Dzeneta Karabegovic, Ph.D.
dzeneta.karabegovic@gmail.com
University of Salzburg
About Me:
Dženeta Karabegović is a Postdoctoral Researcher (Habilitation Track) at the University of Salzburg in the Division of Political Science and Sociology. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick in the UK where she worked on an ERC funded project, Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty. Her wider research interests are rooted in international and comparative political sociology with a particular focus on transnationalism, diaspora, migration, democratization, human rights, transitional justice, and the Balkans. She has done consulting work with local and international organizations focused on diasporas and development, returnees, education, and civil society. She was an Assistant Professor at International Burch University in Sarajevo, Lecturer at the Sarajevo School for Science and Technology, a Guest Researcher at Mid-Sweden University’s Forum for Gender Studies and a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. She was a U.S. Fulbright Fellow at the Hugo Valentin Centre at Uppsala University in Sweden, holds an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago and completed her B.A. (Hons) at the University of Vermont in Political Science and German with a Holocaust Studies minor. Her academic work has been published in multiple peer-reviewed academic journals and has a co-edited volume (with Jasmin Hasić) on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s foreign policy since independence with Palgrave. She was born in Banja Luka, BiH and grew up in Berlin, Germany and Burlington, Vermont in the United States.
Research Interests
Refugees
Immigration & Citizenship
Human Rights
Conflict Processes & War
Research Methods & Research Design
NGOs
Diaspora And Transnationalism
Transitional Justice
The Balkans
Forced Migration
European Migration Policy
International Migration Cooperation
Migration And Displacement
Migration Governance
Return Migration
Memorialisation
Qualitative Research Design
Local Peacebuilding
Peace Research/Studies
Post-Conflict Peacebuilding
Post-Conflict Justice
Countries of Interest
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Diaspora actors demonstrate their ability to play a role in a variety of political and social processes in their homelands, including transitional justice. Transnational diaspora memorialization initiatives have become embedded and sustained within different contexts. This paper examines how the causal mechanism of coordination affects memorialization initiatives. It compares memorialization efforts in two localities in Bosnia and Herzegovina with different levels of coordination between diaspora, returnees, and local institutional actors. Centralized coordination with the help of a homeland institution enriches existing memory narratives and aims to forward transitional justice. Memorialization and commemorative practices initiated by diaspora without homeland institutional backing can lead to coordination among a more diverse set of actors, ultimately fostering new, alternative, and more inclusive memory narratives.
This case study explores the insider–outsider divide in fieldwork situations when researchers and informants may occupy hybrid positions. The paper draws from the author’s multi-sited fieldwork experience with individuals from Bosnia and Herzegovina in Europe as well as in a post-conflict setting, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through interviews with conflict-generated diaspora as well as local and returnee populations, the influence of language and local ties in the community and country of origin are juxtaposed with experiences in countries of settlement, especially in relation to diaspora mobilization. The work provides practical guidance, explores inherent challenges and advantages of using such methodologies, and argues a strategic approach and reflexivity should be carefully considered not only when building research designs but throughout the research process as well.
Protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2014 sparked newfound interest in the region and in the potential of citizen-led movements to elicit change in transitional societies. However, much of the academic literature in response has explored this episode with a focus on the protesters, their claims, organization, outputs, and potential to create long-lasting impact. On the other hand, elite responses to citizen-led protests are underexamined and undertheorized, particularly in post-conflict societies facing complex governance arrangements with high horizontal concentration of power. This article analyses how political elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina responded to episodes of contentious politics in the country. We explore the different ways protests were undermined by subnational elites in three cases utilizing process tracing and comparative analysis. Elites with higher levels of power concentration are better equipped to address contentious politics, as they are able to manage and control collective claim making, thus suppressing the domestication of competing norms on subnational levels to varying degrees.
Education is acknowledged as a component of transitional justice processes, yet details about how to implement education reform in postconflict societies are underexplored and politicized [King, Elisabeth. 2014. From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda. New York: Cambridge University Press]. Local and international actors often neglect the complicated nature of education reform in postconflict societies undergoing transitional justice processes [Jones, Briony. 2015. "Educating Citizens in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Experiences and Contradictions in Post-war Education Reform." In Transitional Justice and Reconciliation: Lessons from the Balkans, edited by Martina Fischer, and Olivera Simic, 193–208. New York: Routledge. Transitional Justice]. The role of the diaspora in transitional justice has been increasingly explored as a participatory transnational actor with influence and knowledge about local dynamics [Roht-Arriaza, Naomi. 2006. The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Haider, Huma. 2008. “(Re)Imagining Coexistence: Striving for Sustainable Return, Reintegration and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ”International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (1): 91–113; Young, Laura, and Rosalyn Park. 2009.“ Engaging Diasporas in Truth Commissions: Lessons from the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission Diaspora Project.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (3): 341–361; Koinova, Maria, and Dženeta Karabegović. 2017.“ Diasporas and Transitional Justice: Transnational Activism from Local to Global Levels of Engagement.” Global Networks 17 (2): 212–233]. This article bridges academic literature about diaspora engagement and transitional justice, and education and transitional justice by incorporating the role of diaspora actors in post-conflict processes. Using empirical data from multi-sited field work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and France, it examines diaspora initiatives which aim to influence local transitional justice processes through translocal community involvement in education and youth policy. It argues that diaspora initiatives can provide alternative and intermediate solutions to the status quo in their homeland, with some potential for contributing to transitional justice and reconciliation processes. Ultimately, diaspora initiatives need support from homeland institutions in order to forward transitional justice agendas in post-conflict societies.
Scholarship on transitional justice, transnational social movements, and transnational diaspora mobilization has offered little understanding about how memorialization initiatives with substantial diaspora involvement emerge transnational and are embedded and sustained in different contexts. We argue that diasporas play a galvanizing role in transnational interest‐based and symbolic politics, expanding claim‐making from the local to national, supranational, and global levels of engagement. Using initiatives to memorialize atrocities committed at the former Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we identify a four‐stage mobilization process. First, initiatives emerged and diffused across transnational networks after a local political opportunity opened in the homeland. Second, attempts at coordination of activities took place transnational through an NGO. Third, initiatives were contextualized on the nation‐state level in different host‐states, depending on the political opportunities and constraints available there. Fourth, memorialization claims were eventually shifted from the national to the supranational and global levels. The article concludes by demonstrating the potential to apply the analysis to similar global movements in which diasporas are directly involved.
This article examines diaspora mobilization through transnational cultural production within Bosnian diaspora communities in Sweden and the United States in response to genocide. A discussion of diaspora mobilization in response to homeland politics is underlined with data from interviews and participant observation. An example of transnational cultural production through public performance art between an artist and diaspora is highlighted in particular. Its focus is Srebrenica genocide remembrance. The article argues that diaspora cultural production can be more moderate and aims to move beyond ethnonationalist public political debates evidenced in Bosnia and Herzegovina's postconflict political environment while reaffirming belonging to the diaspora in respective host countries.
Books Written:
This book is the first to provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the foreign policy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a post-conflict country with an active agency in international affairs. Bridging academic and policy debates, the book summarizes and further examines the first twenty-five years of BiH’s foreign policy following the country’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1992. Topics covered include conflict and post-conflict periods, Euro-Atlantic integration, political affairs on both local and regional levels, integration with a variety of international organizations and actors, neighboring states, bilateral relations with relevant other states including the United States, Russia, selected EU countries, and Turkey, as well as BiH’s diaspora. The book highlights that despite their apparent weakness, post-conflict states have agency to carry out foreign policy goals and engage with the international sphere, including in geopolitics, and thus provides a novel insight into weak states and their role in international politics.
Media Appearances:
TV Appearances:
Invited panelist to speak about women in academia, including opportunities and challenges.
Radio Appearances:
Commented on Ratko Mladic's Trial Results
Newspaper Quotes:
Discussed the potential of the country's academic diaspora as an underutilized resource. Also reflected on the quality of the country's higher education system and its effect on emigration more generally.
Za Koga (Ne)Cu Glasati. - Interview with 50 Bosnian Intellectuals about 2018 Election
Bosnian Women Reflect on Resettlement