Why were Bosniaks treated more favourably than today’s Muslim refugees? On differing narratives of identity, religion and security

Today’s migration crisis has prompted comparisons with the recent past, with analyses highlighting the relatively successful integration of refugees from Bosnia in the 1990s. Catherine Baker reflects on why today’s migrants are not being given as warm a welcome and why even the welcome of Bosnian migrants was less warm than it has been remembered as.

Although even before 9/11 racism and Islamophobia were turning Muslim migration into an imagined security threat, Bosnian refugees did not fit the profile of suspected terrorists that in 1990s European cultural politics was already being attached to brown ‘Middle Eastern’ men.