Solidarity or Crisis? How Personal Migration Experiences Shape Popular Perception on Forced Migrants in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the end of 2017, Bosnia and Herzegovina has experienced a significant increase in the number of migrants transiting through the country. Based on an ethnographic reading of nineteen recollections of ‘personal migration experiences’ of Bosnians during 1992–1995 war, which form the basis for popular perception of migrants in the country, this paper explores how the concept of solidarity is imagined and lived in the context of this significant increase. We argue that Bosnians interpret these recent arrivals as a ‘test of humanity’, having been in a similar situation in the early 1990s. In this regard, the concept of solidarity opens a window onto the interactions with and between migrants and non-migrants, recognizing a shared set of concerns and orientations, rather than exceptionalizing migrants through the lens of ‘crisis’. That said, the concept of solidarity is less popular among those who do not share a so-called ‘migrant’s faith’, resulting in negative perceptions of migrants. In these perceptions, migrants’ presence in the country is criminalized, resulting in various calls for more aggressive, even violent, ‘popular’ handling of migrants transiting or settling in Bosnia and Herzegovina.