Which Side Are You On? Integration of Two Conflicting Ethnic Identities in Children from Serbo-Croatian Mixed Marriages

Year 2024, , 77 - 102, 25.06.2024

Nevena Rudinac

https://doi.org/10.56679/balkar.1452123

Abstract

Children from Serbian-Croatian mixed marriages face challenges reconciling two potentially conflicting ethnic identities due to implicit and explicit tensions between these two ethnic communities. This article explores the process of reconciling these ethnic identities, focusing on the respondents' narratives about growing up in a Serbian-Croatian mixed marriage. Our sample consisted of 5 male and 3 female respondents born during the 90s, which were marked by brutal conflicts between Serbia and Croatia. The results show that the participants went through the process of forming a coherent ethnic identity, which was marked by distancing from the dominant Serbian influence, and the majority of them opted for a specific identity position: cosmopolitan, Yugoslav, Serbo-Croatian, and a more integral form of the dominant Serbian identity.

Keywords

mixed marriages, ethnic identity, Serbo-Croatian conflicts, identity integration

Ethical Statement

This research has an ethics approval issued by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Protocol #2021-32.. The data for this research has been derived from interviews with individuals from Serbo-Croatian mixed marriages and it can’t be publicly shared because the author doesn’t have permission from the participants to share the transcripts in their entirety.

References

• Benet-Martínez, Veronica, Leu, Janxin, Lee, Fiona, and Morris, Michael. “Negotiating biculturalism: Cultural frame switching in biculturals with oppositional versus compatible cultural identities.” Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology 33 (2002), 492–516.
• Benet‐Martínez, Veronica and Haritatos, Jana. “Bicultural identity integration (BII): Components and psychosocial antecedents.” Journal of Personality 73 (2005), 1015–1050.
• Berry, John, Kim, Uichol, Power, S., Young, M., and Bujaki, M. “Acculturation attitudes in plural societies.” Applied Psychology 38 (1989), 185–206.
• Brubaker, Roger. “Ethnicity without groups.” European Journal of Sociology/Archives européennes de sociologie 43 (2002), 163–189.
• Burić, Feđa. “Becoming mixed: Mixed marriages of Bosnia-Herzegovina during the life and death of Yugoslavia.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012.
• Burić, Feđa. “The lies my diary told: use of autobiography in the study of mixed marriage in the former Yugoslavia,” in Politics of Identity in Post-Conflict States, eds. Éamonn Ó Ciardha and Gabriela Vojvoda, 73–82, Milton Park: Routledge, 2015.
• Burić, Feđa. “Confessions of Mixed Marriage Child'. Diary in the Study of Yugoslavia's Breakup”. Südost Europa 64 (2016), 325–343.
• Guest, G., Bunce, Arwen, and Johnson, Laura. “How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability.” Field Methods 18 (2006), 59–82.
• Hiles, David and Cermák, Ivo. “Narrative psychology.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology, eds. Carla Willig and Wendy Stainton Rogers, 147–164. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008.
• Hromadžić, Azra. Citizens of an empty nation: youth and state-making in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
• Huynh, Q. L., Nguyen, Nguyen, Angela-Minh Tu., and Benet-Martínez, Veronica. “Bicultural identity integration”. In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, eds. Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles, 827–842. Berlin: Springer, 2011.
• Miramontez, Daniel, Benet-Martínez, Veronica, and Nguyen, Angela-Minh Tu. “Bicultural identity and identity/group personality perceptions.” Self and Identity 7 (2008), 430–445.
• Padilla, Amado. “Bicultural social development.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 28 (2006), 467–497.
• Sagiv, Talia and Yair, Gad. “The end of ethnicity? Racism and ambivalence among offspring of mixed marriages in Israel.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (2019), 861–877.
• Slany, Krystyna and Strzemecka, Stella. “Growing up multicultural: The experiences of children raised by Polish-Norwegian mixed couples in Norway.” Studia Migracyjne-Przegląd Polonijny 166 (2017), 87–111.
• Willig, Carla. Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology. London: Open University Press, 2008.