Bosnian and Herzegovinian diaspora in Norway: upward mobility and social cohesion within the Norwegian society

Abstract

Namely, I examined the Bosnian and Herzegovinian immigrants to Norway whose integration process went fairly smooth. Immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina rapidly became a socially and financially functional part of the host society. However, there are no simple and comprehensive indicators that would help us understand the position of Bosnian and Herzegovinian community in Norway. Thus, this work does not pretend to offer definitive and exclusive conclusions on the studied phenomena. I focused on the community that has rather complex in-group interaction, rooted in its distinct cultural code and specific context. Therefore, I aimed to grasp and point out some of the major outcomes of this transition from the Bosnian war refugees to respectable ethnic community in the Norwegian multicultural society. In other words, I was interested in comprehending the patterns of the Bosnians and Herzegovinians‟ social mobility and what kind of side effects it had on its actors and their internal relations. What have they gained and/or lost in the process of integration? How do they perceive themselves then and now, and what have changed, if anything did? These are some of the questions this work tried to answer.