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