The Politics of Social Ties: Immigrants in an Ethnic Homeland (Southeast European Studies) [1 ed.] 9781472426925, 1472426924

Citation preview

The PoliTics of social Ties

southeast european studies series editor: florian Bieber, centre for southeast european studies, University of Graz, austria The Balkans are a region of europe widely associated over the past decades with violence and war. Beyond this violence, the region has experienced rapid change in recent times, including democratization and economic and social transformation. New scholarship is emerging which seeks to move away from the focus on violence alone to an understanding of the region in a broader context drawing on new empirical research. The southeast european studies series seeks to provide a forum for this new scholarship. Publishing cutting-edge, original research and contributing to a more profound understanding of southeastern europe while focusing on contemporary perspectives the series aims to explain the past and seeks to examine how it shapes the present. focusing on original empirical research and innovative theoretical perspectives on the region, the series includes original monographs and edited collections. it is interdisciplinary in scope, publishing high-level research in political science, history, anthropology, sociology, law and economics and accessible to readers interested in southeast europe and beyond. Forthcoming titles in the series strategies of symbolic Nation-building in south eastern europe Edited by Pål Kolstø International Justice and Democratic Consolidation in Post-Milošević Serbia Trials and Tribulations Mladen Ostojić croatia in the european Union changes, Development and Perspectives Edited by Pero Maldini and Davor Pauković state Building and Democratisation in Bosnia and herzegovina Edited by Soeren Keil and Valery Perry Debating the end of Yugoslavia Edited by Florian Bieber, Armina Galijaš and Rory Archer

The Politics of social Ties immigrants in an ethnic homeland

MIla DragOJevIć The University of the South, USA

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2014 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Mila Dragojević 2014 Mila Dragojević has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data a catalogue record for this book is available from the British library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dragojevic, Mila. The politics of social ties : immigrants in an ethnic homeland / by Mila Dragojević. pages cm includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–4724-–2692–5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. refugees—Serbia—Social conditions. 2. refugees—Social networks—Serbia. 3. Serbs—ethnic identity. 4. Serbia—emigration and immigration. 5. Bosnia and Hercegovina—emigration and immigration. 6. Croatia—emigration and immigration. 7. Yugoslav War, 1991–1995—refugees. i. Title. Hv640.4.S4D73 2014 305.8918’2044—dc23 2013044002

ISBN 9781472426925 (hbk)

Dedicated to my parents

This page has been left blank intentionally

Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface Abbreviations Note on Pronunciation

ix xi xiii xv xvi

1

Introduction

1

2

Identity Formation and Political Mobilization

23

3

The Social Logic of Voting

39

4

The Formation of the Refugee Identity

63

5

Refugees and Electoral Discourse

87

6

Coethnic Immigrants in Croatia, Israel, and France

113

7

Conclusion

139

Appendix A: Survey Methodology

143

Appendix B: Survey Questionnaire

147

Appendix C: Descriptive Statistics

157

Appendix D: Interviews

161

Bibliography Index

165 179

This page has been left blank intentionally

List of Figures 1.1

Central Balkans in 2008

12

2.1

Processes of Identity Formation and Political Mobilization

24

3.1

Predicted Probabilities of Voting for Nationalist Parties by Proportion of Refugees in PSUs

57

3.2

Predicted Probabilities of Voting for Nationalist Parties Among Refugees and Locals

58

3.3

Predicted Probabilities of Voting for Nationalist Parties and Proportion of Refugees in Interpersonal Networks

59

5.1

Refugee Settlement in Busije, July 2007

99

This page has been left blank intentionally

List of Tables 3.1

Composition of Refugees’ Close Interpersonal Networks

45

3.2

Social Distance: Refugees and Locals

49

3.3

Political Participation

53

3.4

Political Orientation

56

5.1

Major Political Parties in the 2008 Parliamentary Elections in Serbia

90

A.1

Number of Refugees and Locals by Cities

144

C.1

Descriptive Statistics

157

This page has been left blank intentionally

Preface This book began many years ago as a result of unanswered questions from my own experiences as a refugee, my graduate school classes, and conversations with professors, colleagues, family, and friends, many of whom have also experienced wars and migration personally. In the early stages of this project, I am thankful for the support and guidance of Pauline Jones Luong, who also helped with the title of the book, Alan Zuckerman, Roger Petersen, Melani Cammett, Keith Brown, Peter Andreas, Linda Cook, Wendy Schiller, Scott Allard, and professors and graduate school colleagues in the Department of Political Science at Brown University. The field research in Serbia was funded by Brown University’s Mary Tefft and John Hazen White, Sr. Graduate Fellowship, which permitted me to spend a full year in Serbia. I also appreciated valuable suggestions and criticisms received at conferences and workshops, and particularly from participants of the MIT Identity Politics workshop, from participants of the “Incorporating Coethnic Migrants: Comparative Perspectives” conference co-organized by the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research and Humboldt University, and from participants of the Post-Communist Politics and Economics Workshop at Harvard University. Among other participants of numerous conferences where I presented early versions of the research and preliminary results, Jasna Čapo Žmegač, Florian Bieber, Susan Woodward, and Pamela Ballinger provided excellent comments regarding concepts, methods, and the applicability of theoretical approaches to the geographic region of interest. Without the help of thirty-seven motivated and dedicated research assistants from Belgrade, Novi Sad, Pančevo, Sombor, Šabac, and Zemun, I would not have been able to complete a survey of 1,200 respondents in four cities. I am grateful to academics and activists in Serbia, and in particular to Žolt Lazar, Vanja Sokolovska, Ljubiša Despotović, Ljubica Djordjević, and Dobrila Jovanović, for their help in recruiting research assistants for the survey and for their support throughout the field research. I appreciated conversations about the research, opportunities to present my preliminary findings publicly, and suggestions for interview contacts from numerous individuals I met over the course of the thirteen months of field research, including Goran Penev, Janko Veselinović, Ozren Tošić, Miodrag Oklješa, Bojan Andjeković, Ratko Bubalo, Vesna Ćorović, Slobodan Vukašević, Mirjana Ivanović-Milenkovski, Jelena Grujić, Ljubica Djordjević, Andrew Konitzer, Srdjan Šljukić, Vesna Ivanović, Aleksandar Džakula, Jasna Čapo Žmegač, Vjekoslav Perica, Vjeran Pavlaković, Davor Pauković, Filip Škiljan, Darko Gavrilović, Ranka Gašić, and Igor Graovac, among many others. I would also like to thank the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia for providing me

xiv

The Politics of Social Ties

with the census data, the Republic of Serbia Geodetic Authority for providing me with maps of the selected primary sampling units, and the staff of Matica Srpska library in Novi Sad who helped me locate relevant primary and secondary sources for my research. I am grateful for the research funding in the last stages of the project from the University of the South’s Faculty Development and Research Fund and the Barclay Ward Faculty Research Fund, which permitted me to complete additional fieldwork and dedicate extensive time to writing and revising the final versions of the manuscript. For the comments and advice, as well as intellectual support, in the later stages of this project, I am thankful to Florian Bieber, Rob Sorsby, reviewers at Ashgate, the University of the South colleagues, and my colleagues at the Department of Politics and the International and Global Studies Program. I am indebted to Sarah Marhevsky, who helped in the last stage of the project with editing and who read the entire manuscript multiple times. I am thankful to my friends who provided moral and intellectual support in different phases of this project, including Helga Rist, Evrydiki Tasopoulou, Oana Lauric, Irm Haleem, Melody Crowder-Meyer, Bethel Sharma Seballos, Kelly Bay-Meyer, and many dear friends from the Brown graduate school. My parents and twin brother, as well as my U.S. and Honduran families, believed in me and motivated me whenever I felt overwhelmed by challenges and uncertainties over the course of working on this project. Finally, I am especially grateful to my husband, Manuel Chinchilla, whose intellectual support, love, and sense of humor gave me the strength I needed to bring this project to a successful completion.

Abbreviations DOS DS DSS EU FRY HDZ ICTY IDP JNA LSV NDH PSU SAA SFRY SNS SPO SPS SRJ SRS RSK UNHCR

Demokratska opozicija Srbije (Democratic Opposition of Serbia) Demokratska stranka (Democratic Party) Demokratska stranka Srbije (Democratic Party of Serbia) European Union Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Savezna Republika Jugoslavija) Hrvatska demokratska zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union) International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Internally Displaced Person Jugoslovenska narodna armija (Yugoslav National Army) Liga socijaldemokrata Vojvodine (The League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina) Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia) Primary Sampling Unit Stabilization and Association Agreement Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (Socijalistička Federativna Republika Jugoslavija) Srpska napredna stranka (Serbian Progressive Party) Srpski pokret obnove (Serbian Movement of Renewal) Socijalistička partija Srbije (Socialist Party of Serbia) Savezna Republika Jugoslavija (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) Srpska radikalna stranka (Serbian Radical Party) Republika Srpska Krajina (Serbian Republic of Krajina) United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Note on Pronunciation Throughout the text a Serbian or Croatian spelling is sometimes used. The following list provides the pronunciation guidelines for the specific Latin script letters that are not found in the English language: Č Ć Dž Đ Lj Nj Š Ž

ch in coach softer ch j in jump softer j ll in million n in new sh in she s in vision

Chapter 1

Introduction

Back then, I was—all of us were—very angry. We came to a country where we shared the same ethnicity with most of the people. So, we expected to fit in, but we were not accepted and felt that we were not welcome at all.1

On an uncommonly hot day in early May, the sound of church bells breaks the silence of Krušedol Monastery, a sixteenth-century Serbian Orthodox monastery tucked in the hills of Fruška Gora. To a casual observer, the sound of bells inviting believers for an Orthodox liturgy, as a line of people formed around the church, would not seem to be anything out of the ordinary in a country where 85 percent of the population identifies with the Serbian Orthodox faith.2 What brings these individuals together on this occasion, however, is not something they share with most of the population in Serbia: They arrive, as they do each year around this time, to attend a memorial service, called parastos, honoring individuals who lost their lives in the wars that took place from 1991 to 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, as well as those who died in exile afterwards. Every year, in early May, refugees who arrived in Serbia in the 1990s from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia come together to attend the event called Krušedolska zvona3 for a variety of reasons. Some people come to see old friends, others come to hear familiar notes of traditional music from Slavonija, Lika, and Banija, and a number of people come with the hope that for an instant they would be transported to their lives before the war. For many individuals attending this event, remembering peace seems to be harder than remembering wars. Many come from geographic regions where the memory of the Second World War (WWII) is still kept alive through stories of surviving family members. Some attendees are even refugees in Serbia for the second time in their lives. Most participants light candles and say prayers for their own relatives. The loss of family, friends, and home, in addition to the memory of ethnic violence from WWII and the 1990s, unites them on this day and distinguishes them from other ethnic Serbs. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the multinational state in 1991, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), the largest transfer of population in Southeast Europe since 1945 ensued. Referred to as “ethnic cleansing” in media 1 Excerpt from an interview with a former refugee in Belgrade on December 20, 2008; fieldnotes 57–82. 2 Konačni rezultati popisa 2002. [Final Results of the 2002 Census], National Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2002, Book 12, 302. 3 The Bells of Krušedol.

2

The Politics of Social Ties

accounts and political statements of that period, this phenomenon had a very concrete meaning for the several million people on the move in the territory of the Former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s: If they were not convincingly identifiable with the ethnic majority in the newly formed state, their lives were in danger. In order to protect their lives, they went to the state they saw as their “ethnic homeland,” because there, their coethnics formed an ethnic majority. In the process, they became refugees. Most of the refugees lost their property and possessions, while some individuals also lost family members. More than a decade later, most people received citizenship and incorporated to various degrees into their new states. Concepts: Immigrants in an Ethnic Homeland Throughout this study, I use terms “refugees,” “former refugees,” and “immigrants” interchangeably when referring to individuals who migrated to Serbia from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1991. There are two principal reasons for this unconventional usage—the first reason is theoretical and the second empirical. First, the theoretical focus of this study is not on the causes of migration but on its consequences, and more specifically, on political and social consequences for the individuals who migrated from a country where they constituted an ethnic minority to a country where they were part of an ethnic majority,4 and who at the time of research may or may not have had an internationally recognized status of refugees, as defined in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.5 While most migration scholars agree that analytically, refugees 4 This study is, in part, inspired by the findings of scholars examining the cases of “coethnic” migrations, who identified how immigrants faced certain social and economic incorporation challenges that resemble a classic newcomer-native, or immigrant-native, dynamic. See for instance, Čapo Žmegač, Jasna. “Ethnically Privileged Migrants in Their New Homeland,” Journal of Refugee Studies 18, no. 2 (2005), 199–215; Čapo Žmegač, Jasna, Strangers Either Way: The Lives of Croatian Refugees in Their New Home (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007); Čapo Žmegač, Jasna, Christian Voß, and Klaus Roth, eds. Co-Ethnic Migrations Compared. Central and Eastern European Contexts (Munich: Kubon & Sagner Verlag, 2010); Elias, N., and J.L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders: A Sociological Enquiry into Community Problems (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1965); Ritig-Beljak, Nives, “Croatian Exiles from Vojvodina: Between War Memories and War Experience,” In War, Exile, Everyday Life: Cultural Perspectives, edited by Renata Jambrešić Kirin and Maja Povrzanović (Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, 1996), 173–88, and other studies of “coethnic” migrations. 5 The 1951 Convention defines a refugees as “a person who is outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of his or her race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail him or herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution (see Article 1A (2)),” http://www.unhcr. org/4ec262df9.html, p. 3, last accessed on August 31, 2013.

Introduction

3

are a special type of immigrants whose choice to migrate, unlike in the case of economic migrants, was not voluntary,6 a number of authors also recognize that the boundary between voluntary and involuntary migration is frequently blurred in reality.7 This is particularly the case in the type of migrations considered in this study where individuals as ethnic minorities may have experienced more or less severe forms of discrimination in their countries of origin, and where reasons for migration differed based on individuals’ personal circumstances and specific wartime conditions in their geographic region of origin. Moreover, in this project, I do not study migrants in Serbia on a macro-level, as a single historical case of 6 Cheryl Benard, “Politics and the Refugee Experience,” Political Science Quarterly 101, no. 4 (1986); Gunther Beyer, “The Political Refugee: 35 Years Later,” International Migration Review 15, no. 1/2 (1981); Richard Black, “Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Policy,” International Migration Review 35, no. 1 (2001); B.S. Chimni, “The Birth of the ‘Discipline’: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies,” Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 1 (2009); Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Alejandro Portes and József Böröcz, “Contemporary Immigration: Theoretical Perspectives on Its Determinants and Modes of Incorporation,” International Migration Review 23, no. 3 (1989); Sussanne Schmeidl, “Conflict and Forced Migration: Quantitative Review, 1964–1995,” Global Migrants, Global Refugees: Problems and Solutions, ed. Aristide R. Zolberg and Peter M. Benda (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001); Aristide R. Zolberg, “The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 467 (1983); Zolberg, “The Next Waves: Migration Theory for a Changing World,” International Migration Review 23, no. 3 (1989); Aristide R. Zolberg, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo, “International Factors in the Formation of Refugee Movements,” International Migration Review 20, no. 2 (1986). 7 See for example, Richard Black, “Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Policy,” International Migration Review 35, no. 1 (2001), 66; B.S. Chimni, “The Birth of the ‘Discipline’: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies,” Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 1 (2009), 12; Čapo Žmegač, Jasna, “Refugees, Co-Ethnic Migrants and Diasporas: Blurring the Categories,” In Co-Ethnic Migrations Compared. Central and Eastern European Contexts, edited by Jasna Čapo Žmegač, Christian Voß and Klaus Roth (Munich: Kubon & Sagner Verlag, 2010), 177–94; Matthew J. Gibney, “‘A Thousand Little Guantanamos’: Western States and Measures to Prevent the Arrival of Refugees,” Displacement, Asylum, Migration: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2004, ed. Kate E. Tunstall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 146; William Petersen, “A General Typology of Migration,” American Sociological Review 23, no. 3 (1958), 261; Povrzanović Frykman, Maja, “Construction of Identities in Diaspora and Exile: Croats in Sweeden in the 1990s,” In Beyond Integration: Challenges of Belonging in Diaspora and Exile, edited by Maja Povrzanović Frykman (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2001), 166–94; Aristide R. Zolberg, “The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 467 (1983), 25–6, or see scholars studying climate or environmental, refugees, GuyPierre Chomette et al., Climate Refugees (Cambridge: Massachussets Institute of Technology Press, 2010), 16, and “ecomigrants,” William B. Wood, “Ecomigration: Linkages Between Environmental Change and Migration,” Global Migrants, Global Refugees: Problems and Solutions, ed. Aristide R. Zolberg and Peter M. Benda (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 46–7.

4

The Politics of Social Ties

wartime migration. Rather, I carry out a micro-level study in which the reasons for migration varied from person to person, as evident from both the quantitative and qualitative evidence presented in the following chapters. Thus, the question whether these diverse individual reasons for migration may have had any effect on individuals’ degree of social and political integration was an open-ended question that I investigated purposefully with an aim to identify and analyze the processes of identity formation among immigrants and processes of their political mobilization. The second reason for referring to Serbian refugees as immigrants throughout this study is empirical. Even though, as the study shows, most of these immigrants were forced migrants, or refugees, their patterns of settlement and incorporation in Serbia resembled more the patterns identified in immigration studies than those in the refugee studies. Most individuals that were interviewed no longer had an official refugee status at the time of the study in 2008 and 2009, and thus, they became de facto immigrants. More specifically, of the roughly half a million refugees who arrived in Serbia from 1991 to 1995 from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, approximately 300,000 remained and received citizenship.8 The desire to remain in Serbia, rather than to repatriate, was evident in the results of the first Registration conducted by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees in 1996, when most individuals, or nearly two thirds (60.3 percent) of the 537,937 registered refugees expressed the desire to remain in Serbia in the future, 8 percent planned to move to another country, and 9.2 percent planned repatriation as a long-term solution.9 Also, unlike in typical cases of refugees who initially settle in camps or collective centers, in Serbia, only 10 percent of the total of 537,937 refugees, stayed in the government-provided temporary collective centers.10 Thus, just like typical immigrants in other countries, in the initial period following their arrival, refugees in Serbia relied primarily on their own resources, including own financial resources they brought with them plus the support of extended family and friends in Serbia. Finally, as most refugees lived in physical proximity to locals, frequently in the same neighborhoods or apartment buildings, rather than in collective centers or camps, they had more opportunity for social contact with local population than it is the case in more typical cases of forced migrations.  8 Also, whenever referring to refugee status, expelled person status will also be included in this category. Most people who left Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in the early 1990s were given refugee status in Serbia. Expelled person status was given to people who left Croatia during Operation Lightning (Bljesak) in May 1995 and Operation Storm (Oluja) in August 1995. Only the internally-displaced persons (IDPs) are excluded from this study, as this category was given only to persons who left Kosovo—a type of newcomers that this study does not encompass, The Refugee Population in Serbia Based on the 2002 Census Data, National Statistical Office and Ministry for the Human Rights and Rights of Minorities of Serbia and Montenegro, 2004; Registration of Refugees, United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia, 1996.  9 Registration of Refugees, United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia, 1996, 26. 10 Ibid., 22.

Introduction

5

The Puzzle At the time that this research was conducted, from June 2008 to June 2009, the two largest parties in Serbia in terms of constituency were the Serbian Radical party (SRS, Srpska radikalna stranka) and the Democratic Party (DS, Demokratska stranka).11 Ethnic Serb refugees, most of whom obtained the right to vote at the time of the research, were more likely to support or vote for the nationalist party, the SRS, than ethnic Serb locals.12 However, existing studies in Serbia based on aggregate electoral data and ethnographic research found that within both social categories—locals and refugees—subgroups and individuals varied in their susceptibility to nationalist mobilization.13 These empirical patterns in Serbia raise the following analytical questions that are relevant to other geographic and historical contexts of nationalist mobilization: Why are nationalist parties, or parties that mobilize supporters around an ethnic identity, successful at attracting the support of some coethnics and not others? Within the same ethnic group, what makes some individuals more susceptible to political mobilization by leaders appealing to one’s ethnicity? The ethnic conflict literature provides a starting point, but it does not account for the variation in the success of nationalist mobilization. One explanation for the successful nationalist mobilization in the literature of ethnic conflict, referred to as an instrumentalist-constructivist explanation, attributes the inter-ethnic violence to the activities of rational political leaders, 11 The SRS’s orientation is more nationalistic compared to other parties, such as the DS. For instance, the name of the journal published by this party is titled “Greater Serbia” (Velika Srbija). Also, at the time of research, the President of the party, Vojislav Šešelj, was being indicted for “having participated in the joint criminal enterprise” during the 1990s by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Third Amended Indictment Against Vojislav Šešelj, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 2007. In late 2008, a portion of the party split off into a more moderate group under the leadership of Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić, changing its name to the Serbian Progressive Party (hereafter, SNS, Srpska napredna stranka) that distanced itself from the portion of the party under the continued leadership of Šešelj. There were no elections from the time that the SRS party split and the time that my survey was conducted. All questions about voting, party preferences, and perceptions of voters referred to the past elections or the period before the split of the party. 12 Andrew Konitzer, “The Serbian Radical Party in the 2004 Local Elections,” East European Politics and Societies 22, no. 4 (2008); Branko Milanović, “Ko je glasao za radikale? [Who Voted for the Radicals?],” Prizma: Monthly Political Analyses of the Center for Liberal-Democratic Studies (2004). 13 Jelena Grujić, “The Refugee Electorate: Past, Present, and Future,” Migrationonline.cz, May (2006), http://www.migrationonline.cz/e-library/?x=1963588; Andrew Konitzer and Jelena Grujić, “An Electorate Adrift: Refugees and Elections in postMilošević Serbia,” Europe-Asia Studies 61, no. 5 (2009); Djordje Stefanović, “The Path to Weimar Serbia? Explaining the Resurgence of the Serbian Far Right after the Fall of Milošević,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 7 (2008).

6

The Politics of Social Ties

or “elites seeking to gain, maintain, or increase their hold on political power.”14 In this account, self-interested elites motivate individuals to engage in violence against individuals perceived as belonging to “other” ethnic groups. The initial mobilization is explained in one of the following ways. First, as a result of the need to protect their own self-esteem, emphasized as one of the “innate human needs” by social identity theory scholars, individuals “discount or ignore” the possibility that leaders of their own group may be responsible for atrocities, such as violence against civilians.15 Second, “asymmetry of information” permits leaders to “manipulate” their potential followers.16 Third, leaders’ control of the use of force protecting their own coethnics creates a dependency between leaders and potential followers, as the alternative form of providing for own security was removed.17 Fourth, masses follow their self-interested leaders because they are attracted by a discourse of “ethnic belonging.”18 And, fifth, the individuals follow these leaders not because they believe their discourse, but because they are actually pursuing their own interests that happen to coincide with the interests of their leaders.19 In order for mobilization to be attributed to the activity of political leaders, the evidence in support of these explanations would need to show that mobilization was successful, or that coethnics engaged in a certain form of collective political action, such as voting. The case of Serbia, however, presents a challenge for the instrumentalist-constructivist explanations in the following ways. First, if nationalist party leaders mobilized around the shared ethnic identity, why were they successful in mobilizing some coethnics and not others? Specifically, why 14 James D. Fearon and David Laitin, “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity,” International Organization 54, no. 4 (2000), 846. A number of scholars have applied variants of instrumentalist-constructivist explanations of nationalist/ethnic violence to a diverse set of cases across the world: Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Paul R. Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); V.P. Gagnon, “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,” International Security 19 (1995); Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). 15 James D. Fearon and David Laitin, “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity,” International Organization 54, no. 4 (2000), 854; Henri Tajfel et al., “Social Categorization and Intergroup Behavior,” European Journal of Social Psychology 1, no. 2 (1971); Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict,” The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole, 1979). 16 James D. Fearon and David Laitin, “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity,” International Organization 54, no. 4 (2000), 854. 17 Ibid., 855. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

Introduction

7

were ethnic Serb refugees more likely to support nationalist-oriented parties than ethnic Serb locals (Table 3.4, Model 2)?20 Second, even if they primarily reached out to refugees as a potential electorate, what accounts for the variation in the active support of the nationalist parties among the refugee population (Table 3.4, Model 3)?21 The second explanation of political mobilization links political patronage and ethnicity. Political scientist Kanchan Chandra argues that an ethnic party is successful in attracting electoral support from coethnics in a patronage-democracy, or a democratic system in which elected officials have the ability to allocate jobs and resources at their discretion, “when it has competitive rules for intraparty advancement and when the size of the ethnic group(s) it seeks to mobilize exceeds the threshold of winning or leverage imposed by the electoral system.”22 Thus, if the group is larger, the probability of winning elections would increase. The reason that coethnics vote for the given ethnic party would be the expected benefit in the form of material resources. It is these patron-client relations between party leaders and potential supporters that, in turn, account for the ethnic cleavages, which tend to become formally or informally institutionalized over time in this type of political system.23 In order for the political patronage explanation of the successful nationalist mobilization to hold, empirical support would need to show that voters who expect to receive certain benefits from ethnic parties are more likely to support those parties than other voters. The political patronage explanation can be tested in Serbia, where 20 Andrew Konitzer, “The Serbian Radical Party in the 2004 Local Elections,” East European Politics and Societies 22, no. 4 (2008); Branko Milanović, “Ko je glasao za radikale? [Who Voted for the Radicals?],” Prizma: Monthly Political Analyses of the Center for Liberal-Democratic Studies (2004); Djordje Stefanović, “The Path to Weimar Serbia? Explaining the Resurgence of the Serbian Far Right after the Fall of Milošević,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 7 (2008). 21 Jelena Grujić, “The Refugee Electorate: Past, Present, and Future,” Migrationonline.cz, May (2006), http://www.migrationonline.cz/e-library/?x=1963588; Andrew Konitzer and Jelena Grujić, “An Electorate Adrift: Refugees and Elections in postMilošević Serbia,” Europe-Asia Studies 61, no. 5 (2009). 22 Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2. 23 For other studies explaining the formation of ethnic or sectarian identities by the patterns of patron-client relations, see Bruce J. Berman, “Ethnicity, Patronage and the African State: The Politics of Uncivil Nationalism,” African Affairs 97, no. 388 (1998); Melani Cammett and Sukriti Issar, “Bricks and Mortar Clientelism: Sectarianism and the Logics of Welfare Allocation in Lebanon,” World Politics 62, no. 3 (2010); Rene Lemarchand, “Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa: Competing Solidarities in Nation-Building,” American Political Science Review 66, no. 1 (1972); James C. Scott, “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Science Review 66, no. 1 (1972); Leonard Wantchekon, “Clientelism and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin,” World Politics 55, no. 3 (2003).

8

The Politics of Social Ties

the SRS engaged in patronage-type activity in the outskirts of the city of Zemun. There, the SRS has held power locally since 1996 and initiated a sale of agricultural municipal land during the privatization reform at very favorable prices to refugees for the construction of houses. Even though the national government did not authorize any construction in these areas, several refugee settlements sprouted in the outskirts of Zemun as a result of the local policy of the SRS (Chapter 5). Thus, if patronage was one of the factors explaining the support for the SRS among the refugees, we would expect that refugees who are property owners would vote for the nationalist parties. However, property ownership was not a significant predictor of the nationalist vote among refugees (Table 3.4, Model 3).24 The third body of scholarship—a diverse set of social-psychological literature—offers insight into the processes associated with the formation of social identities. For example, group boundaries may become less pronounced through intergroup contact.25 Yet, the intergroup contact may also lead to a greater consolidation of group boundaries and the ensuing conflict. A possible factor that contributes to the development of group boundaries during the contact may be competition for material resources, based on the experimental findings of the realistic conflict theory scholarship.26 Subjective factors, such as the innate human need for the pursuit and protection of self-esteem, may also contribute to the intergroup competition and the consolidation of group boundaries, as social identity scholars assert.27 For example, emotions, such as prejudice or resentment, 24 Many refugees, however, became property owners without the help of the SRS because they were able to sell to purchase new property or construct new houses from the proceeds of the sale of their property in the place of origin. Based on the survey question number 58 asking respondents about the proportion of their pre-migration property they managed to sell or exchange by 2009, the time when the survey was conducted, 15 percent from 378 respondents were able to claim the value of all of their pre-migration property, 12 percent claimed a larger part of the property, 6 percent claimed half of the property, 8 percent claimed a small portion of the property, and 59 percent of respondents were not able to sell or exchange any property by the time the survey was conducted. 25 Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1954), 261–81; Karl Wolfgang Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1966); H.D. Forbes, Ethnic Conflict: Commerce, Culture, and the Contact Hypothesis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). 26 Muzafer Sherif et al., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers’ Cave Experiment (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961). This experimental work carried out in the United States emphasized realistic factors, such as competition for material resources, as explanations of the formation of group boundaries. 27 Rupert Brown, “Social Identity Theory: Past Achievements, Current Problems, and Future Challenges,” European Journal of Social Psychology 30 (2000); Henri Tajfel et al., “Social Categorization and Intergroup Behavior,” European Journal of Social Psychology 1, no. 2 (1971); Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict,” The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole, 1979).

Introduction

9

may contribute to the formation of “insider” and “outsider” groups. The “insiders” then may perceive the “outsiders” as inferior.28 Some of these social-psychological processes may have indeed contributed to the formation of the refugee identity in contrast to the local identity in the country where both groups share the same ethnic and religious identity, as evident both in this study (Chapters 3 and 4) and in the existing scholarship examining the dynamics of coethnic migrations.29 Empirically, I measured the presence of the refugee identity with two types of indicators: “relational comparisons” between perceived social groups and “cognitive models,” or shared in-group values and experiences.30 The measure of social distance, or the desirability of having a member of the perceived “other” group as a neighbor, captured the relational component of the refugee identity in contrast to the local identity (Table 3.2, Models 1 and 2).31 Qualitative measures of relational comparisons included locals’ views of refugees and refugees’ views of locals (Chapter 4). One component of the cognitive models, or shared in-group values, was measured quantitatively by respondents’ political preferences (Table 3.4). Two quantitative indicators of the cognitive model included refugees’ recent wartime experiences—arrests as a type of less severe experience and killings of friends, neighbors, or family members as a type of more severe experience with violence (Table 3.4). However, as will be shown in the following section and in the following chapters, the social-psychological factors on their own do not fully explain political behavior of refugees in Serbia. For instance, while I find that such wartime experiences influenced refugees’ 28 Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1954); Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 21–36; Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Paul M. Sniderman et al., The Outsider: Prejudice and Politics in Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Jon Elster, in his article, “Rationality and the Emotions,” The Economic Journal 106, no. 438 (1996), 1387, differentiates emotions that are based on senses from emotions based on cognitive functions, such as reasoning, memory, and personal experience. I am referring here to the latter type of emotions, or emotions based on cognitive functions. 29 Čapo Žmegač, Jasna, Strangers Either Way: The Lives of Croatian Refugees in Their New Home (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007); Čapo Žmegač, Jasna, Christian Voß, and Klaus Roth, eds. Co-Ethnic Migrations Compared. Central and Eastern European Contexts (Munich: Kubon & Sagner Verlag, 2010); Elias, N., and J.L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders: A Sociological Enquiry into Community Problems (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1965); Jelena Grujić, “The Refugee Electorate: Past, Present, and Future,” Migrationonline.cz, May (2006), http://www.migrationonline.cz/e-library/?x=1963588. 30 Rawi Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 4 (2006). 31 The survey also asks respondents about preferences of having a member of a given group as a spouse or a boss. However, I only consider the social distance toward “refugees” and toward “locals” as neighbors in the models in this particular study (see Table 3.2, Models 1 and 2) because the focus of the analysis is the neighborhood-level social context.

10

The Politics of Social Ties

preferences when choosing close friends, or when forming social ties, in their new communities (Table 3.2, Model 2), such personal experiences did not directly influence individuals’ political orientation (Table 3.4, Model 3). The Argument Given a mass migration to an ethnic homeland, a country where immigrants constitute an ethnic majority, I argue that individuals who share prior ethnic discrimination experiences tend to establish sizeable interpersonal networks consisting mainly of other coethnic immigrants. Immigrants with such highly homogeneous interpersonal networks are, in turn, more susceptible to appeals made by nationalist political parties. This is so because bottom-up processes of mobilization taking place within these interpersonal networks accompany the top-down mobilization efforts of political parties. The mobilization from below is the necessary link between the formation of a distinct social identity (the immigrant identity in contrast to the native identity in this case) and the immigrants’ political activity. Unlike the mobilizing activity of political parties, mobilization from below is not outright strategic. Rather, immigrants engage in political discussion with their close friends and family members over the course of discussing other daily concerns. The expectation that the shared experiences facilitate a greater level of understanding gives them confidence to express personal views more freely. As a result, homogeneous interpersonal networks composed mainly of individuals with common experiences of discrimination related to migration are more conducive to political radicalization than more diverse circles, those in which individuals self-censor in order not to be perceived as intolerant by the broader community. The composition and size of interpersonal networks indicate the degree to which immigrants incorporate socially in their new communities. If their interpersonal networks are larger and heterogeneous—consisting of a greater number of locals—their level of social incorporation is high, and there is no distinct immigrant identity in contrast to the native identity. Highly homogeneous networks indicate that immigrants have incorporated into their own communities in a segmented manner.32 32 Segmented incorporation, or “segmented assimilation” is documented in the immigrant incorporation literature. See, for example: Richard D. Alba et al., “Immigrant Groups in the Suburbs: A Reexamination of Suburbanization and Spatial Assimilation,” American Sociological Review 64, no. 3 (1999); Thomas Bauer and Klaus F. Zimmermann, “Network Migration of Ethnic Germans,” International Migration Review 31, no. 1 (1997); M.D.R. Evans, “Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Effects of Ethnic Market Size and Isolated Labor Pool,” American Sociological Review 54, no. 6 (1989); Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, “Trends in Residential Segregation of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians: 1970–1980,” American Sociological Review 52, no. 6 (1987); Alejandro Portes and Minh Zhou, “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants,” The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (1993).

Introduction

11

Based on this argument, I hypothesize that in the context of Serbia, in neighborhoods where refugees settle in greater numbers, the refugee identity in contrast to local identity is likely to form, as manifested in social distance toward neighbors who are members of the respective “other” social category. In either type of a neighborhood, those individuals who share similar pre-migration experiences of ethnic discrimination are more likely to form homogeneous close interpersonal networks, consisting predominantly of other refugees. In other words, after arriving in a new community when trying to establish new friendships, or new social ties, individuals seek others who are most like themselves, and potentially most able to understand their own circumstances. Finally, I hypothesize that political parties, particularly those mobilizing around ethnic identity, are more successful in mobilizing those refugees who form homogeneous interpersonal networks. While the relative size of the refugee population in a given community, or a neighborhood, may be a condition that makes this group a likely target of the top-down political mobilization, the success of mobilization will be assumed to vary independently of the proselytizing of political parties. The success of mobilization is measured in this study by individual political activity, manifested in the voting preferences. Refugees in Serbia The decade of the 1990s was both politically and economically turbulent not only for Serbia, but also for the entire region of the Former Yugoslavia. Wars, economic sanctions, the transition from a communist to a democratic regime, the transition from a socialist to a market economy, and internal political instabilities placed an enormous strain on Serbian state institutions at the time when the first wave of refugees arrived from Croatia in the summer and fall of 1991. Following the disintegration of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), Serbia and Montenegro remained in the same state as a parliamentary democratic federation, which was renamed officially as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in April 1992.33 The abysmal nature of the economic situation in the FRY manifested itself in hyperinflation that started in 1992. The inflation rate peaked at 313 million percent in January 1994, reaching the second highest rate of inflation in the world historically.34 The unemployment rate in the FRY rose from 19.7 percent in 1990

33 The country changed its name twice more until the time that this research was carried out in 2009. In 2002, it was renamed “Serbia and Montenegro,” and it became “Serbia” in 2006, following the independence of Montenegro. 34 The highest was the Hungarian hyperinflation of 1945–46, James Lyon, “Yugoslavia’s Hyperinflation, 1993–1994: A Social History,” East European Politics and Societies 10, no. 2 (1996); Pavle Petrović, Željko Bogetić, and Zorica Vujošević, “The Yugoslav Hyperinflation of 1992–1994: Causes, Dynamics, and Money Supply Process,” Journal of Comparative Economics 27 (1999), 335.

The Politics of Social Ties

12

HUNGARY

ROMANIA

CROATIA

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

SERBIA

MONTENEGRO

BULG KOSOVO

Abriatic Sea

MACEDONIA ALBANIA

ITALY Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL)

(DAYTON AGREEMENT LINE)

GREECE

Figure 1.1

Central Balkans in 2008

Source: Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin

Introduction

13

to 25.7 percent in 1997.35 These figures are even more striking when compared to the economic figures a decade later, when Serbia started recovering from the severe political and economic instability of the 1990s. For instance, in the period between 2003 and 2005, the unemployment rate dropped to 15.2 percent.36 The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $19,861 million in 1995 compared to $31,989 million in 2006.37 In addition to the poor economic situation of the country at the time of the refugees’ arrival, the country was also under economic sanctions at two different points during the 1990s as a result of the regime’s involvement in violent conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. From 1992 until 1996, UN Resolution 757 (1992) imposed comprehensive sanctions against the FRY for the failure of its leadership to adhere to Resolution 752 (1992), which called for the cessation of all external military action in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.38 The European Union (EU) and the United States (US) further imposed various economic sanctions on the FRY during this time, including the access to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank credits. The first round of international sanctions was lifted following the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. However, the UN, the EU, and the US imposed a second round of international sanctions on the FRY from 1998 until 2000 for the regime’s violence against the ethnic Albanian civilian population in Kosovo.39 In the FRY, the transition to democracy was difficult due to the semiauthoritarian leadership of the Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who headed the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), a successor party of the League of Communists of Serbia.40 Milošević presided over Serbia from 1989 until 1997 and over the FRY from 1997 until 2000. Milošević controlled the media, electoral processes,

35 World Development Indicators, The World Bank (1999), 60. 36 World Development Indicators, The World Bank (2008), 58. 37 Ibid., 204. 38 Resolution 757 was passed on May 30, 1992. Sanctions included a ban of imports of Yugoslav products, a ban on international exports to Yugoslavia, a ban on general trade with Yugoslavia and the country’s access to international financial institutions, a ban on international flights to and from Yugoslavia, the reduction in diplomatic personnel overseas, and a number of other measures; see United Nations Security Council Resolution 757 (1992). See No. 3 and 4 regarding the specific requirements for the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Croatian Army units from the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 752 (1992). 39 Presse Agence France, “List of International Sanctions Against Serbia,” (2000) Arms embargo in No. 8, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1160 (1998). 40 From 1992 until 1993, the president of the FRY was Dobrica Ćosić, who was replaced by Zoran Lilić from 1993 until 1997. But, the role of the FRY presidents was also curbed due to the non-democratic leadership of Serbia’s President Milošević, who relied on informal and coercive methods rather than on institutional and deliberative methods of governance.

14

The Politics of Social Ties

and the police through informal and coercive means.41 On October 5, 2000, mass protests overturned Milošević following the September 24, 2000 parliamentary and presidential elections in which the incumbent regime had reported false results of their victory.42 In this election, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition won a majority of the seats in the parliament and the DOS candidate Vojislav Koštunica won the presidential election with 50.24 percent of the votes.43 Shortly after taking office, the new leadership under the DOS coalition signaled its break with the politics of the past and its commitment to promoting peace in the region by transferring Milošević from Serbia to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, where he was charged with violent crimes against humanity committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.44 In the years following the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, several waves of refugees came predominantly from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, but also from other republics of the Former Yugoslavia.45 The causes of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars, which were accompanied by the ethnic cleansing 41 Florian Bieber, “The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society: Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 17, no. 1 (2003); Gregory O. Hall, “The Politics of Autocracy: Serbia under Slobodan Milošević,” East European Quarterly XXXIII, no. 2 (1999); Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002); Jasminka Udovički and James Ridgeway, eds., Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 247–66; Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995), 141–2. 42 CeSID, The View on Elections: Report from Parliamentary and Presidential Elections in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Provincial Elections in Vojvodina, September-October 2000, vol. 4 (Belgrade: Center for Free Elections and Democracy, 2000), 69. 43 Presidential elections results: Vojislav Koštunica (DOS) 2,470,304 votes, 50.24 percent; Slobodan Milošević (SPS) 1,826,799 votes, 37.15 percent; Tomislav Nikolić (SRS) 289,013 votes, 5.88 percent; Vojislav Mihailović (SPO) 145,019 votes, 2.95 percent; and Miodrag Vidojković (Affirmative Party) 45,964 votes, 0.93 percent, Ibid., 65. Parliamentary election results: DOS 2,040,646 votes (58 seats), SPS 1,532,841 votes (44 seats), SNP Montenegro 104,198 votes (28 seats), SRS 406,196 votes (5 seats), SNS 8,048 votes (2 seats), SVM 47,768 votes (1 seat), Ibid., 69. 44 Milošević was charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva conventions, and violations of the laws or customs of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indictment Against Slobodan Milošević, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (2001). He was also charged with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war in Kosovo, Second Amended Indictment Against Slobodan Milošević, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (2001). 45 The total number of registered refugees in 1996 in Serbia was 537,937. Refugees came from the following Former Yugoslav states: 232,974 came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 290,667 came from Croatia, 1,306 came from Macedonia, 3,014 came from Slovenia, 914 came from the FRY, and 4,216 did not provide an answer, Registration

Introduction

15

and massive population displacement, were already discussed extensively in the literature.46 Rather than focusing on the causes of the wars proposed in this extensive literature, my study builds on this scholarship by examining the social and political consequences of the wartime violence and displacement for individuals who became refugees and who tried to integrate in their new communities. While this study focuses only on the refugees in Serbia, refugees of Refugees, United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia (1996), 34. 46 Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); J. Lenard Cohen, Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia´s Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition (Oxford: Westview Press, 1995); Beverly Crawford and Ronnie D. Lipschutz, “The Myth of ‘Ethnic Conflict:’ Politics, Economics, and ‘Cultural’ Violence.” (University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, Research Series #98, 1998), http://repositories.cdlib.org/uciaspubs/research/98; Bette Denich, “Dismembering Yugoslavia: Nationalist Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide,” American Ethnologist 21, no. 2 (1994); Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Ana Dević, “Ethnonationalism, Politics, and the Intellectuals: The Case of Yugoslavia,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 11, no. 3 (1998); Josip Glaurdić, The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Vesna Ivanović, Raspad Jugoslavije i stvaranje Bosne i Hercegovine (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 2006); Miroljub Z. Labus, “Uloga ekonomije u raspadu Jugoslavije [The Role of Economics in the Disintegration of Yugoslavia],” Sociološki pregled 28, no. 2 (1994); Zoran Lakić, “Razbijanje ili raspad SFR Jugoslavije [Breaking or Disintegration of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia],” Časopis Saveza istoričara Jugoslavije [Journal of the Association of Historians of Yugoslavia] 5, no. 9 (1999); John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as a History: Twice There was a Country (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Branka Magaš, The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980–1992 (New York: Verso, 1993); Siniša Malešević, Ideology, Legitimacy, and the New State: Yugoslavia, Serbia and Croatia (London: Frank Cass, 2002); Aleksandar Pavković, The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the Balkans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); Vjekoslav Perica, Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in TwentiethCentury Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002); Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962–1991 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992); Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jim Seroka and Vukašin Pavlović, eds., The Tragedy of Yugoslavia: The Failure of Democratic Transformation (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992); Laura Silber and Alan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (London: Penguin, 1995); Jasminka Udovički and James Ridgeway, eds., Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: the Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

16

The Politics of Social Ties

fleeing violent conflicts in the 1990s in other states in the Southeast Europe faced similar circumstances, as evident from the review of literature on the refugees in Croatia in Chapter 6, for example. The first refugees in Serbia started arriving in the second part of 1991, when at the end of the year, 32,957 individuals from Croatia and 7,424 from Bosnia and Herzegovina arrived.47 At the end of 1992, there were 96,123 persons from Bosnia and Herzegovina and 23,890 from Croatia.48 Between 1993 and June of 1995, a total of 45,521 individuals arrived from Bosnia and Herzegovina, while 26,353 came from Croatia.49 From July of 1995 until the time that the registration took place in June of 1996, the greatest number of refugees in total arrived to Serbia. In this period, 204,522 persons came from Croatia following the military operation of the Croatian army known as Oluja (Operation Storm) on August 5, 1995, while 81,164 came from Bosnia and Herzegovina.50 Based on the first Registration of Refugees, which was conducted in 1996 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia (Commissariat) following the last significant wave of refugees, 232,974 individuals arrived from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 290,667 individuals came from Croatia, and 14, 296 arrived from other republics of the Former Yugoslavia, totaling 537,937 people.51 Refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia comprised 97 percent of the total of 537,937 refugees, or 523,641 individuals in Serbia in 1996.52 Geographically, 69 percent of the 537,937 refugees, or 370,473 refugees settled in northern parts of Serbia, consisting of Belgrade and the province of Vojvodina; 28 percent in southern parts of Serbia; and 4 percent in Kosovo.53 While other ethnicities, such as Bosniak Muslims and Croats, were also included in the total number of refugees, ethnic

47 Registration of Refugees, United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia (1996), 34, Table 17a. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. The goal of the Croatian military operation Oluja (Storm) was to reclaim the crescent-shaped region of Croatia bordering Bosnia and Herzegovina in the south and Serbia in the north, known as Krajina, where ethnic Serbs constituted local majorities and formed a self-proclaimed state, Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK, Serbian Republic of Krajina). This “state” was never internationally recognized, and it only existed from 1991 until 1995. At the time of the military operation, this entire area of Croatia was under the supervision of the United Nations Protections Force (UNPROFOR). Based on the Security Council Resolution 802, signed on January 25, 1993, the warring parties agreed to cooperate with the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia and with the UN in these areas of Croatia, known as United Nations Protected Areas (UNPAs), United Nations Security Council Resolution 802 (1993). 51 Registration of Refugees, United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia (1996), 34, Table 17a. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 36.

Introduction

17

Serbs constituted a majority of refugees in the two FRY states of Serbia and Montenegro (91 percent, or 515,946, from the total of 566,275).54 Five years later, in 2001, the UNHCR and the Commissariat conducted another registration. The total number of registered refugees dropped by 30 percent to 377,131.55 From this total, a little less than 36 percent, or 133,853, consisted of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, while 64 percent, or 242,624, consisted of refugees Croatia.56 Ethnic Serbs continued to comprise the vast majority, almost 90 percent, of the total number of 377,131 persons.57 Geographically, 79 percent of the total of 377,131, or 297,301 refugees, still resided in Belgrade and Vojvodina, while only 21 percent, or 79,830, were located in southern parts of Serbia.58 From the total of 377, 131 refugees, only about 6 percent resided in collective centers or special institutions, while others stayed in private residences, either on their own or with family and friends.59 This tendency to find private accommodation rather than to rely on government-provided temporary refugee housing was consistent with the general preference of the refugee population in Serbia to incorporate in their host country indefinitely rather than to return to their countries of origin: In the 2001 Registration, 60 percent of the 377,131 refugees, or 227,521, preferred to incorporate locally into Serbia, only 5 percent, or 19,993, preferred to return to their original countries, while 34 percent, or 129,617, were undecided or did not have an answer regarding their long-term plans.60 The last, and abridged, Registration of Refugees that the UNHCR and the Commissariat conducted in 2004–2005 did not include the question regarding the long-term plans of the 104,246 individuals who still held refugee status at the time of the registration.61 From that number, 104,087 were refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. At that time, from 104,087, only 4,406 refugees, or around 4 percent, remained in collective centers, while 29 percent, or 29,768, lived with family and friends, and 64 percent, or 66,642, resided in some type of private of accommodation. Roughly 3 percent, or 3,267, resided in social housing.62 This report concluded with several criteria regarding the eligibility for the extension of refugee status and outlined the following groups that would not be eligible for the extension of refugee status: 54 Ibid., 22. 55 Registration of Refugees, United Nations High Commissione for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia (2001), 6. 56 Ibid., 8. 57 Ibid., 9. 58 Ibid., 13. 59 Ibid., 15. 60 Ibid., 35. 61 Refugee Registration Report in the Republic of Serbia in 2005, United Nations High Commissione for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia (2007). 62 Ibid., 12–13.

18

The Politics of Social Ties

1. Individuals who voluntarily returned to their country of origin; 2. Individuals who voluntarily accepted citizenship in their host country; 3. Individuals who were able to return to their home country and use their property without any obstructions, but failed to do so; 4. Individuals who were registered as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and 5. Individuals who emigrated to a third country.63 In one of the reports published in 2007, around the same time as the most recent Registration, the UNHCR estimated the following figures: Of roughly half a million individuals with refugee status in Serbia in 1996, who were predominantly from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, 27 percent returned to their original countries, 4 percent resettled in third countries through the UNHCR, and 27 percent received citizenship in Serbia, while 18 percent continued to be eligible for refugee status.64 The remaining 24 percent, or 116,700 individuals, did not register in 2004–2005, according to the UNHCR.65 Given that exact numbers of individuals who remained in Serbia indefinitely were not included in the UNHCR or the Commissariat reports, and in order to estimate most precisely how many former refugees were still in Serbia at the time of this research, I turned to the most recent Census from 2002, which included a question about whether individuals arrived after 1991 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, or other parts of the Former Yugoslavia. Thus, the total number of people who came to Serbia since 1991 and remained until 2002, when the Census was conducted, was 379,135.66 From that number, 91 percent, or 344,137, arrived from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.67 Thus, it may be concluded that in 2002, there were still 344,137 individuals who left their homes in either Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. These individuals constituted the population of this study. From 1991 to 2001, the state provided only short-term humanitarian assistance, in the form of temporary residence in collective centers, food packages, medicine, temporary health insurance, and clothing. This type of assistance was provided until refugees returned to their home countries or became self-sufficient economically

63 Ibid., 22–3. 64 Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons in Serbia as of March 15th 2007, UNHCR (2007). 65 Ibid. 66 National Statistical Office and Ministry for the Human Rights and Rights of Minorities of Serbia and Montenegro, The Refugee Population in Serbia Based on the 2002 Census Data (2004), 3. In the survey and interviews in this study, the children of refugees, born after the parents’ settlement in Serbia, were not included since they were not eighteen at the time of the 2008 Parliamentary election. 67 Ibid., 3–8.

Introduction

19

by purchasing property or finding employment in Serbia.68 When discussing the response to the refugee crisis in Serbia in the 1990s, it is also important to note that several non-state political actors in Serbia, including the military police of the RSK, and even the state police of Serbia, engaged in the forcible military mobilization of individuals with refugee status from Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina on June 11, 1995.69 This violation of refugees’ international rights based on the 1951 Convention, which some of my respondents noted in their indepth interviews, was also documented extensively by the Belgrade daily Naša Borba and IAN (International Aid Network), among other non-governmental organizations in Serbia.70 The state policy regarding refugee incorporation changed in 2002, when the emphasis shifted from repatriation toward local incorporation.71 In 2003, a pilot project was initiated, which permitted individuals to purchase farm households with loans over five to thirteen years, a one-year grace period, and interest rates of 8 percent.72 Farm houses were purchased in the following years with donations from international donors including the UNHCR. Through 2008, 408 houses were purchased through these programs.73 Long-term private housing assistance was also provided in the form of construction materials that were secured by international donors beginning in 2002, benefiting 2,942 recipients of construction materials through June 30, 2008.74 Local governments’ initiatives included the Fund for Aid to Refugees, Expelled and Displaced Persons, founded by the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.75 The Fund pursued activities aimed at facilitating either the return home for those who wished to go back to their states of origin or the attainment of permanent housing for those who wished to stay in Serbia. Thus, most long-term state incorporation policies focused on the housing, while the policies regarding the employment of refugees were not overtly 68 The Law on Refugees, Parliament of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1992, Articles 1 and 2 list the type of humanitarian aid that the state provided, while Article 17 specifies when the beneficiary would no longer be eligible for the aid under the refugee status, The Regulation for Assisting Refugees, Parliament of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992). 69 Goran Opačić et al., eds., Redress in Action: Consequences of Forcible Mobilization of Refugees in 1995 (Belgrade: IAN International Aid Network, 2006), 22. 70 Ibid. 71 United Nations High Commissione for Refugees and the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia. The National Strategy for Resolving the Problem of Refugees, Expellees, and the Displaced (2002). 72 See “Integration Programs” on the site of the Commissariat: http://www.kirs.gov.rs/ articles/navigate.php?type1=6&lang=ENG&date=0&all=1; last accessed on October 19, 2009 (pdf document in the database). 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 75 See website of the Fund: http://www.fondajnfort.org.yu/; last accessed October 19, 2009.

20

The Politics of Social Ties

discussed in the Commissariat reports on the programs of integration. Regarding housing, priority was given to the refugees in collective centers, even though the programs also included refugees and IDPs in private housing as well as locals who were in need of social assistance. Given that fewer than 20,000 people benefited from these policies and that there were still around 100,000 persons with refugee status in Serbia in 2009, it can be concluded that the overall role of the state in the incorporation of refugees was limited. Outline of the Book In the next chapter, I formulate a theoretical framework of identity formation and bottom-up political mobilization that will be applied to the case of refugees in Serbia throughout the book and to other migration cases in the penultimate chapter. By mapping out the processes of political mobilization and identity formation in the aftermath of a mass migration to an ethnic homeland, I argue that nationalist mobilization is likely to be successful when immigrants form homogeneous interpersonal networks, consisting of other individuals with similar experiences of prior ethnic discrimination. In Chapter 3, I present survey evidence documenting the subnational variation in the formation of refugee identity. On the neighborhood level, refugee vis-à-vis local identity forms in areas with a greater proportion of refugees, where refugees and locals both express a greater social distance to members of the perceived “other” group. On the individual level, those refugees who experienced violence prior to migration are more likely to form homogenous interpersonal networks, or close social circles consisting predominantly of other refugees. In Chapter 3, I show a link between the type and size of interpersonal networks and political activity. More specifically, respondents with larger interpersonal networks vote more frequently, and refugees with more homogeneous interpersonal networks are more likely to vote for nationalist parties. In sum, the nature of the social incorporation of refugees in an ethnic homeland affects both the formation of a distinct refugee identity and the refugees’ political activity. Chapter 4 addresses the question of how the refugee identity develops in the first place. It examines social mechanisms and processes associated with the formation of intra-ethnic social boundaries. Specifically, by analyzing 104 indepth interview statements, consisting of 83 former refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia and 21 local Serbs, I show how a social boundary between coethnic refugees and locals develops following the mass migration. Refugees were drawn to other refugees when forming close interpersonal networks more than to the local population for several reasons. One of the reasons was the shared experience of forced migration and violence, which facilitated empathy, mutual understanding, and trust. Another reason was the desire to associate with those who perceived them as equals. In interviews, refugees expressed their awareness that locals regarded them as inferior not only economically, but also culturally.

Introduction

21

In Chapter 5, through the analysis of available documents, media accounts, and in-depth interviews, I explore the sources of the variation in support of nationalist parties among refugees and locals. Chapter 5 accounts for the information exchanged within interpersonal networks and also documents bottomup mobilization processes. The key insight of this chapter is that interpersonal networks do not appear to change previously held political views; rather, individuals are drawn to other like-minded individuals, or to those who share some similar wartime experiences, when seeking to establish new contacts and friendships. Interpersonal networks serve mainly to reinforce the pre-existing opinions and to motivate individuals to vote for the political options that are perceived as desirable in their informal social circles. Chapter 6 applies the theoretical framework from the study of refugees in Serbia to three additional cases of migration to an “ethnic homeland.” I selected first a case from the region, the case of Croatian refugees from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in Croatia. Then, I selected a case from a different geographic region and from a comparable historical period—the case of Jewish immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel. Finally, I chose a case from a different geographic region and from a different historical period—the case of pieds noirs from Algeria in France. Chapter 6 builds on existing scholars’ efforts to study and document a phenomenon of coethnic migrations, most notably examined by Jasna Čapo Žmegač.76 Even though the exact causes and circumstances of these migration cycles differed significantly from the case of Serbian refugees, in all three cases, newcomers left their countries of origin because of ethnic discrimination and developed a distinct immigrant identity in contrast to the native identity. Having lived as ethnic or religious minorities in their countries of origin, the newcomers arrived to a perceived “ethnic homeland” with a sense of entitlement that a state in which they are part of the ethnic majority, unlike the state in which they were ethnic minorities prior to migration, should prioritize their needs and interests over those of other groups. However, they became disillusioned with the official and unofficial welcome they received and began to form, particularly in areas where they were concentrated geographically, interpersonal networks consisting predominantly of other newcomers.77 These networks, in turn, facilitated their political involvement in the new country through voting for right-oriented political 76 Jasna Čapo Žmegač, “Ethnically Privileged Migrants in Their New Homeland,” Journal of Refugee Studies 18, no. 2 (2005); Čapo Žmegač, “Refugees, Co-Ethnic Migrants and Diasporas: Blurring the Categories,” Co-Ethnic Migrations Compared. Central and Eastern European Contexts, ed. Jasna Čapo Žmegač, Christian Voss, and Klaus Roth (Munich: Kubon & Sagner Verlag, 2010); Čapo Žmegač, Srijemski Hrvati [Croats from Srijem] (Zagreb: Durieux, 2002); Čapo Žmegač, Strangers Either Way: The Lives of Croatian Refugees in Their New Home (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007). 77 Jasna Čapo Žmegač, “Introduction,” Co-Ethnic Migrations Compared. Central and Eastern European Contexts, ed. Jasna Čapo Žmegač, Christian Voss, and Klaus Roth (Munich: Kubon & Sagner Verlag, 2010), 13–14.

22

The Politics of Social Ties

parties. In all three cases, newcomers formed immigrant associations; in addition, newcomers in Israel established their own immigrant political parties that tailored their programs to this particular group. In the final chapter, I summarize my main argument and elaborate upon its implications. One of the main findings of this research is that the formation of social identities is first and foremost a bottom‐up social process, as individuals are drawn to others like them in terms of experiences and beliefs, which in this case of refugees have to do with ethnic discrimination and wartime violence, when seeking to establish close social ties. The electoral messages of political parties aiming to attract the support of certain population segments tend to resonate with individuals whose less diverse networks reinforce previously held views. A potential positive aspect of this outcome is a development of citizens who are more politically engaged. However, a potential negative aspect is that such closed and tight‐knit networks could lead to the exclusion of those with different political views and, possibly, to long-term political instability if people do not feel free to express their divergent views.

Chapter 2

Identity Formation and Political Mobilization

The antagonism exists and it will stay. Maybe it is because of us. Maybe we cause it subconsciously by our own behavior or statements that bother them.1

Given a mass migration from a country where migrants constitute an ethnic minority to a country where migrants form part of the ethnic majority, nationalist political parties may attempt to mobilize coethnic newcomers. Parties employ discourse that targets such social categories over the course of electoral campaigns and in their public statements by emphasizing their shared traits or promising to meet their particular needs. While the party mobilization may target coethnic immigrants as a group, I will argue that immigrants who have homogeneous close social ties, consisting predominantly of other immigrants, are more susceptible to this mobilization because informal discussions taking place within such select networks facilitate bottom-up political mobilization. This chapter conceptually links the processes of political mobilization to the processes of identity formation by drawing on the social psychology literature—most notably realistic conflict theory and social identity theory—political behavior scholarship, and migration studies. Processes of Mobilization and Identity Formation In the aftermath of a mass migration from a country where immigrants were ethnic minorities, immigrants who remain and receive citizenship in their new country where they form an ethnic majority, rather than return to their country of origin or emigrate to a third country, may become a target of national-level or locallevel political mobilization. I refer to these mobilization processes as top-down mobilization processes. On the national level, nationalist-oriented political parties may employ discourse that targets coethnic immigrants over the course of electoral campaigns and in their public statements. This political discourse emphasizes certain shared traits and shared personal experiences. On the local level, contacting of voters by political parties, community campaigning, local political rallies, and patronagetype activities are examples of the top-down mobilization processes. However, these activities may or may not lead to a successful political mobilization on an 1 Interview with refugees from Croatia, fieldnotes 18 (29–30), August 29, 2008.

The Politics of Social Ties

24

individual level of analysis. I argue that understanding why some coethnics are more susceptible than others to political mobilization requires the study of how social identities that are seen as relevant in mobilization discourse form in the first place. The diagram in Figure 2.1 illustrates these processes in a case of a mass migration to an ethnic homeland. Immigrants may settle in neighborhoods with high or low proportion of other immigrants. On the neighborhood level, it is expected that in those communities where immigrants constitute a greater proportion of the total population, an immigrant identity will form in contrast to local social identity, as manifested in the degree of social distance that members of respective groups express toward one another. In both types of neighborhoods, however, individual immigrants will identify to a greater or lesser degree with a new immigrant identity. One way in which this tendency may be manifested is in the choice individuals make when deciding whom to include, or exclude, from a select circle of very close friends. Friends are very close if individuals maintain regular contact with them, talk about private matters with them, and consult them when in need of help with a difficult problem, such as illness or the loss of a job. Friends are somewhat close if individuals maintain less frequent contact with them, do not discuss private matters with them on a regular basis, and only turn to them for help with smaller problems.

Processes of top-down political moblllzatlon

Processes of Identity formation

Neighborhoods with high

proportlon at coethnlc Immigrants: targeted by nationaist parties

Immigrant vs. local Identity prom~nent (I.e. greater social distance)

Immigrants who experienced greater degree at dtscrlmlnalion In country of OF

0.0005

R-squared

0.0939

Note: This model is an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Coefficients are listed in the cells with corresponding standard errors in parentheses. Significance levels are represented in the following manner: ***p