Bosnian Post-Refugee Transnationalism by Maja Halilovic-Pastuovic

Author:Maja Halilovic-Pastuovic
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030395643
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The part of the report that deals with the social and cultural evenings mentions that music events continue to be organised whose aim is to increase attendances from other ethnic groups of former Yugoslavia to give them the ‘opportunity to rebuild the trust’ that was there before the conflict (BCDP 2008: 12). While the Project’s Annual Reports often describe the people from the former Yugoslavia as other ethnic groups, the reports also emphasise the connections and similarity between these people and Bosnian migrants, in particular with regard to language and culture. The reports also show willingness and dedication to continue the collaborations between Bosnians and other people from the former Yugoslavia, via the Bosnian Project, and a loosening of self-description by the Bosnian community in Ireland to a community of interest.

Considering that Bosnians did not feel part of the Bosnian community in Ireland, and the fact that the other minority communities from the former Yugoslavia got involved in the Project, it is very difficult to perceive Bosnians in Ireland as a coherent entity and indeed a community. Rather it can be argued that Bosnians in Ireland are a contingent community.

Kelly (2003) studied community associations that have been provided for refugee populations in the UK in the early 1990s. Her study reflected on and tested out the findings by Rex et al. (1987), namely that community associations play an important role in assisting the adaptation of community members to the host society. Rex et al. found that community associations have four main functions: overcoming isolation; providing material help to community members; defending the interests of community; and promoting the community’s culture. Kelly’s research focused on a newly arrived population of Bosnian refugees and five associations set up for them in the UK. She found that some Bosnians conformed to the idea and expectations of these associations and that these people became pivotal in maintaining them. Overall, however, Kelly found that ‘rather than being a formal expression of informal community, the associations are a formal construction of an ideal and do not reflect reality of their members’ (2003: 46). In reality, Kelly found there was no community, or communities, of Bosnians in the UK; there were instead kinship groups, friends and networks. The associations reflected the expectations of the British society rather than the Bosnian reality. She concluded that what did exist was contingent community defined as ‘group of people who will, to some extent, conform to the expectations of the host society in order to gain the advantages of a formal community association, whilst the private face of the group remains un-constituted as a community’ (Kelly 2003: 36).

I argue that the Bosnian community in Ireland is a contingent community. I also argue that Bosnian post-refugee transnationalism was enforced by the Irish interculturalism. Irish interculturalism, as a regime of governmentality by a racial state of Ireland, relied on community development approach to integrate Bosnian refugees into the Irish society. The approach failed. Bosnian migrants engaged in transnational activities instead and Bosnian community in Ireland never developed as planned.

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