5 November 2024, Tuesday

12.00-13.00

Istanbul Bilgi University

santralistanbul Campus, E1-309

Decided Return Migration: Emotions, Citizenship, Home and Belonging in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Aida Ibričević, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow, REMESO, Linköping University

Global Fellow, PRIO Migration Center

Abstract

The seminar will host the book launch of Aida Ibričević’s Decided Return Migration: Emotions, Citizenship, Home and Belonging in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dr. Ibričević will discuss her post-Ph.D. journey from dissertation to book, her contributions to return migration scholarship, and how her book sheds light on contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

This open access book creates conceptual links between political emotions, citizenship, home and belonging. The book describes that, in the case of decided return and reintegration to a post-conflict society and a fragmented state, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, the returnees do not conceptualize the emotional dimension of the home state citizenship as home and belonging as this citizenship does not make them feel safe and secure. Instead, “feeling at home” is found in family, place and time, while belonging is categorized as ethnic, religious, relational, landscape, linguistic, and economic. The emotional dimension of the home state citizenship is constituted through a wide spectrum of emotions, ranging from anger, frustration, fear, guilt, shame, disappointment, nostalgia, powerlessness, to patriotic love, pride, defiance, joy, happiness and hope. This book provides a valuable resource to students and scholars of migration and diaspora studies, as well as political scientists, human geographers and anthropologists.

Biographical note

Aida Ibričević is a political scientist and migration researcher with a wide range of research interests, including political emotions and migration, citizenship, external voting, return migration, women in the diaspora, migration in the healthcare and ICT sectors, diasporic knowledge transfer, and diaspora engagement policies. She publishes her work in scholarly journals and provides peer-review to a number of international academic journals, including International Migration (Wiley) and Emotions, History, Culture, Society (Brill). Her academic credentials include a Ph.D. in Political Science from Istanbul Bilgi University, an M.A. in Economics from Central European University (CEU) in Hungary, and a B.A. in Economics from Middlebury College in the United States. Dr. Ibričević is employed as a Postdoctoral Fellow at REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden, as part of the Horizon Europe project MORE: "Motivations, experiences, and consequences of returns and readmission policy: Revealing and developing effective alternatives." Aida is also affiliated as a Global Fellow at the PRIO Migration Center, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway. She is proud of her “BiH Diaspora Discussions,” at www.aidaibricevic.com, a blogging space devoted to contextualizing contemporary academic and policy debates within the realities of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian diaspora.

Notice: Participants to enter the santralistanbul Campus should use the Visitors' Gate (Ziyaretçi Girişi) located at the end of the parking lot. 

• Poster-Seminar