The consequences of armed conflicts on life paths of Bosniaks from Eastern Bosnia

Abstract

This article sets out to describe the individual mobility of persons affected by the war in former Yugoslavia from a long-term, biographical perspective. It evaluates how the conflict and post-conflict conditions limit or enhance the spatial range of individual activities. The time-geographical approach is applied through the usage of spatio-temporal records of the war and postwar life. Thirty-two respondents from Bosnia and Herzegovina were interviewed, and asked to generate an "ex-post facto" open time-space activity diary. The article demonstrates the usefulness of the time-space activity diary usage as a significant instrument for a sensible analysis of life-paths.

War and the city: Lessons from urbicide in Ukraine

“…As for the fourth narrative, it is similar to the one found by Uher and Ira (2021). Our interviewees express the intention to return as conditional.…”

“…The results of the interviews largely overlap with the finding of Uher and Ira (2021), who found that the vast majority of respondents from Eastern Bosnia did not intend to return to the localities where they used to live before the war. The main reasons were the loss of housing, a feeling of insecurity, and that those places were no more important to them than they had been before the war (Uher, Ira, 2021). Additionally, some of them feel exiled in their own city, disoriented and lost, losing the sense of belonging to their city (Azzouz, 2019).…”

“…Our interviewees express the intention to return as conditional. In the case of Eastern Bosnia, such conditions were like 'if we have a house', 'if there were schools, job opportunities, shops, doctors, better conditions', and 'if relatives were not killed' (Uher, Ira, 2021). In the case of the cities of Eastern Ukraine, the key conditions are related to the home, since homes embody past memories and future dreams of returning home (Lundgren, 2016).…”

Post-1990 migration biographies of Slovaks from Vojvodina: A time-geographic perspective

“…In this paper a special attention was given to selected behavioural geographical aspects. The long-term impacts of the wars in former Yugoslavia are not entirely clear, but our behavioural geographical research shows that there are certain differences between the motivations and life paths of Serbs from non-Serbian republics of the former Yugoslavia (see Uher and Ira 2019), the motivations and life-paths of Bosniaks (Uher and Ira 2021) and inhabitants from Vojvodina of Slovak origin. Patterns of post-war spatio-temporal behaviour of Slovaks from Vojvodina are largely influenced by their origin and the emerging type of new relations with the country of their ancestors.…”