Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti
ferences between the two main adversaries, the Romany therefore suffered
from a progressive exclusion from places of interaction of both groups,
until they were literally shut out from public spaces. As they began to be
considered alien to both state and parallel schools, and as they were
increasingly looked upon with suspicion in public workplaces and even in
the mixed districts of the larger cities, they were progressively crushed
between one opponent and the other. Even the endeavours of the Roma
people to have an independent voice of their own had no result:
…With the Roma community of the 1990s, we asked to set up a Roma
association in Kosovo but we got no permission… we had some meetings
to set it up… but since the Serbs in Kosovo were few and… if we
had this association tying all Kosovo Roma like a federation, the Serbs
were few and they needed votes… and they said: look, if you need something
political, economic and social you have to be a member of SPS…
that would be the Serb Socialist Party… You must be linked to that, with
this you can have your rights as individuals or as a people, you can have
all your political, economic and social rights here… but I was against…
I did not become a member and this is also because the political motive
that they sent me away from work, how can one work under the State,
have a salary from the State and not have this membership card I did not
want? Well, this is the political part because… I did not agree with the
Serbs… [Tahir]
Part II
Death, Fear and Changing Perceptions of the Body
Among Survivors of Ethnic Cleansing
Laura Corradi*
Body and war
The body is an undeniable element of visibility. This knowledge is well
understood by whomever becomes the target of an “ethnic” conflict:
Albanian, Romany or Serbian. Some things may change, such as the times,
forms and degrees of conflict; yet the body remains, as a common place of
* Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, now professor in Sociology of Health
and Illness at the University of Calabria and in Methods of Social Research at the University
of Venice.
172