ABSTRACT
While in most European countries Bosnians displaced during the 1992-95 warwere regarded and ‘tolerated’ as temporary refugees, who would eventually – willingly or unwillingly – go ‘back home’, Bosnians who arrived in Australia throughout the 1990s and early 2000s were treated, and saw themselves, as immigrants in search of a permanent resettlement. A so-called ‘chain migration’ – with migrants assisting family members, friends and neighbours to migrate and join them in desired destinations – has been a key feature of Bosnian migration to Australia. in effect, people’s roots have become their routes. As described in this chapter, shared ‘local’ patterns, networks and loyalties have played an important role in the morphology of the (re)constructed diaspora groups in Australia, with the formation of ‘trans-local’ zavičaj communities. This chapter discusses how the idea of zavičaj is (re)constructed, performed and made meaningful in a transnational context. While it may be transformed in the journey, the zavičaj is not destroyed, with violence and forced displacement unable to erase various forms of popular memory and performative enactment of local identity that continue to produce and reproduce the ideas of zavičaj as one’s intimate and ultimate home. As argued in this chapter, ‘ethnic cleansing’ – which was primarily aimed at the destruction of the Bosnian multicultural zavičaji – is thus defied.
