The aim of this essay is to study the lives of Bosnian refugees who were forced into fleeing their homeland and integrate into the Swedish culture and society.  During the period of 1992 to 1996, approximately 2.2 million Bosnian citizens were forced to flee to other countries due to the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some of the citizens were internally displaced in nearby regions or border countries. Other refugees sought residence in different parts of the world. The Swedish Migration agency granted residency permits to 50,000 Bosnians between the years of 1993 to 1994.1  In order to accomplish the purpose of the essay, four Bosnian refugees who arrived in Sweden during the 1990s have been interviewed. The four interviewees generated answers which are then compared to previous research in this field. Written history tends to describe people in power as well as warfare in general. Therefore, by using oral history as a method in this study to investigate Bosnian refugees ́experiences, a more significant perspective of how they experienced integration in the Swedish society is more likely to appear. With their experiences and memories that they share with us, one will understand the life of a refugee.  This essay entails a qualitative approach where we conducted semi-structured interviews with Bosnian refugees. The theory we used to analyze the results is an integration model developed by Jose Alberto Diaz who studied integration in Sweden.  As a result, this study shows various factors that affect the individual ́s integration into the Swedish society. For example, the personal integration, housing integration, language skills, meaningful employment and livelihood, social contacts and the treatment of the authorities. These are some of the factors that affect the integration of immigrants.

This thesis explores the dialectical relationship between humanitarianism and neo-nationalism, as it is reified through the rhetoric of the Swedish aid organization Right Hand Aid. It initiates an inquiry of the organization and provides a new example of how humanitarianism is used for legitimizing and depoliticizing purposes. The analysis is based on research questions concerning how humanitarianism is appropriated and instrumentalized to suit the organization’s neo-nationalist agenda for ”aid on site” and against reception of refugees, and what the consequences of this rhetorical fusion are. The theoretical framework is composed of theories on humanitarianism (politics of life, utilitarian rationality and humanitarian iconography), neo-nationalism (economic chauvinism), eurocentrism and depoliticization. The bulk of the empirical material consists of written and visual sources, which is why textual analysis has constituted the main method. This has been complemented by semi-structured interviews with RHA representatives. The thesis argues that RHA’s neo-nationalist agenda is depoliticized by the appropriation of humanitarianism, which from a global perspective implies depoliticization of a primordialist, eurocentric stance towards the global flows of aid and people, hence reifying the power relationship between the global north and the global south.