, Paul, 38–57. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lorber, Verena. 2017. “To Come into Focus: Female ‘Guest Workers’ from Former Yugoslavia in Austria (1960–1980).” In Migration in Austria, edited by Bischof, Günter and Rupnow, Dirk, 161–186. New Orleans, LA: University of New Orleans Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mihajlović, Steven. 1987. “Yugoslav Gastarbeiter: The Guest Who Stayed for Dinner.” Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business 8 (1): 181–197.Google Scholar
Molnar, Christopher, A. 2019. Memory, Politics, and Yugoslav Migrations to Postwar Germany. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Adam. 2017. “US Military Logistics Outsourcing and the Everywhere of War.” Territory, Politics, Governance 5 (1): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2012. The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Reilly, Karen. 2012. “Ethnographic Returning, Qualitative Longitudinal Research and the Reflexive Analysis of Social Practice.” The Sociological Review 60 (3): 518–536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlica, Branko. 2005. “Migrations from Yugoslavia to Germany: Migrants, Emigrants, Refugees and Asylum-Seekers.” Medjunarodni Problemi 57 (1/2): 121–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedersen, Morten Axel. 2016. “Moving to Remain the Same: An Anthropological Theory of Nomadism.” In Comparative Metaphysics: Ontology after Anthropology, edited by Charbonnier, Pierre, 219–243. Reinventing Critical Theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield International.Google Scholar
Primorac, Emil, and Babić, Mate. 1989. “Systemic Changes and Unemployment Growth in Yugoslavia, 1965–1984.” Slavic Review 48 (2): 195–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ringel, Felix. 2018. Back to the Postindustrial Future: An Ethnography of Germany’s Fastest-Shrinking City. 1st ed. EASA Series 33. New York: Berghahn Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roitman, Janet L. 2014. Anti-Crisis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sadiković, Mirna. 2019. “Poslodavci traže načine da zaustave odlazak radnika iz BiH.” Radio Slobodna Evropa, July 24, 2019. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/poslodavci-tra%C5%BEe-na%C4%8Din-da-zaustave-odlazak-radne-snage-iz-bih/30073185.html. (Accessed November 16, 2019.)Google Scholar
Sandić-Hadžihasanović, Gordana. 2019. “Iz BIH otišla gotovo polovica ljudi: neće da budu taoci politike.” Radio Slobodna Evrpa, October 30, 2019. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/bih-otislo-gotovo-polovica-ljudi/30244167.html. (Accessed November 16, 2019.)Google Scholar
Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Šavija-Valha, Nebojša. 2019. “Jajce: The Machine for Production of History.” Sarajevo: Nansen Dialogue Centre.Google Scholar
Schwenkel, Christina. 2013. “Postsocialist Affect: Ruination and Reconstruction of the Nation in Urban Vietnam.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (2): 252–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shonick, Kaja. 2009. “Politics, Culture, and Economics: Reassessing the West German Guest Worker Agreement with Yugoslavia.” Journal of Contemporary History 44 (4): 719–736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simić, Andrei. 1974. “Urbanization and Cultural Process in Yugoslavia.” Anthropological Quarterly 47 (2): 211–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sippola, Markku. 2013. “The Awkward Choices Facing the Baltic Worker: Exit or Loyalty.” Journal of Baltic Studies 44 (4): 451–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai. 2016. “Soviet Debris: Failure and the Poetics of Unfinished Construction in Northern Siberia.” Social Research: An International Quarterly 83 (3): 689–721.Google Scholar
Stefansson, Anders H. 2006. “Homes in the Making: Property Restitution, Refugee Return, and Senses of Belonging in a Post-War Bosnian Town.” International Migration 44 (3): 115–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stefansson, Anders H. 2010. “Coffee after Cleansing?” Focaal 2010 (57): 62–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura, ed. 2013. Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tikveša, Amer. 2016. “I Ovce i Novce: Srednjoškolsko Obrazovanje u Jajcu.” Školegijum, July 22, 2016. http://www.skolegijum.ba/tekst/index/1023/i-ovce-i-novce. (Accessed June 5, 2020.)Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Toal, Gerard., and Dahlman, Carl. T.. 2011. Bosnia Remade: Ethnic Cleansing and Its Reversal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veselinović, Gojko. 2018. “Đaka sve manje, udžbenici sve skuplji.” Slobodna Evropa, September 3, 2018. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/đaka-sve-manje-udžbenici-sve-skuplji/29468427.html. (Accessed March 15, 2019.)Google Scholar
Vigh, Henrik. 2008. “Crisis and Chronicity: Anthropological Perspectives on Continuous Conflict and Decline.” Ethnos 73 (1): 5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Sarah. 2008. To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing. Berkley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas, and Schiller, Nina Glick. 2002. “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences.” Global Networks 2 (4): 301–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winland, Daphne. 2002. “The Politics of Desire and Disdain: Croatian Identity between ‘Home’ and ‘Homeland.’” American Ethnologist 29 (3): 693–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank. 2019. “Migration and Brain Drain.” Europe and Central Asia Economic Update (Fall). Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Woolfson, Charles. 2010. “‘Hard Times’ in Lithuania: Crisis and ‘Discourses of Discontent’ in Post-Communist Society.” Ethnography 11 (4): 487–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, Susan. L. 1995. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yarrow, Thomas. 2017. “Remains of the Future: Rethinking the Space and Time of Ruination through the Volta Resettlement Project, Ghana.” Cultural Anthropology 32 (4): 566–591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar