Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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with European regulations. He is now living at the reception centre of San<br />
Foca without any hope of finding work and unable to move freely because<br />
of his refugee status.<br />
Ardita [age: 38, female] is the mother of four children, who she brought to<br />
Italy with her in January of 1999. She is an Albanian of Islamic faith from<br />
Llucan, a village in Serbian territory, and she remembers the escalation of<br />
tension between ethnic groups. To her, the difficulties began in 1997, when<br />
violence erupted in her mostly Serb-inhabited neighbourhood. Her problems<br />
were made worse by the Albanian villages in Serbia, which moved to<br />
support the Albanians of Kosovo, (though mostly by helping those who<br />
had been forced from their homes). Ardita’s flight from Kosovo was hurried,<br />
and occurred before the beginning of the NATO bombings.<br />
Dritan [age: 63, male] was born in Pristina, but had lived most of his life<br />
in Albania until he and his father were forced into exile by Serbian nationalists.<br />
He is an engineer, has two children and he is an atheist. During<br />
World War II, Dritan fought with Albanian partisans, against the Nazi-<br />
Fascist occupation. When the war was over, he went to university and<br />
studied in Moscow, while the situation of Kosovo was made difficult by<br />
the widening political distance between Yugoslavia and Albania. He then<br />
began a career as a poet and writer. Now that the NATO bombings have<br />
ended, he has finally been able to visit the places of his infancy with his<br />
wife.<br />
Arta [age 23, female] is a Romany woman who arrived in Italy just six<br />
days before the interview. She was still deeply traumatized by the murder<br />
of her mother, which took place before her eyes. Her tale was woven with<br />
the pain of one who, with her father, had to escape her home to avoid being<br />
another Romany victim of the war. Majkell [age 67, male] is Arta's father.<br />
He has lived in Kosovo his entire life before being forced to escape. He is<br />
now trying to reach his sons in Germany. He was barely able to tell the tale<br />
of his wife’s murder before dissolving in tears.<br />
The South: Lecce<br />
Places and mediators<br />
<strong>Psychosocial</strong> <strong>Notebook</strong>, Volume 2, October 2001<br />
In order to collect interviews, researcher Patricia Ruiz chose the Regina<br />
Pacis immigrant reception centre, which is located in San Foca, in the<br />
province of Lecce. Half of the southern Italy interviews were collected in<br />
this region: five in the centre, and one in the interviewee’s home in the city<br />
of Lecce. This is how she describes the site:<br />
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