"Are You the One and Only Homeland I have?" Ethno-demographic Changes in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1945-2013
Abstract
This book analyses population development of three constitutive nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina (i.e. Bosniaks-Muslims, Serbs and Croats), transformation of ethnic proportional representation of Bosnian population due to differences in demographic behaviour and spatial impacts of forced migration on population distribution after the end of the civil conflict in the 1990s.
The main focus is on comparing the development of the ethno-demographic structure of socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina with the condition of the country after the war. The current demographic characteristics of the population, and contemporary ethnic composition of the country remains fundamentally affected by events related to the conflict: the so called forced migration and ethnic cleansing.
The monography compiles two fundamental approaches, one of them being the top-down approach. It focuses on the characteristics of the role of Western powers in the post-war peace-building process, specifically the analysis of their principal objective - restoration of the original ethnic heterogeneity by means of controlled repatriation of refugees, and evaluation of if its overall success.
This approach is confronted with an insufficiently comprehensively reflected bottom-up perspective, i. e. the perspective of the returnees themselves. Obstacles, which the returnees encountered, and issues that affected the sustainability of the repatriation to their original place of residence are analysed in the scope of this approach.