Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 1 • Silvia Salvatici
Contradicting this, Adem told the students that the “villagers” do not care
about their house ( something he himself considered the most important
investment of a family), preferring to use the money they earned from their
city jobs to buy two or three cars. As a consequence of this, he continued,
the villagers allegedly did not have a place to house their families, and
cluttered Pristina with too many cars. Taken together, these convictions
remind us of the popular stereotype of the “country bumpkin”, but further
point to the fragmentation of the Kosovar-Albanian community. This division
is also perceived, with varying degrees of awareness, by the Kosovar
Albanians, although routinely buried by the suggestion of a monolithic
national identity.
The migration from village to town also seems to have created deep rifts
within the Kosovar-Serbian community of Northern Mitrovica. In conversations
with Vladimir, the negative image of the “villagers” re-emerged,
this time in an even more violent tone: “You can recognize them immediately”,
he said. “They are very different from people who have always
lived here. The way in which they behave… how they speak… When I
hear them speaking I vomit.” In this community, the migrant villagers have
fallen from favour, from being the butt of jokes to being seen as “bandits”.
In Vladimir’s words:
And how do they survive? They set up these horrible kiosks, these little
shops… illegally, of course. And they steal. Mainly they steal. They
come to town because they know that now there are no rules, no controls.
They are all the shit of this town.
Here also, the political radicalism of the migrants was seized and held
responsible for both the divisions within the Serbian community, and the
tensions between Serbs and Albanians. As Vladimir continued:
They are extremists. They don’t want peace. They say that the Albanians
don’t want peace, but it’s their responsibility. THEY don’t want the
peace. People from the town are different, although they don’t take any
initiative… they just tolerate them. I don’t understand why they don’t do
anything. Those villagers are what bothers me the most about the situation
nowadays in Mitrovica North.
According to widely held opinion on the village migrants, Mitrovica has
not only shifted to a more radical political position (with a consequent
exacerbation of the tension between theirs and the Albanian community),
but has also undergone a change in its appearance, living space and social
life: “I was with my colleague a few days ago”, said Biljana, a resident of
Mitrovica:
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