Daring "life-return projects' to post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article discusses the prospects for realization of rights-based return against the backdrop of a twenty years-long (inter)nationally managed return process to post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. It draws on 42 in-depth interviews with two different waves of returnees: early assisted returns (1997-2005), and later self-organised returns (2005-2013). Our findings show that realization of return implicates the courageous well-planned and self-orchestrated life return projects, closely inter-linked with the construction of the complex micro-social structures buffering against the unpredictable macro-social context of post-Dayton BiH. Instead of being propelled by formal and assisted return programmes, it is rather the intricate relational practices with space(s) and people - continuously investing in the multisite local and transnational social networks, and flexible mobility and settlement patterns - shaped by social agency of the returnees that lead to realization of the return projects.