Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti
These discriminatory provisions were especially harmful to the Albanians
who refused to collaborate with the Serbs, and who, with some of the
Kosovar Romany, did not agree to count themselves amongst the supporters
of Slobodan Milosevic. 8 According to the witnesses, collaborating
would have meant supporting unjust acts, and would have made it impossible
to maintain equality between conflicting parties. This is a recurrent
theme in the interviews held with adult Romany about the workplace,
or with younger Romany, who have been pressured at school to take arms
for the Liberation organizations in order to earn the “right” to remain in
Kosovo once the conflict ended.
The workplace therefore, along with the schools, became the conflict’s
battleground in anticipation of its spread to other institutions in the 1990s.
What did this mean to the daily lives of the men and women who were citizens
of Kosovo? What were the consequences of these measures to the
experience of women and young people before they were directly involved
in the school conflict and the actual war? Of course, many of the interviewees
chose to emphasize that economic exile, in other words, dismissal
from work, led to greater collective suffering to both the emigrants and
those, mostly women, old people and children, who chose to stay behind
in Kosovo.
Other themes recurrent in the interviews were the destinies of families and
the changes in traditional family structure, as well as in gender and generational
roles. With one parent abroad, and often both far away, women
both young and old had to take charge. They were given new responsibilities,
not so much of supporting their families financially, as this was done
by a husband working in another European country or in the United States,
but of interacting with public institutions, schools and health services, and
of dealing with administrative offices and the police.
168
Question: And when your mother left too, who stayed home, who had
the responsibility of maintaining the home?
Merita: I was there, and also my grandmother and aunt, and my
great-grandmother who died three years ago; yes, we were
an all-women family, except for the young sons of my uncle,
because my brother left with our mother the first time,
together with my three-month-old sister who is now ten, and
my brother then was 16 or 17…
Question: And when there were problems, like solving school matters,
having to go to public offices for some reason, who did that,
did you do that?
Merita: Yes, us and our grandmother, we did not go out much
alone…