The independent post‐Yugoslav country of Croatia has faced a conjunction of war, mass forced migration and post‐communist/post‐socialist transition which defies adequate analysis by a single discipline, much less the ‘technicism’ of traditional ‘refugee studies’. Based on three years of ‘social praxis’ in Croatia ‐ the author served as a volunteer in a refugee camp, working with grassroots NGOs, and as a ‘professional’ researcher examining NGO contributions to ‘peacebuilding’, social reconstruction and social development ‐ this article challenges the existing orthodoxy which sees NGOs as inexorably a part of ‘progressive’ civil society. The experience of Suncokret and other NGOs in Croatia, in the context of the involvement of global agencies, rather supports the argument that NGO work with refugees and displaced persons perpetuates the extended reproduction of a globalized new professional middle class. © 1997, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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