This book examines the salience and role of ethno-national identities of young people in Bosnia
and Herzegovina fifteen years after the end of the Bosnian War. The underlying argument is that
ethno-national identities and boundaries in Bosnia are not constituted and maintained through
intensive social contact as constructivists such as Fredrik Barth and Thomas Eriksen have
argued but rather through a lack of it. The author shows that cross-ethnic contact is a
critical mechanism that helps rather than hinders the building of multiple and complimentary
identities. She proposes that contrary to the constructivist arguments the actual content of
identities such as descent and religion matter for the intensity and malleability of
identities. The fieldwork material demonstrates that identities can become multilayered in
situations where the other is personalized and experienced.
