Idea Transcript
Journal of Refiigce Studies Vol. II. No. 2 1998
Nationalist Discourses and the Construction of Difference: Bosnian Muslim Refugees in Sweden1 MARITA EASTMOND
This article explores practices and discourses that shape and articulate refugees' lives and identities, with a particular focus on a community of Bosnian Muslim refugees in Sweden. The dynamics through which cultural distinctiveness and ethnic boundaries emerge as legitimate and essential is seen through the lens of different frameworks of nationalist thought about culture, place and identity, linking institutions and discourses in postwar Bosnia, the host society and refugee research. Outlining the contexts in which such discourses become salient, the article also examines the ways in which they are negotiated at the level of the refugee community. What is the relevance of the emerging Bosnjak nation to those in exile and how does it interact with other social identities? How do they respond to increasingly 'culturalist' practices of the host country, including the tendency to medicalize refugees' experiences? The questions are explored in relation to refugees' lived experience of war and the exigencies of everyday life in exile. Introduction
The construction of significant difference is part of demarcating and legitimating boundaries between groups, and central in all ethnic-nationalist thought. This paper aims to explore such processes in the interaction between refugees and the host society. First, the articulation of difference is examined at the intersection of three discursive domains related to, and affecting, refugees: the exile discourse of Bosnian Muslim refugees in search of a post-war identity; the receiving society's policy and practice; and generalizing research models on 'the refugee experience'. These discourses reflect similar notions about identity, place, culture and exile and tend to essentialize differences in ways which reflect an underlying idiom of what Malkki (1995a) refers to as 'the national order of things'. In the predominant modern conception of the world order, the nationstate is the given basis of identity and culture, the 'natural' place to live and belong (Bauman 1990). Nationalist sentiments and rhetorics are becoming increasingly salient not only as a force in generating conflicts andrefugeesbut
O Oxford Univcnity Preu 1998
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Department of Social Anthropology, Gdteborg University, Sweden
162 Marita Eastmond
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also in shaping the policies of acceptance and accommodation of refugees in increasingly restrictive receiving societies. They therefore form important ideological frameworks in which refugees are to reconstitute their lives and identities, and influence the orientations of both refugees and hosts to integration and repatriation. Second, the study is concerned with the social meanings construed around identity and 'national consciousness' as Bosnian Muslims, within these ideological frameworks, in relation to lived experience and to the situation of exile. In this ethnographic perspective, refugees are seen as subjects making sense of their past, not least the recent war, and the exigencies of their present, rather than as passive victims simply going through the stages of adaptation or assimilation. This approach illuminates the dynamic interplay between nationalist politics and the ways in which these are interpreted and negotiated by actors in coping with the challenges of their everyday lives. Importantly, for refugees, this 'everyday life' is framed by and straddles different social contexts and places at the same time: sending and receiving societies, exile communities, and other, globally dispersed and transnational networks to which refugees are connected. The Bosnians in Sweden, like many other refugee groups, today receive direct TV and radio broadcasts from Bosnia and from other diaspora networks (these 'virtual nationalisms' add another dimension to the 'imagined' community, as described by Anderson, 1983). Frequent visits to the home country and to friends and relatives in other countries of asylum, economic remittances, voting in elections at home, and double residency of households are examples of different forms of continued participation in both societies. These complex and translocal webs of social relations and cultural meanings thus form the context in which lives and identities are reconstituted. Processes of ethnic identity and boundaries in exile therefore constitute a continuing dynamic that draws on events and discourses in different contexts. For the Bosnian Muslims, conditions in Bosnia form one such important context, especially here the assertion of ethnic and cultural difference brought on by nationalist politics and the war. These form part of post-war realities (as reflected, for instance, in many areas of education and mass media) and run parallel to a multi-ethnic state policy. They imply stressing difference and rejecting much of the pre-war, cultural commonality that did exist in many areas of everyday life of multi-ethnic Bosnia. We know very little as yet about the extent to which such culturalist policies are being embraced, pursued, modified or contested by actors at the level of local life. Second, these events and policies in Bosnia form the backdrop against which their identity as Muslims, their past and present, are construed in the context of Swedish society. The question then is, whether and in what ways this identity becomes relevant in exile in relation to the exigencies of everyday life—how does life as linked to both societies shape the dynamic of ethnic identity? This approach also suggests a contribution to theory in the area of nationalism, identity and exile. In contrast to the predominantly macro-level study of the politics of nation-building, it focuses on the way in which
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Bosnian Muslim Refugees and the Promotion of 'National Consciousness'
In a general principle or blanket decision by the Swedish government in June 1993, the large majority of Bosnian asylum-seekers in the country were granted permanent residence, in the majority of cases on humanitarian grounds. Together with family reunions, the figure in 1996 approached 70,000, making it the largest single refugee group received to date. The majority are Bosnian Muslims, young and often well-educated families, from a variety of geographical areas and social backgrounds. In accordance with the Swedish policy of dispersal, the refugees have been settled in communities all over Sweden. In a very short time, the Bosnian refugees have formed their own associations in the form provided for and funded by the Swedish pluralist policy for immigrants and minorities. Thus, the National Association of Bosnia-Hercegovina heads a growing number of local associations. While
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nationalist ideologies and culturalist policies are perceived from the vantage point of local life; here, identities and boundaries are negotiated in everyday social interaction and in relation to other social identities, such as class and gender. Malkki (1995a) showed the importance of local circumstances for shaping the significance of nationalist discourses among Hutu refugees in Tanzania. The present study also problematizes the fact that, for most refugees, such ethnic identity constructions are formed in the dynamic interplay between different socio-political contexts of everyday life in which refugees are involved and thus must be seen as translocal and transnational phenomena. The first part of the paper will deal with the social construction of a national identity among Bosnian Muslim refugees in Sweden, as expressed in this discourse, with a particular focus on the mobilization of culture and history as symbols of community and markers of ethnic boundaries. Data are based on participant observation and interviews in a community of about 300 Bosnian refugees, the majority of whom are Muslims, settled in a Swedish town. The focus is primarily on the official discourse emanating from the local association, but also on the negotiations of identity that take place in more informal contexts of family and kin-based networks. The second part will examine the interactions of these ethnic constructions of identity with those ascribed them by the host society, with data drawn in part from interviews with different local agents of refugee settlement, such as social workers, teachers, and the employment exchange. The identity as Bosnian refugees is also being shaped and articulated in response to the position as refugees in Sweden which resonates with the world-wide image of Bosnian war refugees. I will look at some aspects of these discourses of the host society including its uses of 'culture' as a concept of significant difference that may create practices of exclusion. Finally, with reference to current debate, I will draw some parallels with the ways in which our own research models may contribute to the essentialization of 'refugeeness' and the medicalization of 'victims of war'.
164 Marita Eastmond
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fulfilling the function of orientating newcomers characteristic of migrants' associations, they also provide an important link to the institutions of the home country. One of their major objectives is '. . . to promote national consciousness' (Medic 1995). An outgrowth of the local associations is extracurricular instruction in history, geography, literature and language, and Islam. Bosnian Muslim congregations are also forming, particularly in the larger urban areas. These associations constitute the major arena for the articulation and affirmation of a national identity. The associations are formally open to all citizens of Bosnia-Hercegovina. In practice, they almost exclusively involve Bosnian Muslims. Other national categories from Bosnia tend to prefer the long-established Serbian and Croatian associations of labour migrants from former Yugoslavia, if any. The Bosnian associations thus reflect the ambiguity of post-war politics in Bosnia, an officially multi-ethnic policy within which the member groups promote their own ethnic nationalisms. The manifestations of a Muslim identity and culture presented below represent a wide range of political positions and degree of engagement by individuals and families, from an antagonistic and exclusivist nationalist ideology for a Muslim state to a multi-ethnic and democratic Bosnia-Hercegovina. As personal strategies to reconstitute life, these positions may shift in response to the shifts and uncertainties of the economic and political conditions in the home country as well as in the host country. Indeed, in comparison with political movements in exile (e.g. Eastmond 1989, 1996), the discourse described here is neither very unified nor ideologically very elaborate; it is not clearly grounded in distinct political alternatives and affiliations that form the basis of social organization and a normative exile culture.2 Before the war, few of the refugees had been involved or interested in politics or ideological issues. Their engagement had rather been with the family-based projects for materially and socially secure lives (Eastmond et al. 1994). Those supporting the multi-ethnic route for Bosnia-Hercegovina face the dilemma of having lost faith in the multi-ethnic system they grew up in, while lacking a viable pluralist alternative to the nation-state model. In the absence of clear ideological alternatives or other belief systems to provide engagement and hope, and in view of the massive and disruptive changes that most have suffered, there is an acute need for stability and a sense of continuity. In this light one should see the broad appeal of the 'imagined continuity' offered by the ethno-nationalist logic: creating a future and a destiny with reference to the past, in which culture and history are engaged not only to validate political claims, but also to form the basis of a continuous identity and community connected to a place. Thus, irrespective of engagement with ethno-nationalist positions today, there is an overall strong support for a more clearly demarcated 'national consciousness' and a restored pride in their national heritage. The support is grounded in concerns denned in terms of resistance to the nationalist aggression of Serbs and Croats and a means to prevent future atrocities; it also emerges in response to the insecurities and turbulent changes caused by war and exile. Many parents in the refugee
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As a social category, 'Muslim' has been an ambiguous term, referring both to nation and to faith. Although, as Allcock points out (1992), the ethnogenesis of the Muslim nation has deeper historical roots, it was designated in specifically national terms during the Federation. According to Allcock, this was an attempt by the Federation to resolve the dilemma with a SerboCroatian speaking Muslim population in Bosnia claimed by both Serbs and Croats. In 1961, as a narodnost or nationality, they were defined as Muslim in the ethnic sense, rather than the religious sense, although the content of that ethnic identity has always been unclear (ibid.). In 1971, they obtained the status of narod or nation. The continued relevance of a Muslim identity is suggested by the fact that the census in that and following years showed a drastic increase in the designation 'Muslim' and a corresponding fall in the 'Yugoslav'
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community, most of whom grew up with the communalist ethos of the Yugoslav Federation, pay a good deal of attention to communicating and shaping this new national pride their children. They claim that it is something they themselves have been denied, and that lacking such a sense of history and identity made them victims of the war. A challenge in shaping that national consciousness is the moulding of an exclusive identity out of the commonality of lived experience and cultural repertoire in many areas of everyday life in multi-ethnic Bosnia. The multiethnic ethos was expressed in the policy of 'Bratstvo i Jedinstvo' or 'Brotherhood and Unity' and was reflected perhaps more strongly in Bosnia than in the other republics of the Federation. This official ideology encouraged a pan-Yugoslav identity, but as censuses and their construction of categories from that period suggest, ethno-national categories remained 'the norm' (Zarkov 1995 in Morokvasic 1998). Nevertheless, social class and local identities (region, town, village) were often more relevant in most spheres of daily interaction than ethnicity, especially in more secularized urban populations. It was here that inter-ethnic marriages were most common: Bringa (1995) cites an estimated 27 per cent of all marriages in pre-war Bosnia. This suggests a stronger opposition to intermarriage in actual practice than that indicated by a social survey of Bosnia from 1988: around 21 per cent said they were opposed to marriage with other groups (Croat, Muslim, Serb) where the cleavage between Muslims and others seemed most marked (cited in Meznaric 1994). However, the war and the revival of ethnic nationalism seems to have produced a stronger objection to mixed marriages, as noted among the refugees. The majority of my informants are married within their ethnic group. The attitudes to marriage over three generations reflect the changing society: those born in the 1940s and 50s and who have made the social transition from rural to urban life, often claim that the parental generation had wanted them to marry within their group, but that they themselves, as secularized modern people, may not have demanded that of their own children; now, after the war, they and their teenage children strongly oppose interethnic marriage. 'We have learnt our lesson', as one of them put it (and very few of the youngsters have romantic relationships outside their group).
166 Marita Eastmond
The Construction of Difference: Symbolic Boundary Markers
History is central in the constitution of an ethnic identity. The identity of Bosnjak is now being claimed and elaborated by many Muslims with new force, thus echoing a historical and contemporary controversy in Bosnia-Hercegovina linked to the ethno-genesis of the Bosnian Muslims (see debate cited in Bringa 1995). In the past, Bosnjak shifted between an inclusive use, encompassing all groups in Bosnia, and a more exclusive one, referring to Muslims only; as a nationality term for the latter, it developed in the second half of the 19th century in response to Serbian and Croatian nationalist ideologies. After the recent war and given political backing, Bosnjak in its exclusive sense has established itself more firmly, and has gained increasing currency in the Sarajevo media and in the new elementary school textbooks in Bosnia, also available in many refugee communities. In the fourth grade history book for instance, the Bosnjaci Muslims are presented as the original people, the descendants of the homogeneous medieval Bosnjani population (Imamovic and Bosnjak 1994, cited in Macek 1997). According to my informants, this Bosnjak identity, in a popular version reflecting a more
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category—but notably they were constructed as mutually exclusive categories, implying one could not be both (e.g. Morokvasic 1998). The identity of'Bosnian' in pre-war Yugoslavia, according to Bringa (1995), was a regional one, not politically relevant or ideologically backed as a territorially based 'nation'; rather, it straddled, but did not subsume, its component national or ethnic-religious communities of Muslims (44 per cent), Serbs (31 per cent) and Croats (17.5 per cent). After the war, 'Bosnian' carries new and politicized connotations: in Bosnia, those who refer to themselves as 'Bosnians' and support a multi-ethnic policy are predominantly Muslims and those of ethnically mixed origin. Similarly, in the Swedish context, the category of 'refugees from Bosnia' are predominantly Muslims or mixed, and the two are becoming coterminous among the host population (to the dismay of other Bosnian nationalities in Sweden). 'Bosnian' or 'Bosnian-Muslim' are terms they often use to identify themselves in contacts with the host society. It is now a clearly political category, referring to citizenship in the state of BosniaHercegovina, used in contrast to Swedish or other state citizenships. In a more restricted sense, as in Bosnia, the term 'Bosnian' refers to an ideological multiethnic position and is used in contrast to (or in some instances including) the more nationalist term 'Bosnjak' explained further on. Below I will look more closely at some of the ways in which the post-war search for identity and a greater 'national consciousness' is given content and expression in exile. Here, as in other such processes, culture formulated as a common heritage becomes a creative tool for articulating ethnic distinctiveness and resonates with the well-known nationalist discourse. However, these symbolic expressions may also be seen to relate to lived experience of war and exile and attempts to make sense of them (cf. Eastmond 1989, 1993).
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academic debate at home, is further related to the Bogomils, members of a heretic sect and the Bosnian Church of medieval times, with mythical connotations in Bosnian history. These understandings thus refute claims by Croats or Serbs, in the debate of previous years, that Muslims were originally Catholic or Orthodox who later converted after the Ottoman conquest; they also counter the derogatory label 'Turks', often voiced as an insult during the war. In this conflict over historical precedence in Bosnia, this exclusive identity is of course highly contested by the non-Muslim Bosnians among the refugees. What the Bosnjak identity does, in contrast to the ambiguous Muslim category, and central in all nationalist discourse, is to make the historical connection clear between a people and a certain territory. Following the same logic, new and increasingly distinct national languages are emerging in Bosnia. The claims by Muslims to 'Bosnian' as their language echo a debate salient in different periods of nationalist politics (can 'Bosnian' be seen as a separate language and if so, is it the language of the Muslims or of the entire population of Bosnia?). With the government policy of 1993, the official standard dialect (ijekavica) of what was formerly 'Serbo-Croatian' can be designated according to the self-ascribed identity of the speaker as either Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian. While reflecting multi-ethnic tolerance, it also acknowledges 'Bosnian' as the national language of the Muslims. At the same time, in the areas of Bosnia controlled by Serbs and Croats, the official language adopted is the variety used in Serbia and Croatia, respectively. Reflecting such language politics, linguistic differentiation is rapid (while dialectical differences were never clearly co-terminous with ethnic identity in pre-war Bosnia). A good example of the subtle means by which difference can be created and charged with meaning as a national boundary marker is the Muslim phoneme 'h', reintroduced into spelling, and with a distinctively guttural pronunciation. The new grammar of the Bosnian language ascribes this phoneme particular significance as an old Bosnian pronunciation retained by Muslims while having been lost or replaced in the languages of other Bosnian groups and ignored by the official Serbo-Croatian standard of the former regime (Vajzovic 1994). A distinctive Muslim heritage is further promoted in the new textbooks on Bosnian literature, excluding non-Muslim and especially Serbian authors (Macek 1997). Media, educational, and other official institutions are well-known principal actors in this process. The discrepancy with everyday practice, as noted by many of my informants, is evident in the way TV broadcasts, for instance, use words people do not as yet understand or even find ridiculous. In the refugee community, as in Bosnia, the new forms are primarily used in special formal contexts such as media and textbooks, in politicized texts and on occasions when the community comes together to celebrate their cultural heritage. In everyday language, however, the conscious practice of these forms varies considerably between families, depending on their active engagement with national consciousness and also with social background and level of education. While in some households 'correct Bosnian forms' are intensely debated at the kitchen table, others may
168 Marita Eastmond
Islam as a Basis of Identity
It is well recognized among scholars of nationalism (e.g. Anderson 1983; Kapferer 1988) that religion is a forceful symbolic medium in nationalist discourse and that it is easily politicized in ethnic-nationalist conflicts. With the recent war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Muslim identity and Islam entered the political centre stage; doing so, it built on the long-standing historical connection, also in everyday speech, between ethnic and religious categories (Muslim, Serb-Orthodox and Croat-Catholic) (e.g. Sorabji 1994). Today, as the main constitutive element in the Bosnian Muslim identity, one that defines them in relation to Serbs and Croats (Bringa 1995), religion or Islam constitutes the most obvious symbol of ethnic difference. The more assertive post-war Islamic identity and religious revival accompanying the conflicts and attempted genocide against Muslims, also draws on other continuities with the past. In many rural areas, as Bringa's study demonstrates (1995), Islam as faith and practice has remained an active part of everyday life and a basis of a local moral community as Muslims. While the
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simply note the changes. Linguistic strategies also seem to reflect the current geopolitical situation in the home country, avoiding Serbian or Croatian words depending on the point of contact and which group is perceived to be the greatest threat. For instance, a refugee family from Mostar, a city tensely divided between Muslims and Croats, now try to exclude Croatian words whereas their relatives from Banja Luka (under the control of Republika Srpska) avoid Serbian words in their language. The changes and negotiations of cultural distinctiveness observed in the refugee community reflect similar concerns and processes in the home country and the many-stranded and intensive interactions through personal contacts, media and school text-books. New text-books in Bosnian language and literature as well as history issued recently by the Ministry of Education are made available in exile through the Embassy and are used in the mothertongue instruction and other voluntary classes attended by Bosnian refugee children. The official Swedish position has been negative towards the claims of the Bosnian associations in Sweden to provide separate language instruction, and Muslim teachers, interpreters and radio programmes. The associations have protested against this position, criticizing the 'Yugoslavism' on the part of Swedish authorities (e.g. Medic 1995), although cost rather than principle may have been the important concern of the receiving society, considering the existing pool of trained Serbo-Croatian staff, from the earlier Yugoslav labour immigration. However, the decision has subsequently been allocated to locallevel municipal administrations, and many local school boards, probably as a conflict-avoidance measure, are now responding to these demands for language instruction in Bosnian. Thus, language has become an identity issue which all the families must respond to, made more acute by the.realities of exile and interaction with a host society.
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Yugoslav Federation relegated religion to the private sphere, secularization was more characteristic of the urban middle classes. However, it may be the case, as with my informants, that for many of those who have made the transition as adults from rural to urban lives and professions, Islam as practised religion is part of their childhood experience. The tradition of their parents may prove to be useful and significant knowledge as they work out the meaning of Islam in their own lives today. Changes may signify a redefined Islam, with new functions and meanings encompassing new social categories and areas of social life in Bosnia. Here I will consider some aspects of this process as it is expressed and shaped by the situation in exile. The continuities and changes are reflected most clearly in the community celebrations of Ramadan (Ramazan), the main event in the ritual calendar of Islam and a collective event affirming unity as a Bosnian Muslim moral community in relation to non-Muslims. As before the war, the significance of religion as faith and practice varies with individuals' devoutness, as well as social class and gender. The most regular participants in the evening prayers and the fasting are usually persons of rural background, some of whom have always been religiously active. Members of the urban middle class tend to play a more organizational role in the arrangements; however, many claim that religion has become more significant, even if not all participate in the prayers or fast. One informant, a well-educated middle-class man from Sarajevo, explained sending his children to Koran instruction thus: 'If we are to die because we are Muslims, at least we should know what that (being Muslim) is'. He may be categorized as what is commonly known (somewhat derisively) in Sarajevo as an 'April Muslim3' or 'neo-Muslim' (Macek 1997), i.e. secularized people now adopting Islam as a marker of identity. Nevertheless, for all, the war has made the connection between politics, self and Islam inescapably significant, for some at one point even a matter of life or death. Children of these families also participate inreligiousinstruction in their free time, especially during Ramadan, and parents pride themselves on the strength of their children's involvement and faith. They are compared favourably to children in Bosnia, especially by two families who have now established households in both countries with children in school in both systems. The greater involvement with religion in exile, they explained, has to do with the need both for spiritual fulfilment and for identity ('pride in who we are') which exile creates, while 'at home (as a majority in our town), the children can take it more for granted'. Although the gendered relation to Islam should not be exaggerated, especially in this heterogeneous community, men tend to take on the organizational, public roles in observing Ramadan. The women, traditionally the guardians and representatives of the moral quality of the household, are seen to take greater responsibility in that domain, such as fasting (more so than husbands) and encouraging children's religious instruction. Some women are now more active in these roles than before the war, and young girls in these households are also fasting, which was unusual at home. An interesting point that needs more research is whether the particular
170 Marita Eastmond
Exile Discourse and Local Community Celebrations
The religious activities around Ramadan and formal national events are occasions when the community comes together to celebrate their culture and their homeland. Organized by the local association, these events provide the symbolic means by which the 'national consciousness' is given form and affirmation. As Clifford notes about diaspora cultures, they '. . . work to maintain community, selectively preserving and recovering traditions, "customizing" and "versioning" them in novel, hybrid, and often antagonistic situations' (1994:317). These occasions, as presentations of national identity, provide an opportunity to see some of this process at work and to discuss how the context of Sweden as a receiving society shapes this process in complex and often conflicting ways. As a presentation of themselves as a nation to themselves, and to others both at home and in Swedish society, the official discourse at these national celebrations has both internal and external aspects, explicit and implicit meanings. The local association, like its national counterpart, is open to all nations of Bosnia-Hercegovina (also reflecting the Swedish local support of the multi-ethnic position). Thus, represented by the flag and the new national anthem of the multi-ethnic State, it yet subtly excludes other categories than Muslims. For instance, forms of greeting associated with Muslims have been
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symbolic significance of women in religious practice may be reinforced, as Islam forms the basis of the Bosnjak nation, and extended by the quest for ethnic purity of nationalist ideologies and the symbolic role of women as custodians of that purity. The connection between Islam and the Bosnjak identity is promoted by the SDA (Party for Democratic Action) in government and its leader, the President of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. However, it is defined as a European and a modern Islam, part of a democratic state. Accordingly, in Sweden the Islam of many Bosnian refugees is distinguished from other expressions of Islam, as refugees prefer creating their own congregations to joining existing supra-national Muslim congregations. It reflects the tension between 'Muslim' as an aspect of national identity which distinguishes them from other Yugoslav identities, and that which ties them to the wider Muslim community or umma (cf. Sorabji 1994). In pre-war Yugoslavia too, the Bosnian local community was the primary identification of the two (Bringa 1995). However, an assertive Islamic identity may have a dubious value as a boundary to non-Muslims in Swedish society. Creating their own congregations may then reflect the fear (also present in Bosnia) of being associated with non-European Islam and fundamentalism: Islam is a controversial identity marker in the negative climate of growing intolerance towards Islam of Western host countries. As their 'Muslim' identity has entered the political stage in both societies, it has become socially more complex and contested.
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reintroduced and are also used by some of the young people, such as 'Merhaba1 (a Turkish greeting, of Arabic origin). This use of Turkish loan words and greetings by 'neo-Muslims' is also criticized by those in Sarajevo concerned with what they see as an Islamization of society (see Macek 1997). In the local community, this new practice was explained to me as their reclaiming of forms that had been discouraged in official language in Bosnia during the Federation, and many of the children remembered them as used by their grandparents living in rural villages. Moreover, cultural representations of the homeland, such as traditional folklore, are framed by symbolic forms associated with Islam or Oriental influences. The new national anthem, for all nations of Bosnia, is said to be based on 'a romantic folksong' and some of them prefer a more patriotic Muslim song made popular during the war. This and other emblems of religious culture celebrate Muslim heroes or martyrs (sehidi). Folk music and dances are interspersed with ilahije (religious songs), and readings of post-war poetry, drawn from Bosnia but also from other exile communities. Celebrating the homeland, these are almost always presented by young girls, symbolically conveying (as characteristic of the nationalist idiom) the purity of the nation, perhaps also implicitly the horrors of its violation, such as those committed against women by the war and the nationalist Other. The poems recount and praise the homeland, its different parts and landscapes. Framed in these tropes of nature, marking a biological connection to the homeland (also through the young woman and her reproductive power) and a divine legitimation, they present well-known nationalist imagery in 'the transnational culture of nationalism' (AJonso 1994; Malkki 1992). Protesting against displacement and ethnic cleansing from the Bosnian territory, they may also be seen as a symbolic re-territorialization in which Bosnia is now claimed by Bosnjaci as an ethnically and culturally distinct place. The overall theme of these national celebrations is that of the refugees as a 'community of fate', as victims of the war, and sharing a particular history and culture long denied them. The images of martyrdom or victimization, common also in post-war Bosnia, are often communicated through new and popular poetry, and presented by children and youth. The victimization through mass rape of Muslim women, as an ethnic strategy and a symbolic violation of 'national purity', is never made explicit and a dense silence also surrounds such women and and their families that may have suffered its consequences. In the messages directed to the local host community (when invited, these are usually local officials, such as teachers and politicians) a victim discourse is more specifically concerned with their position as refugees. As a presentation of self to a Swedish audience, the message is 'we are victims of war and not voluntarily here'. It resonates with a conception of Bosnian refugees that is emerging in the helping professions of the host society described below. While the national identity being shaped is closely related to events and discourses in Bosnia, it takes on additional functions and meanings in exile. As part of a discourse in exile, nationalist sentiments may draw particular strength
172 Marita Eastmond
The Refugee Community: Ideology and Reality
The formal performances, then, are the occasions when the community comes together as a moral community to celebrate their national heritage and mark the boundaries with other groups. As formalized events, similar to rituals, such occasions are particularly good at communicating those things which are most in doubt (Moore and MyerhofT 1977). In search of national unity, this community of Bosnjaci is in a very clear sense imagined rather than real. Underlying the ideological unity, as characteristic of all nation-building, other social identities are more salient, challenge the national solidarity and imply potential conflict. In particular, the social turbulence of war, with massive population displacements, makes reconstruction of a sense of community between people forcibly thrown together especially difficult: the local refugee collectivity is a result of the placement administered by the host country, and represents people from different parts of Bosnia and different social strata who would not, before the war, have existed in each others' social worlds or felt they had much in common. First of all, the discourse as well as everyday interaction denies and avoids through silence the dilemma of ethnically mixed marriages and people of mixed origin: in the nationalist scheme of classification, they constitute an aberration. As such, they betray the purity of the nation and blur the boundaries of neat categories, anomalies which in Douglas's sense (1966) are symbolically associated with danger and pollution. The mixed marriages among my
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from the very absence of the homeland, at least as it is depicted. This homeland is imagined and idealized as a distant, unattainable but dreamed of reality, infused with the emotional force of personal losses suffered as disowned and displaced people. From the vantage point of exile, the categories of the homeland are more clear-cut and generalized; political enemies and heroes are simplified as symbols to embrace or reject. However, the multiple contacts with Bosnia make such symbolisms ambiguous. Personal observations of conditions at home can modify simplified messages such as those provided by national media broadcasting to those exiled abroad. Returning from brief visits, some informants report surprise at the more critical and nuanced political debate among friends and relatives compared to the more one-sided images portrayed by such national media. The circumstances of life as refugees in Sweden also shape the social meaning of such images of the homeland; in response to a growing sense of rejection in Swedish society, the dream of home may take on new significance. Specific instances, such as the ambivalent Swedish position towards recognition of a BoSnjak nationality and Bosnian language, provide impetus to a more articulate nationalist stance. Other aspects of their position as refugees in Swedish society, as shown below, both reinforce and counteract the relevance and consolidation of a Bosnjak identity and community.
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informants are few and, as in Bosnia today, do not always withstand the social pressure exerted on them. In the town studied, boundaries between Muslims, Serbs and Croats are strictly maintained. Where forced together, as in the Swedish classes, people keep conflicts at bay by reducing communication to a minimum and to 'safe' and superficial topics, avoiding any reference to the war. The sudden death of the woman in one such mixed union mobilized two large ethnic networks over great distances in the struggle over the custody of the children. The mixed families, thus unable to straddle the divisions and participate in any of the ethnic networks from former Yugoslavia (and facing a similar problem if returning home), seek other mixed families or orient themselves to Swedish networks and to remaining in Sweden. Second, in the Muslim group, other identities based on class and social status or local place of origin in Bosnia make a difference in social interaction, perhaps even more so as they are threatened in the new context. Referring to the reduction of previous socio-economic differentiation in the present, one man, a factory-worker before the war, noted, 'Director or worker (at home), here we are all simply refugees and welfare recipients'. While indicating the problematic experience of generalized perceptions by the host society which render invisible other dimensions of their identity than that of refugee, it was also a comment on those who, unlike himself, tried to draw on previous status positions in the new situation. The experience of a general social downgrading of the entire group, seems to increase competition and status claims rather than solidarity, no doubt forming part of the distrust which many informants refer to when asked about their local social relations. While, on a personal level, the search for national identity and community may be meaningful with reference to the turbulent transformations of their lives, few close social relations are formed locally across family and kin-based networks and little interaction takes place outside of the formal association events (except for some of the men who occasionally meet in the evenings to drink coffee and play cards). Informants often lament the contrast between the present, and the ideal and pre-war practice of socializing (druziti se), of being a sociable person. Nevertheless, families maintain ties with relatives, friends, former neighbours and others in many other places; as often as the household economy permits, they visit or telephone exiles in other parts of Sweden and Europe. Almost every family now, after the Peace Agreement, has made at least one return trip to Bosnia, even if many cannot go back to the place where they once lived. The dissonance between ideology and actual social practice is more evident in a small community of limited membership. In the nearby larger urban refugee community, interactional networks of Muslims are facilitated by access to people of prior acquaintance and social affinity, especially those from the same home town in Bosnia, although these networks remain small compared to social life at home before the war. In addition, a few professional groups of medical staff and teachers have formed in response to opportunities in the refugee assistance structure. The war has also created entirely new collective
174 Marita Eastmond identities; for example, former prisoners of war camps, now in exile, constitute a network extending over Western European host countries. Tbe Social Construction of Difference in the Host Society
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The search for a post-war identity in nationalist terms, then, is more complex in exile than the ideology implies. An overriding concern for most adults has been and remains the 'normalization' of everyday life, associated with recovering some stability and predictability in social and economic life and including regaining other (such as professional) social identities, suspended or lost by the war. In the political context of former Yugoslavia, creating stability and welfare is precisely the promise of the nationalist rhetoric (cf. Bowman 1994). In the exile situation, however, professional and other social recognition beyond the identity as refugee or immigrant is difficult, while this identity has in itself a wide range of problematic connotations in the present in Sweden. After the first years of introductory programmes of learning Swedish, engaging in complementary training or entering a second professional education, many adults are confronting the poor prospects of the labour market.4 In the local economy of the town studied, its traditional industrial base eroding since the early 1980s, there seem to be few immediate alternatives to welfare dependency or short-term State-supported jobs. The agents of the local employment bureau confirm the difficult employment situation of refugees, in particular those with a poor command of Swedish, and the negative attitudes of many employers to hiring non-Swedes. In informal conversation, some refer to a commonly adopted but not always explicitly expressed attitude that unemployed Swedes have priority. Explanations of differential employment by the immigration authority focus on length of residence, lack of language and other skills, and ethnic discrimination on the labour market (SFV 1995). Acceptance on the labour market increasingly depends on being Swedish, not only in the cultural but also in the ethnic sense (being of Swedish descent, without visible marks of foreignness, such as appearance, accents, names). Some State labour exchanges were recently exposed by news media to be helping companies weed out job applicants with foreign names. Thus, while ethnic and cultural distinctiveness may well be a political and personal resource in rebuilding post-war lives, it can be a potential disadvantage in an increasingly restrictive host society and feed into discourses of difference and discriminatory practices. The threat of permanent economic marginality in Sweden, and the promise, if weak, of a lasting peace in Bosnia, have reinforced a desire to return. This of course says little about actual plans and intentions, given the great obstacles involved, especially for those who are not able go back to the place they left behind (cf. Medic 1996).5 Nevertheless, in the absence of options perceived in the host country, the nationalist discourse gains added significance as a strategy which promises a more secure and meaningful existence at home. Only a small number of families in my sample have actually returned as yet, others
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have begun a temporary commuting life of double residency (which includes obtaining dual citizenship), and one may expect a number of other tie-over return strategies in the future. With the situation in the 1980s and 90s of restrictive refugee policy, rising costs of refugee reception, ethnic discrimination and a more polarized public debate concerning immigrants and refugees, exclusivist discourses and practices reflect processes in other Western European countries and echo the debates there on 'the new racism'. A similar debate in Sweden (e.g. Rojas 1993, 1995; Alund and Schierup 1991; Alund and Karlsson 1996) points to the mechanisms through which immigrants and refugees are referred to the margins of society. However, debates using 'immigrant' as a generalized term are part of the problem. The division between 'immigrant' (subsuming the 'refugee' category) and 'Swedish* has become a pervasive feature of social categorization in many spheres of public life in the past two decades, tending to become oppositional or even mutually exclusive categories, and critical in contexts such as employment, social benefits, and housing. The term 'immigrant' is a very broad category, encompassing a population of varying legal status, length of residence, ethnic identification and social background, and tells us very little about a person's degree of integration or personal ties and attachments. Although the term includes Swedish nationals born and raised in Sweden with one parent of foreign origin, the folk conception associates it with foreignness. The significant difference of that foreignness is increasingly identified with 'culture', and thus increasingly problematized: 'immigrant', as recognized in the recent Committee on Immigration Policy (SOU 1996:55), tends to be conceptually associated with a diversity of social problems that in themselves may have very little to do with ethnicity or culture difference. The framing of research in terms of that problematic dichotomy (e.g. statistical analyses of the criminality of immigrants and their children, as in Ahlberg 1996) reinforces such conceptions of difference. 'Culture' as explanatory factor clouds other fundamental social problems that affect people in the course of economic change and efforts to dismantle the welfare state, irrespective of ethnicity. These notions are also fed by the ambiguities of the formulated goals of cultural pluralism, the Swedish policy since the mid 1970s, which supports immigrant cultures through associations and instruction in the mother tongue. 'Culturalism' is recognized in the review made by the Committeee as '... a pervasive and far-reaching influence in many areas of public life' (SOU 1996:55:69, my translation) and the new proposed policy directives give less emphasis and support to cultural differentiation in favour of 'immigrants' social participation and their own responsibility in society'. Some would say that this is a return to an assimilationist policy, with the normative yardstick of interaction in multi-ethnic Sweden being Swedish (national) culture. A blatant example cited by Alund and Karlsson (1996) may be that granting permanent residence permits to asylum-seekers (in particular in de facto cases) has been increasingly tied to their 'good behaviour'.
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These professional categories and other supporters of multicultural models (including the ambiguities with which these models are denned) resonate with the refugee and immigrant communities' own celebrations of their ethnic distinctiveness; inadvertently they both share some common ground with the discourse of anti-immigrant and populist neo-nationalist political discourses, which (de-emphasizing the biological) also defend their national and cultural heritage as essential difference (Diaz 1992; TaguiefT 1990). The conceptual link between these different positions, as Gilroy (1992) points out, is the celebration of difference and the view of culture as (inherited) essence, as a set of characteristics transcending historical and other boundaries, of ethnic groups and nations. Gilroy points to the suggested closeness of culturalism to the ideas of nation and national belonging, the nation as a unified cultural community (1992:53). The process is similar to that debated in other parts of Western Europe, referred to as 'the new racism' in the UK (e.g. Gilroy 1987, 1992; Miles 1993); 'cultural racism' or 'racisme differentialiste' (e.g. Taguieff 1990) in France. To the agents in social welfare, health and the educational system, interacting with the refugees in my study, the Bosnians are perceived as 'modern', 'not as culturally different from us'. They are thus contrasted to perceptions of non-Europeans making up the majority of refugees received in the 1980s, and with reference to the hierarchy of categories conceived in terms of 'cultural distance'. The Bosnjak identity is not made relevant in these
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The concerns with problematic difference, addressed as a problem of culture and also, more recently, health, are reflected at different levels of policy and implementation, which include the training models of practitioners working with settlement and integration of newcomers, as well as in research. For example, more and better Swedish language instruction (to be compulsory and linked to welfare or unemployment benefits) is often called for as a panacea to make foreigners acceptable to the labour market. In a large, two-day conference I attended in 1996 on 'Integration and Education' for politicians and educational staff with invited researchers, the topic of economic integration was absent; rather, it addressed integration as a problem of language, culture and identity with emphasis on refugees and immigrants themselves. The focus of much Swedish research in the field designated 'International Migration and Ethnic Relations' has long been concerned with problems of language, identity, socialization and culture and much less with economic and labour market integration or the overall implications of the changes in refugee policy and law over the last decade (see e.g. Hammar 1994). 'Minority health' is another growing field of research (e.g MFR 1995), including the mental health of refugees (SFR 1994). Not surprisingly, there is wide acknowledgement of these concerns, not only in the local institutions of my study, but among the broad range of specialist professional categories, themselves created by the Swedish pluralist policy, such as interpreters, teachers, social workers, counsellors, psychologists and health care staff.
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interactions (nor is it easily distinguished from other Bosnian national identities by the Swedes involved). However, there is another dimension of difference that has become a salient difference ascribed to refugees from Bosnia, that of 'traumatized victim'. (This perception of war victims ties in with the existing, generalized understanding of the refugee experience as mentally disabling, see below). Since 1994, substantial government funds in the health care sector have been allocated to preventive and curative treatment for Bosnian refugees.6 Many of these are indisputably in need of special care and support as a result of organized violence and flight, although no figures are available. But, one might add, the tendency—not least by extensive media coverage—to make 'Bosnian* synonymous with 'traumatized refugee' overlooks the possible needs of other refugees. Furthermore, it assumes that all difficulties experienced by Bosnian refugees are somehow related to the war. These assumptions resonate with the widespread discourse of the Bosnians as victims of war, in exile organizations and in Bosnia, which is cultivated by international media and humanitarian organizations. When translated into a medical idiom, such a victim identity easily becomes a negative marker of significant difference. With its emphasis on trauma, and in the absence of viable opportunities for economic and social integration, the receiving society seems to offer a sick role and a pathologized identity. However, from the refugees' perspective, the major concern in their everyday lives is rather the active reconstitution of 'normal life,' which means recovering a sense of economic independence and control over their lives. A previous in-depth study of eleven Bosnian refugee families and their coping strategies indicated the impact of such medicalized assistance models. Coming from the same rural town, and the same concentration camp in Bosnia, the families were resettled in different local communities in Sweden. In one of these communities, the families were offered temporary employment opportunities, while those in another community received comprehensive psychological services. One year after arrival, the majority of the adults in the latter community were on indefinite sick leave (Eastmond et al. 1994). While differences in culture, language, and health status are indeed important considerations in the integration of refugees, the tendency is to simplify very complex processes of reconstituting viable lives, which are as much a question of structural difficulties of the economy, increasing political restrictiveness in accepting refugees and a growing anti-refugee climate. As discourses of difference, culturalization and medicalization (or pathologization) help to shape popular explanations in the receiving society of the refugees' continued social marginality, they contribute to legitimating and perpetuating that social position. Similarly, a generalized victim identity both as refugee and traumatized victim, while it provides individuals with an explanation for their failing to live 'normal lives', may become part of self identity, reinforcing dependence and disability rather than empowerment (cf. Eastmond 1996).
178 Marita Eastmond Refugees and Research Models
for one category of migrants, refugees, which is homogeneous with regard to the motives for migration and traumatic experiences, considerable similarities have been found in the degree and manifestation of psycho-pathology (Roth and Ekblad 1993: 188).
Such generalized and ahistorical models of the refugee experience are graphically represented in the training of practitioners by what is known in Sweden as 'the refugee curve', delineating the phases of that experience in psychological terms. The refugee experience entails losses, Malkki cautions, but we cannot, a priori, assume what these are or what social meanings are construed around them. Rather, it covers a diversity of experiences, socio-political causes and contexts and cannot easily be generalized. While transformation and change are part of the refugee experience, not all change is perceived as loss or denned as problematic or unwelcome by the refugees themselves. Crossing a national border does not necessarily imply a culture shock or the need to adapt to a new and strange environment, as many studies of Third World refugee situations show (e.g. Eastmond 1993, Spring 1982). Losses may be denned more in terms of economic welfare and personal agency than culture and identity, even if exile discourses may present them in such terms. Moreover, as the case of the Bosnian Muslims shows, national identities in the homeland are often neither clear-cut nor unproblematic; in Bosnia, they were central to the identity politics of the war. The social meanings and identities they then construe in exile, furthermore, are shaped by this conflict but also in the context of the 'global ecumene' (Hannerz 1996), in much more complex webs of ongoing relations and transactions with many other places and social contexts than the concept of 'uprooting' implies. Research models, exile discourses and culturalist policies of receiving societies concerned with the consequences of people
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Not surprisingly, our research models also shape the constructions or images of forced migrants as refugees or war victims and inform discourses and practices of the receiving society. The tendency of such models in the field of refugee studies to generalize 'the refugee experience', expressed as a loss of culture, identity and homeland, has been critically examined by Malkki (1995b). 'Uprooting' has become something of a key metaphor to describe that experience. In the modern system of nation states as a conceptual order, in which the nation is perceived as the 'natural' place of belonging, identity and culture are secure and stable only 'at home'. As 'people out of place', to paraphrase Douglas, refugees are an aberration of neat national categories, an anomaly in need of normalization and control—as reflected in policies and interventions but also in a therapeutic literature which generalizes refugees as high risk groups for mental disorder. A recent research review on migration and mental health claims that, although results are not clear-cut with respect to migrants and psycho-pathology,
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A challenge for research, as I see it, is rather to capture the political and cultural dynamics, as well as the diversity of social experience, behind such social constructions and generalized descriptions of the 'refugee experience' or 'victims of war'. This article has suggested an ethnographic approach to that challenge, exploring some of the creative ways in which cultural identity is being shaped and given articulation by Bosnian Muslim refugees, in relation to the different social contexts in which they simultaneously participate, and intersecting with other discursive domains related to refugees and significant difference. It has also drawn attention to the ideological frameworks that shape these processes; in particular, how the pervasive and persistent ways in which we perceive world order, culture and human identity inform the conceptualization of refugees and refugee policy, as well as refugees' own constructions and essentialist discourses. 1. The study forms part of a wider research programme on the transformations involved in reconstituting life in exile. A revised version of a paper presented at the IASFM Conference, Eldoret, Kenya, 6-10 April, 1996. 2. There was considerable uncertainty about how to vote in the recent parliamentary elections, with a good deal of last-minute changes, especially among members of the educated middle-class. 3. Referring to the month in which the war started in Bosnia-Hercegovina. 4. In 1996, only 26.6 per cent of those born in Bosnia and now residing in Sweden had entered the labour force (were eligible to seek employment), and more than half of those (53.8 per cent) were unemployed. The figures for the total population in Sweden, irrespective of origin, were 77.8 per cent in the labour force, out of which 8.1 per cent were unemployed (SCB 1996).
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'uprooted' from their native countries and reflecting essentialized notions of identity and culture may then rather be seen as expressions of the same nationalist logic of a 'natural' relation between a people, a place and a culture. Not only researchers and nationalists essentialize, refugees may do so as well, as this case study shows. Notions of the homeland as the best place to be, re-creating and celebrating history and traditions, and discourses of victimization may form part of constituting a collective self in exile. Our research models must take account of such constructions and the internal variations they subsume,7 the circumstances in which they emerge as relevant and how they interact with other and dominant constructs of identity. The Bosnian Muslims constitute an example of the tendency to conflate the terms of refugee and war victim into a generalized category of traumatized, associated with psychopathology. The medicalizing idiom thus translates socio-political conflicts and the Bosnian refugees' own victim discourse, condensing much more complex experiences and lived meanings, into a unidimensional problematic difference, reducing all sources and signs of suffering in the host country to the trauma of war and cultural liminality. In Sweden, as elsewhere, this is reflected in a growing literature of research and clinical work on traumatized refugees, and in priorities of funding of research and of interventions in mental health care.
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5. In a survey comprising 865 Bosnian refugees in Sweden in 1995, 49 per cent wanted • to return (Medic 1996), the majority representing 'complete' families and a medium educational level. At the time of the enquiry, the situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina changed in favour of Croats and Muslims, which tended to inspire greater hopes of return; also, 95 per cent of the 865 adults had no employment in Sweden and 64 per cent of the families had no contact whatsoever with Swedish families. However, the condition for return given by 37 per cent of respondents was being able to return to where they lived before flight. Importantly, expressed desire to return says very little about the actual assessments and plans refugees make with respect to returning. 6. In 1994, SEK 50 million was targeted for Bosnian refugees for prevention and treatment; in 1996 another SEK 30 million for projects in the health sector aiming at the rehabilitation of refugees injured by torture (Socialstyrelsen 1995) was used primarily for Bosnian refugees. 7. My research with the Latin American exile communities and the social construction of the exile condition revealed the discrepancies between the official discourse of exile culture, reflecting the ideology of the movement, and personal understandings of the collective history and ideals, based on different social positions and life experience in the home country and in the country of exile (Eastmond 1989, 1996).
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MS received March 1997: revised MS received January 1998
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