Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai
developed area that has drained money from the Yugoslav State, the
Serbian IDPs from Kosovo were considered privileged. According to
many Serbs from Serbia, those arriving from Kosovo were not entitled to
humanitarian aid any more than any other citizen of the FRY. A third
reason for the difficult situation in which the Kosovar Serbs found themselves
was that their culture and identity had evolved differently from that
of the Serbs in Serbia. Most of the Kosovar Serbs, like their Albanian
counterparts, had lived and worked in a rural environment, as members of
large, patriarchal families. Their values were consistent with their social,
economic and cultural horizon of daily experience. The Kosovar Serbs
were perceived as “backwards” by the more modernized population of
Yugoslavia. They were subject to discrimination and stigmatization in
Serbia proper, often being called Shiptars, (a derogatory term used for
Albanians), which, paradoxically, associated them with their Kosovar
“enemies” and differentiated them from other Serbs.
At the time we collected our interviews, most of these Kosovar Serbian
families were undergoing the process of resettlement alone, relying on
their own resources, (apart from the very basic humanitarian aid provided
by the UNHCR, OXFAM, and especially the Yugoslav Red Cross, these
being the only organizations authorized to distribute aid at the time). While
richer families had been able to rent homes on their own, those who could
not afford this found themselves in extremely precarious situations. Most
found shelter in provisionally organized collective centres, which were
usually set up in abandoned schools or buildings that had once belonged
to the state. Often, these shelters were situated in the outskirts of the main
urban centres, in Belgrade, Kraljevo, Kragujevac, Leskovac and Vranje, as
well as in Novi Sad.
The areas we identified as most suitable for the interviewing process were
Novi Sad (Vojvodina), Belgrade, Kraljevo, and Kragujevac in central
Serbia, and Leskovac in Southern Serbia. These last three cities, because
of their proximity to Kosovo, had received the largest influx of IDPs.
These areas were selected mainly because of the significant presence of
Kosovar IDPs, but they were also found suitable to the purposes of the
project because of the regional differences between Southern Serbia
(Leskovac), Central Serbia (Kraljevo and Kragujevac), Belgrade, and
Vojvodina (Novi Sad). On the basis of the number of working areas and of
refugees, we decided to train and hire six interviewers: two for the
Belgrade area, one for the Novi Sad Area, two for the Kraljevo and
Kragujevac area, and one for the Leskovac area. Altogether, the interviewers
collected more than 120 interviews, among which 40 have been
selected for translation.
90