Construction of Ethnic Belonging in the Context of Former Yugoslavia—the Case of a Migrant from Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abstract

This article deals with the question of the change and continuity of ethnic and national constructs of belonging in the context of former Yugoslavia with special emphasis on Bosnia-Herzegovina. I am taking a biographical analytical approach. This allows me to reconstruct the process of the development and transformation, as well as the continuity of ethnic and national constructs of belonging. Moreover, this approach also allows an analysis of these phenomena in their genesis. Based on a case study, it will be demonstrated how ethnic and national belongings developed, how they changed, and how under some circumstances they exhibit a certain continuity. In doing so, the interplay between the past and the present as well as the intra-biographical and societal developments were analyzed. I came to the conclusion that the biographer formed a supra-ethnical Yugoslavian construct of belonging which was maintained despite the migration experience. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0903226