Bosnian Refugees in America New Communities, New Cultures

Over the past few decades, refugee resettlement has changed in the United States, and, indeed, throughout the Western world. Since 1992, when the United States set up its admissions program for refugees from the former Yugoslavia, and up until January of 2000, more than 107,000 refugees were admitted for permanent resettlement. This more recent immigration of refugees is different than prior immigration flows in several important respects: - Refugees, unlike immigrants, were not moved by personal motivation to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and their flight, rather than planned, is often precipitous, with great losses of personal possession, relationship, and property. - In addition, the world has changed since the Irish and Italian immigration of the late 1800s and early 1900s. People are more mobile and communication crosses physical boundaries.Instead of the more traditional "melting pot" phenomena, we see a trend toward transnationalism; the simultaneous membership in different cultures, multiple communities, and a citizenship identification that no longer places people at one geographic point in time. This book is based on the results of a research project that focused on the lives and experiences of a sample of 100 Bosnian families in an upstate New York community. This particular community has been the site of resettlement of over 10,000 refugees from many countries between 1979 and 2001, with over 4,000 Bosnian refugees coming between 1993 and 2001. The book tells the story of the psychological, socio-cultural and economic adaptations of the Bosnian refugees to this community, the strategies they have used for successful adjustment, and theobstacles they still face in reconciling personal hopes and dreams, the effects of the trauma of war, and the cultural differences and dislocation that are a part of their experience. This is a timely and appropriate study of interest about people geographically displaced, traumatized, and resettled with policies that vary in the extreme by country, if not also by local community. Not only are the needs of refugees themselves a subject worthy of study, but the practices of resettlement and how policies work at the implementation level are important themselves. Understanding how a community best responds to its inhabitants, particularly people who are ethnically and culturally "new" or "different" and how people adapt and adjust optimally themselves has implications. A discussion of sociological and social work practice with refugees ensues as the concluding chapter of the book and suggestions are made for working with refugees in the years following resettlement in individual, family, and community contexts.Coughlan, Reed is the author of 'Bosnian Refugees in America New Communities, New Cultures', published 2005 under ISBN 9780387251554 and ISBN 0387251553.