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This chapter analyzes changes in the gender roles and responsibilities of refugee women in the post-Yugoslav states caused by their forced displacement. It begins by addressing the ‘logic’ of the exclusionary politics of ethnic nationalism in the region, and the social and political implications of women’s forced migration. In documenting the experiences of women I interviewed as they became refugees, the chapter examines changes in their roles and social relations caused by the gendered violence of war, flight and exile. The women are of different ethnic-nationalities and have varied experiences of becoming refugees. Nevertheless, the interviews reveal that these women have much in common. The hardships of their survival in exile and the development of successful coping strategies through which they confront their victimization are both the potential spaces for the creation of new narratives of belonging and multiple identities.

This paper addresses the question of totalising gender power relations that have led to and shaped the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia and the emerging ethno-national states on the ‘periphery’ of Europe. I argue that the same type of gender power relations continue to dominate the region, notably Serbia, and to perpetuate gender inequalities and gender based violence in its many everyday and structural forms, causing profound levels of human insecurity. My analysis aims to set in motion a debate on how to tackle these continuing gender inequalities and GBV in post-war societies. In so doing, I propose a shift from focusing on the hierarchy of victimisation that has characterised much of the feminist analyses, activism and scholarly work in relation to these (and other) conflicts, to a relational understanding of the gendered processes of victimisation in war and peace, that is - of both women and men. Such an approach holds a potential to undermine the power systems that engender these varied types of victimisation by ultimately reshaping the notions of masculinity and femininity, which are central to the gender power systems that generate gender unjust peace.

This article focuses on the process of integration of Chinese immigrants in Serbia. It is based on a pilot study conducted among Chinese traders in Belgrade, and examines the ways in which this highly mobile group of people is becoming incorporated into the Serbian society. The discussion points to a set of opportunities that Serbia as a transition society and a non-immigrant country offers to Chinese traders who have been settling in Belgrade and Serbia since 1996. It explores multiple and various types of emerging social interaction embedded in daily life of both Chinese traders and locals, all of which shape their local integration. It argues that a society such as Serbia provides a space for choice and active management of risks involved in trading migration enabling Chinese traders to create a transnational pathway to incorporation. Although their primary aim is not to ?settle for good?, but to remain mobile for the better, Chinese traders have established a wide range of contacts with the local population and have created some important inroads into the Serbian society.

Questo articolo esamina il processo di etichettamento politico e burocratico dei rifugiati e il suo rapporto con razza, etnicitŕ, classe e/o genere, oltre che con altri meccanismi di esclusione che operano nei luoghi del loro insediamento. Considera criticamente le prospettive e i processi di insediamento delle persone fuggite dai conflitti in Yugoslavia, a cui č stato garantito il diritto di lavorare e/o studiare in Italia sulla base di un decreto governativo speciale, senza una lunga procedura di determinazione dello status. L'analisi si basa su una ricerca etnografica condotta a Roma negli anni 1999 e 2000. Esplora i meccanismi e il processo che hanno permesso loro di beneficiare dei diritti garantiti al loro arrivo. La discussione si focalizza, da un lato, sulle connessioni tra strategie e politiche di assistenza e sui limiti strutturali che incarnano e, d'altro lato, sul tipo di agency che incoraggiano. Esplora il ruolo delle reti sociali co-etniche, cross-etniche e minoranza-maggioranza nel processo di insediamento. Questo articolo sostiene che se l'acquisizione formale di diritti legali e sociali legati all'inclusione e all'eguaglianza non č accompagnata da contatti e legami informali tra minoranza e maggioranza, a livello micro, l'esperienza dei gruppi di minoranza rimarrŕ fortemente condizionata dalla loro sensazione di "alteritŕ" e dalla percezione di diseguaglianza ed esclusione. Ciň avviene perché lo sviluppo della fiducia tra gruppi (etnici) di minoranza e gruppi di maggioranza dipendono solo parzialmente dal set di diritti che possono essere garantiti ai gruppi "etnici" o "di minoranza".

This paper explores the importance of gender sensitive analysis of conflict constructed as ethnic strife for conceptualising and developing new and more effective ways of intervening in this type of war. It points out that because most of the physical violence and suffering in these conflicts occur at the community level, they generate massive refugee movements, causing not only physical and material devastation, but also the destruction of social networks and local communities. This critically affects the prospects for refugee return, which is central to any sustainable peace agreement and post-conflict democratic development. In searching for an answer to the question of how to address effectively the issue of reconciliation in such a context, the discussion highlights the centrality of acknowledging gender dimensions and dynamics of this type of war, as a way of uncovering and recognising a reconciliatory potential of women as women organising and activism that often occurs it these conflicts. By focusing specifically on the initiatives of some women groups during the war in the former Yugoslavia, which aimed at rebuilding trust and broken social networks at a communal level, the paper examines the reasons why women as women often opt for alternative forms of political mobilisation. It argues that this type of activism has an important potential for conflict resolution and should be recognised in a fundamental way in any attempt to build-peace in conflict zones.

This article examines the question of an absence of an integration policy, and specifically how this lack of state intervention is perceived by refugees themselves, and how it shapes their attitudes towards and strategies for integration. The emphasis in examining integration of refugees in this paper is on the importance of human agency in the process of structuring and re-structuring social relations across space and time. The article is based upon research among a group of refugees from former Yugoslavia settled in Rome. Their experiences presented in this paper document a case of integration in which the refugees, for the most part, have not encountered any kind of assistance programme. This situation caused considerable difficulty in the process of their settlement, particularly during its early stages, yet it permitted spontaneous and personalized encounters between the refugees' native culture(s) and that of the receiving society. It is suggested that the nature of these encounters contributed to strengthening the adaptability of the refugees. It also affected their subjective wellbeing and tended to compensate for the numerous problems associated with other aspects of their integration.

The paper examines, in a comparative way, the situation of refugees settled in Italy and the Netherlands. It examines how refugees themselves perceive their social condition in the two contrasting `models' of integration in Italy and the Netherlands and how they define integration success and develop strategies to achieve their goals. The narratives of refugees explored in this paper documents that integration, as it is perceived and desired by the refugees themselves, is both about its functional aspects and about social participation in the wider community. These aspects of integration consist of sets of overlapping processes that take place differently in various spheres of the receiving society and have various outcomes. It is argued that policy should recognize this complexity and acknowledge refugees as social actors rather than turning them into policy objects in order to facilitate integration in each of these sub-sectors.

The character of the immigrant policy context in Italy has caused refugees from the former Yugoslavia in Rome to organize themselves spontaneously and to create a self-reception system that facilitates their functional integration. The Italian policy context allows refugees to approach their situation in exile in an active way because it does not offer them a dependent role. Emphasizing the importance of providing refugees with a framework for an active reconstruction of life, however, should not be understood as an apologia for the absence of strategy for integration as well as legal, financial, and institutional means to facilitate this process.

This article examines the meaning of ethnic-national identity focusing on author's personal search for ethnic-national identity or location in the context of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. From that point of departure, the author analyses the position and role of women within ethnic-national discourses in what was Yugoslavia. The article challenges the essentialist notion of belonging to ethnic-national collective and its links to the patriarchal values of brotherhood and solidarity, examining the way that the discourse of male violence and ethnic-nationalism works in relation to gender. It argues for deconstruction and rearticulation of such male-defined maps of belonging, suggesting a more inclusive politics of ethnic-national identity which would allow for allegiances based on acts of conscious political choice and acknowledgement of internal differences.

To introduce the problem of identity and the wars in former Yugoslavia, I begin with the words of a refugee boy from Croatia. In a school in Belgrade the children were asked to describe in writing how they felt about who they are. The boy wrote: ‘I am nobody.’ When asked why he felt this way, he replied: ‘Because my father is from Croatia, my mother from Serbia. Where am I from?’1

How can one be objective in confronting abstract nationalism without facing the nationalism of one's own people? Moreover, in the case of former Yugoslavia, to be a Serb means to face the burden of the greatest responsibility for what has happened within the country. To be a Serb, to live in Serbia nowadays, and not to be nationally obsessed, means to be accused of betraying your nation, and labelled as a 'bad' Serb. Distinctions between 'bad' and 'good' Serbs have become very important to our national mythology which is a warrior mythology, extrapolated from Serbian history, overburdened as it is with liberation wars. Through their history, Serbs have been brave soldiers, fighters for their national liberation and the liberation of their 'brother' nations of South-Slavs. They have been glorified as honest and fearless soldiers, constantly at war, suffering terrible losses, regarding themselves as the greatest victims of the 'violent cauldron' of Balkan history. Always, at some point, they come to feel 'betrayed' by their 'brother' nations during or after these wars. In truth, Serbs have certainly suffered privations in their difficult history. That, no one can deny. The current manipulation of Serbian national pride is based on tragic memory and deeply rooted fear, especially among Serbian communities in neighbouring republics. They fear becoming victims of their 'brother' nations, as has happened before in their history. Our nationalistic leaders, 'fathers of their nation', 'invented' the slogan that 'Serbs were always winning the war, but always losing the peace', in order to mobilize our people to fight for their 'national pride and historical justice'. Due to this shameless manipulation it became possible to mobilize Serbs mainly living in more or less homogeneous communities in some regions of Croatia, to start to fight for their 'national rights and liberation'. Actually, they became the first victims of the radical national policy of the Serbian leadership in Serbia. Yesterday's 'powerful national policy' became today's 'destiny', the only