Nationalist discourses and the construction of difference: Bosnian Muslim refugees in Sweden

Abstract

This article explores practices and discourses that shape and articulate refugees' lives and identities, with a particular focus on a community of Bosnian Muslim refugees in Sweden. The dynamics through which cultural distinctiveness and ethnic boundaries emerge as legitimate and essential is seen through the lens of different frameworks of nationalist thought about culture, place and identity, linking institutions and discourses in postwar Bosnia, the host society and refugee research. Outlining the contexts in which such discourses become salient, the article also examines the ways in which they are negotiated at the level of the refugee community. What is the relevance of the emerging Bosnjak nation to those in exile and how does it interact with other social identities? How do they respond to increasingly 'culturalist' practices of the host country, including the tendency to medicalize refugees' experiences? The questions are explored in relation to refugees' lived experience of war and the exigencies of everyday life in exile. ©Oxford University Press 1998.