Book Description

Abstract: This dissertation explores the processes of incorporation and identity maintenance among refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina who settled in the cities of Boston, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, following the 1992-1995 Balkans conflict. After experiencing forced migration, the refugees had to rebuild their pre-war identities, construct new communities, and adjust to a new host setting. Comparing the processes of adaptation and community development between the Bosnian communities of Boston and Hartford, this ethnographic study of 42 refugees in New England reveals variant outcomes in levels of economic integration between urban and rural subjects, as well as dissimilar degrees of interethnic cooperation among the three dominant religious groups--Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. In addition, this work analyzes the impact of ethnoreligious identity and religious institutions on immigrant incorporation patterns found within these two locales and suggests how particular religious institutions help to shape nationalist narratives, facilitate integration, and provide ethnic identity maintenance for Bosnian refugees. Disparate degrees interethnic cooperation found in the Boston and Hartford communities can be attributed to the variables of ethnic and religious concentration, level of education, skill sets, and rural vs. urban origins. The findings of this study indicate that Boston's urban, educated, and multicultural Bosnians live secular lives, express interethnic cooperation, and avoid nationalistic narratives in a post-migration setting. In sum, they are reinventing Yugoslavia in Boston. In contrast, the Hartford community is experiencing a burgeoning religious life after migration due, in part, to the homogeneity of the Bosnian Muslim community, their rural origins, lower levels of education, and poor English language abilities. The galvanization of Muslim religious identity after the war can be partially attributed to access to a new Bosnian American Islamic Cultural Center that reinforces religious identity and simultaneously facilitates immigrant adjustment. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the introductory frameworks and historical overview of the development of ethnic nationalism; the following two chapters explore immigrant integration patterns and the role of religious institutions in that process. Finally, the study ends with a discussion of Bosnian identity maintenance and community life in Chapter 5, followed by concluding remarks.