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REMAKING HOME
Reconstructing Life, Place and Identity in Rome and Amsterdam
Maja Korac
ISBN 978-1-84545-391-6 Hb $60.00/£38.00 Published (October 2009)
eISBN 978-1-84545-956-7
“This book provides excellent and much needed insights into the lives of refugees in general, and those from the former Yugoslavia in particular.” · H-Urban
“By focusing on meanings and practices of home making among refugees from former Yugoslavia in Rome and Amsterdam, Korac’s book invites readers to rethink the experience of displacement/emplacement as a complex and interconnected set of processes that produces a pluralization of identities and solidarities. This insightful perspective - overlooked in dominant institutional approaches to ‘integration’ and in a significant part of the academic literature too often driven by donors’ policy agendas and inclined toward some form of methodological nationalism - represents both a valuable contribution to the debate and an invitation to explore further the relationship between different scales of refugee governance and processes of ‘nesting’.” · Journal of Refugee Studies
“This book – based on ethnographic qualitative research and sensitivity to cultural complexity and human resourcefulness, combining comprehensively and comparatively search material with theoretical reflections on migration cultural processes – is a valuable contribution to the ever growing migration studies literature and to our understanding of current European cultural and social tensions.” · Anthropological Notebooks
Rather than emphasising boundaries and territories by examining the ‘integration’ and ‘acculturation’ of the immigrant or the refugee, this book offers insights into the ideas and practices of individuals settling into new societies and cultures. It analyses their ideas of connecting and belonging; their accounts of the past, the present and the future; the interaction and networks of relations; practical strategies; and the different meanings of ‘home’ and belonging that are constructed in new sociocultural settings. The author uses empirical research to explore the experiences of refugees from the successor states of Yugoslavia, who are struggling to make a home for themselves in Amsterdam and Rome. By explaining how real people navigate through the difficulties of their displacement as well as the numerous scenarios and barriers to their emplacement, the author sheds new light on our understanding of what it is like to be a refugee.
Maja Korac is Reader in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London. She is author of Captives of Their Sex: Social Identity of Young Rural Women Between Traditional Culture and Contemporary Values (1991, Belgrade: Institute of Sociological Research, University of Belgrade; published in Serbo-Croatian), Linking Arms: Women and War in post-Yugoslav States (1998, Uppsala: Life & Peace Institute), and co-editor of Feminists under Fire: Exchanges across War Zones (2003, Toronto: Between the Lines).
Series: Volume 26, Forced Migration
LC: JV8331 .K67 2009
BL: YC.2011.a.82
BISAC: SOC002000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/General; SOC007000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Emigration & ImmigrationContents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Reconstructing Life, Place and Identity
Problems with Centring on the State
Rethinking Refugeehood: Focusing on Processes, Intersections and Agency
Liminality and Refugee Agency
Lived-In Worlds of Refugees: From Contexts to Processes
Policy ‘Solutions’ and Types of Agency They Engender
A Note on Method: Focus on Refugee Voices
An Outline of the Book
Chapter 1. The Question of ‘Home’: Place-making and Emplacement
Place, Home and Homeland
Territorially Bounded Places and Identities: Importance and Meanings
Orientation to Place and the Politics of Belonging
Links between Peoples, Places and Cultures: The Question of Community
Group and Cultural Identity as an Organising Principle for Incorporation
The Question of Community Organisations
Transnational Practices of Place-Making
Transnationalism and ‘Homelessness’
Ties with the New Home
Taking Control and Reconstructing Life
Chapter 2. Experiences of Displacement: Force, Choice and the Creation of Solutions
The Mass Exodus of People from War-torn Yugoslavia: The Quest for Ethnic Purity and Territorial Cleansing
How One Makes a Decision to Leave and Where to Go?
Flight and Creation of Solutions: Agency and the Role of Social Networks
Chapter 3. Regaining Control over Life: Dependency, Self-sufficiency and Agency
Following the Rules in the Netherlands
Struggling to Survive in Italy
Problems with Refugee Assistance
Chapter 4. Negotiating Continuity and Change: The Process of Reconstructing Life
Bonding Networks and the Emplacement of Refugees in Rome and Amsterdam
Bridging Social Networks and the Emplacement of Refugees in Amsterdam and Rome
Social Networks and Emplacement: The Process of Becoming ‘of Place’
Chapter 5. Transnational Lives of Refugees, Questions of Citizenship, Belonging and Return
Transnational and ‘Glocal’ Ties – a Sense of Continuity and Belonging
Transnational Strategies of Survival and Betterment
Transnationalism and the Changing Notion of Return
Citizenship: A Status or a Practice?
New Meanings of Citizenship, Belonging and Emplacement
Emplacement: A Process of Pluralisation
Appendix I
Refugees Interviewed in Rome
Refugees Interviewed in Amsterdam
Appendix II
Community Organisations of Nationals from the Yugoslav Successor States in Rome and Amsterdam
Appendix III
Contacts Made with NGOs, Church Organisations, Governmental and International Organisations in Italy and the Netherlands
Appendix IV
The Social Characteristics and Legal Status of the Refugees in Rome and Amsterdam
Appendix V
The Ethnic Background of the Refugees Interviewed
Bibliography
Index