Stratified Reconciliation and the Politics of Recognition in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina: Youth Narratives from Cazinska Krajina

Abstract

This article examines how young people in north-western Bosnia and Herzegovina construct and negotiate post-war memory and reconciliation in the context of the intra-Bosnia conflict of the 1990s. Drawing on a corpus of online forum discussions among participants aged 18–23 from the Una-Sana Canton, the study applies a critical discourse analysis framework to explore how competing narratives, identity labels, and moral evaluations are articulated in everyday interaction. The analysis focuses on discursive strategies such as nomination (e.g. labels like “autonomaš” [autonomist], or “izdajnik” [traitor]), predication, deontic modality, pronoun use, and metaphorical framing (e.g. “stare rane” [old wounds], “clean start”). Particular attention is given to how participants position themselves in relation to inherited conflict narratives, intergenerational transmission of memory, and present-day socio-economic concerns. Findings show that young participants simultaneously reproduce, question, and reframe dominant narratives of division. While some discourses sustain boundaries rooted in wartime affiliations, others shift focus toward shared structural challenges such as unemployment and political clientelism. The data also reveal tensions between calls for reconciliation and persistent moral polarization, as well as the emergence of future-oriented discourses that imagine distancing from the past. By foregrounding intra-community divisions and everyday meaning-making practices, the paper contributes to critical discourse studies of post-conflict societies and offers insight into how reconciliation is negotiated beyond institutional and elite-level processes.