I still vividly remember two scenes I witnessed the last time I flew from Belgrade airport. In the first, an elderly couple was rejected check-in for a Berlin bound plane by an airport officer because Covid-19 related regulations has just changed and they did not have all required documents. Removed from the queue, they stood in the hall, close to each other. The woman was making a phone call, probably trying to reach the son in Germany to tell him that they will not come. The second scene took place in the passport control area. A young couple with an infant was slowly moving along, frequently turning toward an older couple standing aside, who waved, gesticulated toward the baby, and followed the young family with their eyes and a somewhat tense expression on their faces, as if they did not want to lose a sight of them even for a second before they disappear behind the check point.

Farewells, separation, anticipation of reunions, endless longing and endless love—they profoundly shape the lives of former Yugoslavs in the aftermath of Yugoslavia's tragic dissolution. Ivana Bajić-Hajduković's book tells the story of these fractured family lives. It offers a glimpse into the world of aging mothers in Serbia's capital, Belgrade, struggling to make sense of their selves and the everyday filled with loneliness, pain, and longing.

Bajić-Hajduković's brief, but rich monograph consists of the Introduction, six chapters, each one addressing a specific aspect of the experience of “mothers left behind” in Belgrade of the 1990s, and a Conclusion. The Introduction provides basic historical context, drawing contours of “the darkness of the 1990s,” marked by violence, insecurity, impoverishment, sanctions and isolation, mass migration of young men to avoid the draft and the frontline, and parents left behind. The first chapter further sets the scene for the main discussion, outlining how Belgrade citizens managed food scarcity in the 1990s. The next chapter discusses the importance of food and its capacity to elicit memories and foster ties and a sense of belonging for migrants, but also for the families they left behind. Chapter 3 offers a glimpse into homes and objects through which parents in Belgrade create meaning amidst loss, longing, and loneliness. Chapter 4 analyzes the phenomenon of remittances and observes the fact that the relationship between the 1990s migrants and their parents was not significantly defined by remittances, unlike in the case of the Gastarbeiter. The next chapter examines communication practices between migrants and their mothers in Serbia, while in the last chapter Bajić-Hajduković highlights how migration in the 1990s affected the highly normative character of family relations in Serbia.

The book offers an important insight into the reality of Serbia's 1990s and the profound impact it had on individuals, families, and family relations. Discussing consequences of the still ongoing mass migration of young people, the author focuses on the “mothers left behind”: a group of aging women who experienced severe isolation in the 1990s and whose experiences were eradicated in the 2000s (13). The author sees her book as a way “to break this silence and give women the voice and space to share their experiences” (18).

With the rather narrow focus limited to mothers (not including children abroad, fathers, or other family members) in the Belgrade area (not Serbia in general), and to the 1990s (not the subsequent years that also saw intense emigration of young people), Bajić-Hajduković placed her research of the migration of young adults and its consequences into a clearly defined context. A broader scope would, however, reveal a more complex picture, and also help avoid a somewhat essentialist interpretation of the ways mothers and their migrant children managed their lives and of the parents’ role in the tumultuous years of Yugoslavia's disintegration (mothers as the ones who had enabled their children to evade conscription, 5). Moreover, class dimension of the parent-migrant relationship in the context of post-Yugoslav migration from Serbia, would emerge as more complex than the focus on Belgrade middle-class families allows. Following her interlocutors, the author insists on a difference between “urban,” “middle class” migration in the 1990s, in which sending remittances was not an accepted practice, and the “rural” Gastarbeiter from the socialist period and their families. The urban-rural divide, however, may not be that central for understanding the migrations of the 1990s, as it was massive in all parts of Serbia, but also because education available to all during socialism enabled many young, well-educated children to become highly skilled migrants in the 1990s, regardless of their background and socioeconomic status of their families.

The way the book's narrative is crafted, with the authorial voice prevailing over others, and with the absence of the voices of children and other family members, offers a rich and poignant, but somewhat static picture of Serbian families marked by migration, separation, and loss. Several portraits chosen as representative of a particular topic discussed in each chapter sometimes seem to serve more as a confirmation of what we already know from literature on migration in general than as a voice that could challenge and complicate our presumptions. Mothers left behind and their migrant children are observed through the lens of their structural roles within a kinship system and social expectations. But the ties between parents and their far-away children are also woven by unconditional love, pride, and care for each other. Reading this book, I wanted to learn more about these feelings and how their force follows its own logic in shaping the fractured worlds of both parents and children. Yet, they are largely absent from the book's narrative, although they must have been there—we, who share the (post)Yugoslav experience know that either first hand, or from the scenes we witness at airports and other places of encounter and separation.