Introduction Community reconciliation requires building trust, creating opportunities for meaningful interaction, dialogue, and healing among diverse identity groups. Our data in multi-ethnic/religious Bosnia Herzegovina reveal that an everyday challenge to community reconciliation is microaggressions, which are reported to perpetuate mistrust and resentment in everyday interactions. Queer people experience constant microaggressions due to their sexual identities and multi ethnic/religious friends and romantic partners. Queer high social identity complexity (HSIC), awareness of multiple identities, and common group memberships make them conscious about microaggressions. Methods The study collected between November 2021 and September 2022, used purposive and snowball sampling to recruit forty-three participants for in-depth interviews with queer community members, NGO workers, and directors/managers on peacebuilding, social justice, and activism in Bosnia, representing three different ethnic and religious identities. After the data corpus analysis of the larger project using NVivo coding, the dataset was analyzed for multiethnic/religious relationships and challenges in everyday interactions. Thematic analysis, from codes to themes, reached the conceptual framework of microaggressions and social identity complexity (SIC). Results Findings indicate that queer people experience three types of microaggressions (microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations). They not only experience microaggressions towards their sexual identity but also are conscious about microaggressions done to friends and partners when they come from diverse backgrounds. The results suggest that participants often interpret family members’ comments as reflecting confining identity expectations (intersection scale) and perceive such remarks as microaggressions, whereas they more frequently describe their own identities in integrative terms (merger identity), consistent with higher SIC expectations. Conclusion Our findings indicate that while having HSIC is essential for coexistence and reconciliation, achieving this complexity alone would not necessarily shift society. We concluded that persistence of microaggressions limits the experience of fulfilling relationships. Policy Implications A deep understanding of the negative role of microaggressions in everyday interactions requires formulating an active agenda for awareness campaigns to shift the language and, possibly, the curriculum. As microaggressions hinder a sustainable reconciliation, combating them will address the ongoing social issues of othering in Bosnia. Reconciliation initiatives should integrate people like LGBTQIA + who demonstrate HSIC, as such individuals already have meaningful multiethnic interpersonal interactions in everyday life. Such actors would be effective in formulating sustainable peace.

Queering Peacebuilding: Microaggression and Social Identity Complexity in Post-Accord Bosnia and Herzegovina

期刊论文
发表日期：

2026年3月26日

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Mehmet Yavuz,
Umut Ozkaleli

摘要

Introduction

Community reconciliation requires building trust, creating opportunities for meaningful interaction, dialogue, and healing among diverse identity groups. Our data in multi-ethnic/religious Bosnia Herzegovina reveal that an everyday challenge to community reconciliation is microaggressions, which are reported to perpetuate mistrust and resentment in everyday interactions. Queer people experience constant microaggressions due to their sexual identities and multi ethnic/religious friends and romantic partners. Queer high social identity complexity (HSIC), awareness of multiple identities, and common group memberships make them conscious about microaggressions.

Methods

The study collected between November 2021 and September 2022, used purposive and snowball sampling to recruit forty-three participants for in-depth interviews with queer community members, NGO workers, and directors/managers on peacebuilding, social justice, and activism in Bosnia, representing three different ethnic and religious identities. After the data corpus analysis of the larger project using NVivo coding, the dataset was analyzed for multiethnic/religious relationships and challenges in everyday interactions. Thematic analysis, from codes to themes, reached the conceptual framework of microaggressions and social identity complexity (SIC).

Results

Findings indicate that queer people experience three types of microaggressions (microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations). They not only experience microaggressions towards their sexual identity but also are conscious about microaggressions done to friends and partners when they come from diverse backgrounds. The results suggest that participants often interpret family members’ comments as reflecting confining identity expectations (intersection scale) and perceive such remarks as microaggressions, whereas they more frequently describe their own identities in integrative terms (merger identity), consistent with higher SIC expectations.

Conclusion

Our findings indicate that while having HSIC is essential for coexistence and reconciliation, achieving this complexity alone would not necessarily shift society. We concluded that persistence of microaggressions limits the experience of fulfilling relationships.

Policy Implications

A deep understanding of the negative role of microaggressions in everyday interactions requires formulating an active agenda for awareness campaigns to shift the language and, possibly, the curriculum. As microaggressions hinder a sustainable reconciliation, combating them will address the ongoing social issues of othering in Bosnia. Reconciliation initiatives should integrate people like LGBTQIA + who demonstrate HSIC, as such individuals already have meaningful multiethnic interpersonal interactions in everyday life. Such actors would be effective in formulating sustainable peace.