engleski

Relocated Community: How to cope with the New Homeland

The paper focuses on the analysis of a variety of emotions present today in a small community of Kistanje in the aftermath of the war that was fought on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Kistanje is a village in the hinterland of Šibenik, at present time with mixed ethnic Serbian and Croatian population. Before the war the village was inhabited mostly by a Serbian Orthodox population, and due to specific political constellations, in the eyes of the majority Croatian population in the wider area of Dalmatia, the place was perceived as a kind of Serbian rebellion center against the newly established Croatian state. After the war, in 1995, most of local population fled to Serbia, and a village was settled by the Croatian population from the village of Janjevo in Kosovo (at that time part of Serbia). The community of Janjevo in Kosovo was considered to be the oldest Croatian diaspora which, regardless of over 700 years of existence in the ethnically and religiously mixed environment with Albanian and Serbian communities, constructed very sound Croatian Catholic identity and preserved strong awareness of it. What is particularly specific about the immigration of Janjevo community to Kistanje is the fact that is often referred to as “a human relocation”, unlike the countless resettlement that resulted from the war in Croatia. In this paper, based on their own field research conducted in the village of Kistanja, the authors pay special attention to the emotions that Janjevci Croats attribute to the very act of their relocation and the context in which it occurred. In particular, the notion of “home” and “homeland” has been examined, as well as different degrees of feelings of otherness within the local community, regardless of their strong aspirations for assimilation and acceptance into Croatian society. In this regard particular attention will be paid to the conscious rejection of their own linguistic expression in order to assimilated and avoid ridiculing and rejection.

migrations, Janjevo community, ethnic identity, Kistanje, war in Croatia

nije evidentirano