Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
month, for work within an international organization, where she made
1,000 DEM per month. This salary gap between local and international
establishments was not unique to Suzana’s case, but normal for most of the
international organizations. In the words of Liljana:
[Working with an NGO] was like you had more power because we needed
money and we had to get the job. It was just after the war period so it
means that everything was destroyed, you didn’t have anything to buy
and everything had to be renewed.
At this same time, however, most of the local staff were young, in their
twenties. The many who stayed in the international organizations began to
receive salaries that were more than twice as high as that of their parents.
Traditional family structures were beginning to reverse. As local staff,
these young employees also became a part of the local leaders of the socalled
rebuilding of Kosovo. They had begun to work at a time of emergency,
to help their people, and had simply continued to work through this
period of reconstruction, when they needed money to help their families
and to acquire professional skills for themselves. As Suzana said:
… now that … the internationals [are] here, you can see with your eyes
how … we [differ] from them or what we have in common, or if we want
to change, or what’s bad on them… because they are not so… ideal, you
know … Well you know that Western life is doing what you want, getting
separated from your parents, living on your own, but here in Kosova
it was difficult, you had to live together with your family and you were
close to your relatives, you were more… it [fits us to get] together…
that’s why I’m [saying] that tradition is to be more [on] our own, not asking
or looking for another life… I’m not against new life, but still keeping
what is more important for one Albanian: family and to go on with
tradition … the role of the family will still be the same [as] it was before,
but it will be more … I don’t know, more modern … but [on] my own, I
don’t want to be exactly like Westerners are.
What Suzana was describing was a balancing act, performed, in her case,
on vanishing ground. Her discourse was ambiguous and oscillated
between tradition and modernity. She claimed that she did not want to see
a change in tradition, but the fact that she was working helped hasten these
changes. She does not live with her parents anymore, but with her
boyfriend, as does Liljana, and neither of the women are married. Both
keep most of their salary for their own use, and can therefore buy what
they wish. Even this situation, however, is vanishing ground. They know
that the organizations will eventually leave, sooner rather than later. As
before the war, they cannot plan their futures. There is no stable path that
will lead them to security. Because of this, Suzana saves her money so that
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