Gender and Economy in the Bosnian Refugee Migration to the United States, 1992-2005

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Tired Bodies and Traveling Women: Gender and Economy in the Bosnian Refugee Migration to the United States, 1992-2005 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Anthropology By Christiana M. Croegaert EVANSTON, ILLINOIS (June 2007) 2 © Copyright by Christiana Croegaert 2007 All Rights Reserved 3 Abstract Tired Bodies and Traveling Women: Gender and Economy in the Bosnian Refugee Migration to the United States, 1992-2004 Christiana M. Croegaert Bosnian women war refugees are not only trauma survivors, but are actively engaged in economic and social practices that shape their American sites of relocation. These economic activities—wage labor, and unremunerated volunteer and kin labor—are embedded in a moral framework of mutual obligation rooted in the concept veze / connections, and in householding practices in which women’s work is prominent and valued. Refugees entered the United States during the end of the Cold War and the global rise in neoliberal approaches to governance both in formerly communist Europe and in America. Economic strategies cultivated during the socialist era prove useful in this new context characterized by refugee interactions with neoliberalizing state and faith-based institutions that posit a moral frame hinged on the figures of the Bosnian victim and American savior, who together enact a culture of dependency wherein women’s work is not recognized. These figures travel as iconic images in popular media, but also are embodied in everyday interactions among American caseworkers and volunteers, and Bosnian refugees. I identify the tensions between peoples’ sensibilities surrounding obligation and dependence through an ethnographic exploration of peoples’ home, work, and cultural sites, and narrative depictions of war and refugee life. Here, the politics of representation is viewed as central to women’s negotiations of postwar material life. American and European-produced 4 television, theatre, film, and textual depictions of refugees circulate widely in Chicago and in “Southtown” Massachusetts. I find that Bošniaks’ distinct status as both white ethnics and Muslims is central to these storylines. Finally, war narratives reveal the impacts of large-scale economic shifts in formerly socialist Europe, and in late capitalist America on Bosnians’ postwar lives. I engage scholars of neoliberal globalization, refugee studies, moral economy, and communication studies to investigate the circumstances under which women refugees are making do in America. 5 Acknowledgements I owe a great deal to the mentorship of my dissertation committee members: Micaela di Leonardo, Katherine Hoffman, Helen Schwartzman, and Mary Weismantel. Drs. Hoffman and Weismantel taught me how to be an ethnographer. They challenged me to be attentive and sensitive—sometimes humble and at other times assertive—when learning about the lives of people who have come of age in a culture cultivated in a context different from my own. Each one of these teachers shared her desire to contribute to knowledge about regions of the globe outside the United States. Dr. Schwartzman urged me to pay close attention to how women situated their stories socially. Dr. di Leonardo’s commitment to the effective use of the written word provided many occasions of frustration and laughter for both of us, and this dissertation would not look the same without her careful input in this regard. I am so grateful for her sharp tongue and extraordinary wit, through which she communicated her ambition that I always connect and subject what I learned as an ethnographer to broader theoretical and social concerns. Her life-long pursuit to trace everyday manifestations of large-scale global inequalities informed many moments of fieldwork, and the writing of this dissertation. I am grateful to other readers as well. Victor Friedman, Larisa JasareviI, Snežana ŽabiI, Öykü Potuoglu-Cook, Niki Fabricant, Craig Tower, and Andrea Muehlbach all provided especially useful critical readings of portions of this dissertation. Paper presentations at UCLA, Stanford University and the University of Chicago also elicited insightful queries that contributed to my write-up. 6 In the field, I owe an enormous debt to Adela Sajdel-CeriI, Ajna and Goran MariI, Hasnija and Lejla DediI. Azra Heljo, Jasmina PojskiO, Mensura Periž, Selena SeferoviI, Dr. Senad AgiI and all the women at the community center, who contributed each in their own way to my research. Tim Amstutz, Dori Dinsmore, Diego Bonisatti and Scott Laing, along with numerous other staff at World Relief in Chicago, and at the local school and hospital in Massachusetts, generously set aside time in the their busy schedules to talk with me about state immigration and refugee guidelines and services. I received funding support for the research and writing of this dissertation from many sources. Research grants from the Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Foundation, Friends of Anthropology Northwestern University Alumni, and the Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University, allowed me to conduct field research from 2002-2005. The Northwestern University Alumnae Dissertation Year Fellowship write-up award made the first iteration of this dissertation possible, and a research fellowship with Jim Spillane in Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy saw me through the final stages of revision. Grants from The Graduate School and the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University supported my presentations of this research at conferences at UCLA, Stanford University, and the 2006 AAA meetings. Finally, friends and family cheered me on throughout this entire endeavor. Catherine Wirth and Janalee Croegaert located dozens of sources for me (on very short notice!) at the Northwestern library. Doug Bolender helped me prepare maps with GIS software. I might not have arrived at Northwestern at all were it not for the encouragement of Lynda Morgan and Roger House at Mount Holyoke who urged me to pursue graduate studies. Janalee, Jim, Jacob, Jubal, Care, Renee, Clivia, Frances, Katiti, Penny, Kelly, Jean, Miki, Marija, and Anna all helped 7 sustain me during this intensive and lengthy research project. In the end, this dissertation could not have been written without the support offered, and questions posed, by Tony DugandžiI. 8 Preface September in Chicago On a warm September Saturday night in Chicago a long line of people winds down Randolph Street towards Michigan Avenue, the eastern edge of the city’s cultural and financial center “looped” by the Elevated train. We are waiting to see an outdoor play presented by Performing Arts Chicago and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago’s not-yet-complete (and significantly over-budget) Millennium Park. Every few minutes a young frazzle-faced woman emerges from behind the ticket table to survey the line. It is the final night of the troupe’s run here, and as they have received several favorable write-ups in the weekend entertainment sections of the city’s daily newspapers, there isn’t enough room to admit everyone in line. My companion and I confer anxiously with the spikey-orange-haired woman in front of us: will we get tickets, or will they sell out before we make it to the head of the line? I was particularly interested to see “Carmen Fenubre”—Funeral Song—because the show centered on the recent wars that marked the dissolution of the Yugoslav state—events that made refugees of more than two million people, upwards of 30,000 of whom had recently made the city of Chicago their new home. Their postwar lives were the topic of my dissertation project, and I hoped I might see some of the Bosnian Yugoslavs I had already met in this beginning stage of my ethnographic fieldwork. Luckily, I did not. The performance was a truly terrifying event that powerfully enacted forced displacement, destruction of homes and cultural sites, mass killings and rapes—the 9 hallmarks of war all-too-familiar to the women and men with whom I had spoken. They didn’t need reminding. So who did? What story could this performance narrative, staged by an internationally acclaimed avant-garde Polish theatre troupe against the backdrop of Chicago’s museums, elite hotels and corporate headquarters, and sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland, the Polish Cultural Institute, the Chicago Park District, the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, and the Polish National Alliance of North America—how could it relate to the Bosnian Wars and the wartime creation of a refugee population of nearly one million people? Carmen Funebre in Millennium Park The Bosnian Wars (1992-1995) were the topic of Polish theatre group Teatr Biuro Podrozy’s original production, Carmen Funebre/Funeral March. The cast included five soldiers, two warlords, one grim reaper (all male figures) and five civilian victims (two women and three men). The performance attempted to create audience confusion and terror by making use of the informal everyday outdoor space and a minimal set against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline. Spotlights beamed from the arms of masked warlords draped in long dark capes, as they roamed to and fro on stilts to ferret out select actor-victims planted next to unsuspecting audience members. Soldiers made a circle around one of the warlords’ female victims, and used a rope to pen her, fling her about, all the while drunkenly spitting red wine at her. The men’s wine-soaked mouths and the woman’s torn red dress signaled the bloody rape we witnessed. Shaken throughout the performance, I watched and listened for other audience responses. People seemed disoriented—perhaps the troupe members felt this disorientation would help communicate the victim’s horror. The program contained a note about the play, “inspired by the 10 war in Bosnia and other ethnic conflicts,” but I overheard confused remarks: “Okay...what was that all about?” and relief: “Glad that’s over,” once the performance ended.

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