Intermarriage-born Millennials in the Whirlwind of the 1990s Yugoslav Wars

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate the role of family choices regarding the language of education in self-representations in the adult life of millennials, who grew up during the 1990s Yugoslav wars in Vojvodina. Although the armed conflicts of the 1990s Yugoslav wars avoided Vojvodina, the war had a profound effect on the region. For intermarriage-born millennials, one of the milestone events in their lives is their parents’ choice of language of instruction when enrolling them in elementary school. The paper is based on an in-depth analysis of interviews conducted with millennials born in Serb-Hungarian intermarriage. The findings show the influence the choice of language of school instruction has on the millennials’ identity and sense of belonging. Those who attended minority language tuition endured more ethnicity-based, nationalism-fuelled incidents during their schooling. This topic is important, since the experiences of intermarriage-born millennials in Vojvodina had previously been neglected because of the focus on Serb-Croatian-Bosnian relationships in conflict literature.