Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 2 • Annie Lafontaine
Suzana considered her position as “go-between” an important one, as it
gave her the opportunity to defend the rights and needs of “her people”.
Before the war, she had studied Law and was also involved in the student
protests of 1997. Her work as a translator in the refugee camp had given
Suzana her first chance to realize a hope she had held for years: to work
for “her people”, and defend their interests.
At the beginning, then, these young workers saw their jobs as means of
giving support and help to their own people. Many of them even worked
without pay, as the massive exodus of Albanians from Kosovo was still an
open wound and the drama of displacement and return was still taking
place. Gradually, however, the young people were themselves “displaced”
from the community of those who were experiencing this arduous process.
They were distanced from their families, and increasingly incorporated
into the collectivity of workers, foreign and local. They were removed
from the group of those who had suffered, and left between communities,
forced to quickly enter the ranks of the NGOs and feeling obligated to
become cultural and linguistic translators between their people and the
foreigners. Some were asked to work for “minorities” (Serbs or Romany),
for instance. They had to put aside their ethnically sensitive mindsets, and
consequently their image of the collectively suffering, strong and unique
Albanians, which had been a powerful cement in the construction of their
identities. At the same time, in the world outside of the international organizations,
the ethnic discourse was free to take concrete shape, as Serbs and
Romany were almost non-existent on the scene of post-war Kosovo. The
local staff thus experienced a cleft between their work and their “real
lives”. In order to fulfil their professional tasks, they had to speak the language
of multiculturalism suggested or imposed by the organizations, but
in their families and within their social networks, the discourse was different.
As they each pursued both sides of this division, they gradually
entered what might be termed a double life.
Some time later, while back in Kosovo, these young Local Staff members
had established themselves in their new positions. They then began to consider
their employment in a more practical light, as a source of income that
gave them more freedom and power. Having learnt languages, they were
privileged by their qualifications, when many other Kosovars (like
Bexhet’s son in Prizren) could not speak English, French, Italian or
German.
When she was back in Kosovo, Suzana could work with foreigners, having
learnt English in her position at the refugee camp. She then began selling
her skills, quitting her local job in which she earned only 200 DEM per
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