Return migration and gender in Bosnia and Herzegovina: narratives of the women returnees in the city Banja Luka

Abstract

The research on return migration and gender has been motivated by ongoing economic, political and social transformation processes taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) over the past three decades as well as by my personal experience as a member of the society who has witnessed all these changes. By three decades, I refer to the times of communism, war and independency of BiH accompanied with the transition from the centrally-planned to the market and democratic oriented country presented in the following way. First, as a part of the Former Yugoslavia (FY), together with other members of the Eastern Block, BiH was under the communist regime until the end of the 1980s. Second, in addition to the transformations at the beginning of the 1990s, the FY broke down following the war on the BiH territory in the period between 1992 and 1995. And the third, within the independent BiH, the end of the war established the new borders inside the country and divided BiH into two Entities, Republika Srpska (RS) and Federation of BiH (FBiH) by splitting the previously ethnically and culturally mixed societies into three ethnic groups: Bosniacs, Serbs and Croats.