ABSTRACT
Consistent with other conflicts in Europe taking place at the same time as this one in the Balkans, the warring factions were preoccupied with the shape of borders between lands. For the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia Herzegovina, this meant that cultural and geographical borders and boundaries in the former Yugoslavia were being re-negotiated, roughly along ethnic lines. This chapter examines the impact of this reality on Serbian Australians. It develops the central idea that the Balkan war caused people to re-evaluate how they constructed themselves and others, and examines what all of this did to relations between the individuals concerned. The fundamental purpose is to prepare the way for further discussion of health and cultural issues in this study in Serbian Australians. The chapter is predicated on the belief that Serbian Australians were self-interpreting individuals who made meaning out of their situation, whether or not they were physically in their ancestral homeland.
