Social (De)precarisation in the Context of Post-Yugoslav Forced Migrations: Narratives from Vojvodina
Social (De)precarisation in the Context of Post-Yugoslav Forced Migrations: Narratives from Vojvodina

Summary/Abstract: The Yugoslav wars, which raged through the 1990s, not only put an end to the post-World War II Yugoslav socialist federation but also had a profound impact on the everyday realities of sense making, social identification, community building, and the securing of livelihoods in the region for decades to come. The aim of this research article – based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Vojvodina, Serbia, in 2022 –is to examine the dynamic interplay between social precarisation and deprecarisation in the context of forced migrations triggered by these armed conflicts, through a critical constructivist framework. It is based on qualitative analysis of narratives and practices of individuals who fled the territories of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia, and operates with the post-Yugoslav shared space of discourse as its main analytical frame. It emphasises a transnational reality of material and ideological efforts to tackle the loss of home, important social relationships, and trust. It shows how post-migration means of making sense of multifaceted conflicts, alliances, and processes of identification in the realm of (co)ethnicity, politics, and (moral) economy render contemporary nationalist projects ambiguous and unstable by interconnecting various pre- and post-war experiences which transcend clear-cut, mainly ethno-religious and national, boundaries.

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