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Refugee integration and citizenship policies: the case study of Croatian Serbs in Vojvodina

This paper aims to study the integration experiences of the Serb refugees from Croatia who left the country during the 1990s and sought protection in Serbia. In the focus of the study will be the access to citizenship and access to the alternative legal statuses as determinants of the specific integration outcomes. This paper acknowledges arguments from the forced migration literature that on the one hand accentuate the refugee agency in the construction of the sense of integration, while on the other highlight the importance of the legal aspects of the integration process. However, this paper argues that integration represents a more complex process than solely one of adjustment to cultural, economic, legal, political and social conditions of the host country. The context within which refugees exercise their agency during the process of integration is not determined solely by the environment of the host state, but is constructed by the legal remedies that are at the disposition of the refugees in their state of origin, possibilities to restore the networks they left behind and feelings of personal identity that are associated with the previous home. In this process, citizenship policies play a complex role. They define the areas of social life in which refugees can legally act, define the nature and the scope of access to material remedies necessary for economic livelihood restoration in the new environment, and finally play an important role in the process of self-construction of identity.

refugees; Croatia ethnicity; integration; citizenship

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