Introduction

Abstract

Abstract“I want to go home,” a highly successful documentary series started broadcasting on various Bosnian TV channels in May 2016. The documentary program (Kenović, 2016) features the stories of artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, and other professionals who have built their careers abroad and have now returned “home” to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Scenes of harmonious family life filled with homemade food and drink, breathtaking images of natural landscapes, and the nostalgic sounds of sevdah music are interwoven with the returnees telling their life stories. In the interviews, the participants acknowledge the benefits of greater career opportunities, economic advantages, democratic freedoms, and political stability of living in the West. However, almost every interviewee emphasized how they feel more content as citizens in their country of origin; how they belong there and how they are socially and spiritually more fulfilled in their home environment. The returnees often invoked well-known phrases such as “There’s no place like home,” “Home is where the heart is,” “Home sweet home” or a Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian saying that goes something like “Travel the world, but keep coming back home.” Such expressions seem to have universal appeal, often found dutifully embroidered on handcrafted ornaments stitching together an amalgamation of warmth and comfort. Yet, their direct application to a context of forced migration and displacement, where some returnees were victims of violence, mass expulsions, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and other forms of persecution, while others have endured considerable sacrifices to make their return a reality, seems to be highly questionable. The documentary series also appears to be in line with international community efforts towards diaspora engagement. Countless “diaspora business forums,” networking events and roundtables are being organized by various levels of government to attract investment from members of the BiH diaspora. Faced with a dwindling tax base, because of high unemployment and emigration rates, the BiH authorities are trying to lure the desperately needed investment for job creation. The returnees’ warm and “homely” responses were accepted and not questioned or problematized by the filmmakers, leading me to believe that the popular TV program was made to promote return and not present a more nuanced understanding of it. Unabated by the often overly sentimentalized, and at times saccharine portrayals of warm homecomings, and with my researcher curiosity piqued, I set out to investigate the phenomenon with scholarly rigor and present my findings in this book.