Description
Book Synopsis 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.
Trade Review “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
Table of Contents 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
