Serbian Australians in the Shadow of the Balkan War

This title was first published in 2000: Although the main tragedy of the wars which first erupted in 1991 in former Yugoslavia lies within the Balkan region, the war's shadow is global in outreach. Using a mainly ethnographic approach, this is an exploration of how the Balkan wars have affected the everyday life and mental health in particular of Serbian immigrants and their families in Australia, and how they have responded to long-distance grief, devastation and dislocation. The work examines how the mass media has enabled migrants to see and feel the impact of events happening in their homeland more vividly than in any previous conflict and how the international consensus which blames the Serbs for perpetrating the wars has stigmatized this immigrant community. In doing so, the author, who is a mental health expert, deals with issues of globalization, fragmentation and adaptation of national and cultural identities, grief and alienation, and the effects of these on mental health and well-being.