Ethnic Identity and Gender Roles in Flux: The Adaptation of Bosnian Refugees to Austrian Programs of Humanitarian Relief and Economic Integration: 1992-1999, Barbara Franz[1]
INTRODUCTION
This paper focuses on the changes in gender relations among Bosnian refugees who arrived in Vienna after the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war in spring 1992. The civil war in Bosnia was an excruciating and traumatic experience for all Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims. Today, seven years after the outbreak of the war and more than three years after the signing of the Dayton Agreement in Paris on December 14, 1995, more than 7 000 Bosnian displaced persons in Austria still live in refugee camps and have not managed to adapt to their new environment. According to Austrian government sources, about 65 000 Bosnian refugees, however, have "integrated". People are considered integrated when they can provide adequate housing and support for themselves and their dependents through legal employment. Despite legal, social and economic segregation and discrimination, the large majority of Bosnian displaced persons residing in Austria were considered economically integrated at the end of 1998.[2]
Refugee women seem to have adapted more successfully to their host community than have male refugees. The findings in this paper do not correspond with the general trend in current migration literature which describes female migrants’ losses and gains, frequently without analyzing the individual motivations and identities of women and men. Authors such as Cherryl Walker (1990) or Tracy Bachrach Ehlers (1990) argue that the migration process, or any other change in the relations of production, can undermine the existing patriarchal structures of a society. They, however, also emphasize the price women have to pay for their new independence. While Bachrach Ehlers (1990:6) argues in Silent Looms that women’s economic influence and social status declined, Walker (1990:8) shows that a change in gender relations results in a devastating increase of economic and emotional insecurity for women. Mirjana Morokvasic (1984:891), in her analysis of Yugoslav Gastarbeiter (guest worker) women in Europe, finds that women are victims of not only gender discrimination, racial discrimination of migrant workers, and class exploitation as working class, but also of a "gender asymmetry" in Gastarbeiter families and host societies. According to Morokvasic (1993:476), "migration and access to paid employment is certainly not a guarantee of improvement in women’s status." She concludes that gender inequality in the arriving group remains largely what it was prior to the migration process. This author, however, found that Bosnian women have managed to "integrate" into the labour market more effectively than have Bosnian men. Thus, for a distinct group of Bosnian refugee women, many of whom were raped and otherwise severely traumatized during the war, the experience of residency in Austria has, over time—but rarely without additional personal suffering—increased their personal freedom and influence in family decisions. Most of them neither want nor, after the Dayton Agreement, are able to return to their places of origin. The exodus thus paradoxically also seems to have served as a catalyst for increasing feelings of independence, emancipation, self-understanding and revised identity for a particular group of Bosnian women.
A substantial number of displaced Bosnians in Austria cannot return to their homes because other ethnic groups now dominate their places of origin. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina has changed not only the pre-war political and social structures, but also the demographic characteristics in the country. Before the war, the population of Bosnia totaled 4.3 million of whom 43.7 percent were Bosnian Muslims, 31.3 percent Bosnian Serbs, 17.3 percent Bosnian Croats, and 7.7 percent other groups. The signing of the Dayton agreement near the end of 1995, theoretically included and anticipated the option of return to their places of origin for the 2.3 million displaced persons and refugees. More than 20 percent of all internally displaced persons have now returned to their places of origin, and about 40 percent of all refugees who came to Western Europe have now returned to the Federation area of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Of the more than 520 000 refugees and displaced persons who have returned, 90 percent benefited from the ‘majority returns option’ of the Dayton Agreement; that is, Bosnian Muslims from the Federation area return to Bosniak areas of the Federation, Croats to the Croat areas, and Serbs to the Republica Srpska. The Dayton agreement does not allow for relocation, for example, of Bosnian Muslims originating in the Republica Srpska to the Federation because this would be tantamount to accepting ethnic cleansing. But relocation increasingly takes place on an individual basis as the years pass and no other opportunities are available. Nearly three years after hostilities came to an end, figures decreased merely to some 700 000 displaced persons and 500 000 refugees still in need of ‘durable solutions’. Of those abroad without a settlement solution, the bulk are in Yugoslavia (250 000 Serbs from the Federation area), in Croatia (80 000 of which 75% are Croats and 25% Bosnian Muslims) and in Germany (130 000, mostly Bosnian Muslims from Srpska) (Stacher 1999; Danish Refugee Council 1997).
The findings in this paper are based mainly on 23 qualitative interviews with Bosnian refugees (three of which were follow up-interviews), 10 interviews with refugee and aid organizations, three interviews with Austrian government officials, and one interview with a Bosnian government officer. While the officials are cited with their full names, the names of Bosnian refugees have been changed to protect their privacy. Conducted in German, the interviews were open and semi-constructured. The methodological approach followed the suggestions of DeVault (1990:96-116) and especially Anderson and Jack (1991) who emphasize the need of listening ‘in stereo’, receiving both the dominant and muted channels and tuning into them carefully to understand the relationship between them.
Discrimination in the labour market against de facto refugees, in combination with the refugees’ experience of new social challenges and economic struggle in the host community, resulted in varying levels of refugee engagement with the host society. Such variation is more gender based than dependent upon education, age and place of origin, although these latter variables also influence successful adaptation to the host society. To understand the preponderant role of gender we should bear in mind that gender inequality changes according to economic and social premises and has no features common to all societies or historic periods. Based on an identity not rigidly linked to a particular area of origin or a social status, the motivation and intent of women interviewed seemed to be anticipatory and creative while simultaneously economically and socially compromising within their new environment. In contrast, Bosnian men appeared to hold on to their previous ethnic and social identity by continuous nostalgic revelations of their lost privileged social status and economic position. This paper, therefore, argues that male Bosnian refugees’ identity is linked to their places of origin, their homes, and their related economic and social status held in their communities of origin. Women refugees, on the other hand, quickly realize the need for personal sacrifice and adaptation in the host society and define themselves through their family relations, their cultural and religious traditions, and their individual projects of adaptation to the host society. The gender-based differences in self-perception further resulted in a number of paradoxical economic and psychological consequences for displaced Bosnians in Vienna.[3]
A Student Journal of International Affairs
Volume 1, January 2000