Immigrants from Former Yugoslavia in Norway: Young People, Migration,Integration and Identity
Description
During and after the conflicts of the 1990s a significant number of people from former Yugoslavia migrated to Norway, and a large number of them ended up permanently settling in the new country. The focus of this paper will be on the young people originating from the territory of former Yugoslavia , of different origins and ethnic identities, who moved to Norway between 1991 and 2001 together with their families. Young people raised and educated outside of the former Yugoslavia have been exposed to different education and environment than their counterparts back “home”. With this in mind, the interest of this project is to investigate how attached they are to what might be perceived as their “old” ethnic identity and ethnic origin, and in light of this, what their relations to “other” ethnics from the same area are, as expressed in vernacular discourse. In particular, this discourse will be examined in relation to attitudes and discursive representations of the wars in former Yugoslavia. This project therefore intends to focus mainly on the way in which prejudices and attitudes are contextualized outside of the country of origin, in this case an environment in which it is generally socially desirable to express values of tolerance and cosmopolitanism, respect for multiculturalism and the belief in equality of opportunity. The main material for this research comes from in-depth interviews with the target-group. This project intends to analyze discourse primarily in those situations in which young immigrants are asked to or choose to effectively assume “their” ethnic identity. Also in order to account for such situations, the researcher needed to become a participant observer in the conversations of focus groups, in attempt to obtain findings directly from the everyday life, and ethnicity is articulated and affirmed exactly through everyday life. With this combination of methods it is possible to account for how people speak and what they think of in- and out-groups.
Immigrants from Former Yugoslavia in Norway: Young People, Migration,Integration and Identity
During and after the conflicts of the 1990s a significant number of people from former Yugoslavia migrated to Norway, and a large number of them ended up permanently settling in the new country. The focus of this paper will be on the young people originating from the territory of former Yugoslavia , of different origins and ethnic identities, who moved to Norway between 1991 and 2001 together with their families. Young people raised and educated outside of the former Yugoslavia have been exposed to different education and environment than their counterparts back “home”. With this in mind, the interest of this project is to investigate how attached they are to what might be perceived as their “old” ethnic identity and ethnic origin, and in light of this, what their relations to “other” ethnics from the same area are, as expressed in vernacular discourse. In particular, this discourse will be examined in relation to attitudes and discursive representations of the wars in former Yugoslavia. This project therefore intends to focus mainly on the way in which prejudices and attitudes are contextualized outside of the country of origin, in this case an environment in which it is generally socially desirable to express values of tolerance and cosmopolitanism, respect for multiculturalism and the belief in equality of opportunity. The main material for this research comes from in-depth interviews with the target-group. This project intends to analyze discourse primarily in those situations in which young immigrants are asked to or choose to effectively assume “their” ethnic identity. Also in order to account for such situations, the researcher needed to become a participant observer in the conversations of focus groups, in attempt to obtain findings directly from the everyday life, and ethnicity is articulated and affirmed exactly through everyday life. With this combination of methods it is possible to account for how people speak and what they think of in- and out-groups.