Misplaced masculinities: Status loss and the location of gendered subjectivities amongst 'non-transnational' Bosnian refugees

In order to understand gendered patterns of coping that have been noted amongst a variety of migrants, this article analyses localized trajectories of subjectivity that structure early coping strategies with downward social mobility amongst a section of refugees from the Bosnian 1992-5 war. In particular, it investigates the 'misplacement' - as refugee men and as Bosnian men - experienced by middle-aged, professional, educated fathers who had fled Bosnian towns. These men tended to stubbornly cling to their remembered personhood, located there where they recalled having counted as someone. Yet they were disengaged from 'transnational' social fields, for the place where they recalled having counted as someone was not present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina, but previous forms of organized sociality in that same geographical location. The article draws attention to the specific interplay of general experiences of migration to western states in the 1990s, 'ethnic cleansing' and refugee policies, and specific remembered localized life-trajectories in the Socialist Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and their sudden end. Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications.