Is the integration of “coethnic migrants,” in the context of war-prompted resettlement, a straightforward and self-explanatory process? In Strangers Either Way, Jasna Čapo Žmegač says “no.” The book presents a unique ethnographic case study of the integration of ethnic Croats following their migration from the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina to Croatia in the early 1990s. Čapo Žmegač convincingly exposes challenges and pressures that this process exerted on the cultural self-identification of both the migrants and the local community. An especially valuable aspect of her approach is the claim that coethnic migration presents a significant challenge to the new society because it introduces cultural diversity that cannot be reduced by common ethnicity as is often believed. Confronted with rejection on the part of local communities, newcomers can develop a backlash ethnocentrism with alleged supremacy of their own culture over the local one. In that sense, Strangers Either Way recalls the experiences of Greek and Turkish coethnic migrants of some 70 years earlier (see R. Hirschon's edited volume, Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey [New York, 2003]).

Although the title frames readers' expectations to suggest a generic study of Croatian refugees, Čapo Žmegač's book is focused on a relatively small (sub)group of Croat coethnic migrants—the Croats of Srijem. They arrived during the peak of the war in Croatia between 1992 and 1994, after the property exchange with Croatian Serbs, and estimates of their numbers range between 13,000 and 22,000. Their peculiarity, exhibited in the book, is that they had not existed as a group before the resettlement. The process of group formation and its homogenization over a latent Srijem identity (123) was set in motion only after their relocation to Croatia, and it went against earlier intragroup differences in “origins, speech, and culture” (171). The reasons for this lay partly in their pattern of resettlement, which included relocation to compact communities such as the village of Gradina. This yielded only a limited interaction with the domestic Croat population and contributed to the alienation of the two communities, causing intergroup “frictions” (chapter 7). Together with a parallel process of political mobilization around the newly established Community of Croatian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons from Vojvodina (1991), the whole experience prompted the homogenization of Srijem Croats who started seeing themselves as a separate group within the Croat nation.

On a more particular level, Čapo Žmegač observes how individual and collective identity (re)construction of Srijem Croat settlers in Gradina involved three distinct strategies (chapter 3). The elderly largely refused to integrate and redefined their identity through their children, a “younger generation” (71, 152). Another group displayed the intense ethnocentrism which, however, remained stuck in the idealized past and consequently led to their refusal of acculturation and overall negative attitudes toward the new community. The third strategy, apparently adopted by the smallest group, consisted of active integration into local communal life with specific cultural practices relegated to the private and domestic spheres (71, 152).

Later chapters scrutinize the Srijem Croats' decision to leave their homes in Vojvodina (Serbia) and resettle in Croatia (chapter 4) and the subsequent construction of perceived mutual differences and stereotypes between the newcomers and the local Croat population (chapter 5). Attention is also given to the political mobilization and organization of the newcomers into Srijem Croat migrant association (chapter 6). A side effect of this effort was a dilemma whether the emergent separate identity—what Čapo Žmegač describes as “a particular ethnic (or subnational) group within the Croatian national community” (123)—should be promoted or abandoned. Eventually the latter occurred.

Čapo Žmegač's research relies on Barth's proposition that cultural differences between communities arise as a consequence of their mutual interaction (10). As confirmed in the study, the newcomers and local population share only certain general “similarities,” whereas specific ones such as local history, knowledge, and certain customs are entirely absent. Consequently, the new arrivals assumed the role of strangers, which they fervently resisted. By uncovering such developments, the author has confirmed the earlier postulates of Norbert Elias and John Scotson in The Established and the Outsiders (London, 1965), which argued that intergroup relations come down to a basic opposition between outsiders and established population (153–154, 181). Čapo Žmegač points out that in the case of Srijem Croats this relationship was further polarized by the continuing presence of “internalized stigma” from the Communist era when both communities perceived their own status as second rate.

Apart from occasional references to “frictions” and “tensions,” missing is more specific information on the types of confrontations between the groups. Despite the author's explanation in the epilogue that she wanted to avoid any further harm to local relations, the reader would benefit from more information on that matter. Also, by referring overwhelmingly to the newcomers' opinions, and with only a few sources coming from the established population, the book leaves an impression of a certain unbalance. Nevertheless, Čapo Žmegač's study is a welcome addition to the field of forced migrations for it makes a significant exploratory step into the understudied phenomena of cultural dynamism and identity (re)construction among coethnic migrants (refugees) in the post-Yugoslav space.