The return of displaced populations is regarded by the international community as essential to peace processes in war-torn societies, with housing and property restitution increasingly seen to constitute a pre-condition for the success of such return movements. A decade after the end of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina the property restitution process is close to full implementation while the rate of return remains relatively low. This paper explores the relationship between property restitution and patterns of return and relocation, as well as between house and the sense of home in the aftermath of the violent conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is based on research among three distinct groups of displaced Bosnians within and from the town of Banja Luka (repatriates, "transnational" refugees, and IDPs). The paper shows that although repossession of pre-war housing was perceived by the displaced as important for reasons of morality, justice, and economic rehabilitation, sustainable return usually also demanded access to jobs and other sources of livelihood, often located in transnational space. This, however, meant that in many cases "return" was temporary rather than permanent, and that for other displaced Bosnians "sustainable relocation" had eventually come to be the desired goal. Yet the option of permanent resettlement in new parts of the country has not received much backing from the international organizations operating in Bosnia because of the emphasis on ethnic minority return as the central objective of post-war reconstruction. At the same time, the sustainability of return has to some extent been jeopardized by the international prioritization of "small home" politics, i.e. property restitution, at the expense of "big home" politics, that is, efforts to normalize the political and socio-economic structures beyond the confines of private homes. The paper argues that displaced persons may (re)create livelihoods and a full sense of home only when a positive relationship starts to develop between housing and the surrounding local and national environment. © 2006 IOM.

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return migration Bosnia and Herzegovina Eurasia post-war refugee Europe Southern Europe peace process