Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
Question: Hard - how? Can you tell me more?
Subject: Something more? Well… you have the impression that
everybody hates you, I mean – the whole world. First of all,
because our media created that impression in people, not
just the state media. Maybe they’re right, I mean, when all
that is happening, who in their right mind can think they like
us? Not to mention, not to go back to the social side of all
this, the position people are in, bare existence, wondering
how to feed the family, all that. Real, real hard… But I’m
under the impression that people still have the strength, the
will and the wish to stand up to all that, to get back on their
feet, after every new strike from the rotten West. (E4)
[Serbian man, aged 24, from urban context, a former university student,
with a meaningful experience of harmonious multiethnic coexistence in
the urban neighbourhood he used to live in].
Question: If someone did not know what a Serb is, how would you
explain it to him? What is incorporated in the term “Serb”
today?
Subject: Serb today is a great martyr, that above all. Nation that suffers,
always, regardless who is guilty, it has always been
over our backs. And we were those who could forgive and
forget. We are like that, we offer our hand again.
[(E15): Serbian woman, aged 25, from a rural context, law student. The
subject lived in a camp with her parents. After a period of estrangement
and isolation, she has regained a feeling of continuity by communicating
with people from “her environment”].
When asked about the present condition of Yugoslavia (the first question),
all of the refugees complained that the current situation was worse than at
any time they could remember. According to them, with the passage of
time, the living conditions and security they enjoyed in communist
Yugoslavia had not improved. On the contrary, they said, everything had
deteriorated. Most of the Serb IDPs interviewed complained of poverty,
unemployment and of worsening living conditions, all of which were usually
blamed on the government in Belgrade. Many people actually remembered
communist Yugoslavia as a happier era when people were richer,
when there was no animosity between the different Yugoslav nations, and
when Yugoslavia itself was appreciated, fully recognized as a country and
respected by its fellow European nations. One of the issues most often
recurring in both the refugees’ described dissatisfaction with their present
condition and their explanation of what being a Serb or a Yugoslav meant
now, was concern about international isolation and the reputation of
Serbia-Yugoslavia abroad. Many refugees claimed that Serbia’s attempt to
preserve its identity, sovereignty and territorial integrity from foreign (in
particular American) cultural and military intrusion was consistent with its
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