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