Challenging the narrative of the ethno-nationalist city in post-war Bosnia

International audience ; This paper seeks to go beyond the elite narrative of ethno-national identities and the marking of territory accordingly in post-war Bosnia. The situation in Brcko, the area of our field research, in East Bosnia-Herzegovina, is typical for post-war Bosnian cities. The liberal peacebuilding project resulted in reinforcing ethno-nationalist segregation. Although divides were created by the war, they were maintained by international peacebuilding strategies such as the power sharing system (Björkdahl and Gusic 2013). Exemplified in the city center of Brcko, war monuments for each of the three ethnic groups mark central space in an exclusive fashion through the use of mutually exclusive symbols.While presented as popular will, ethno-nationalist narratives of space are elitist, masculinist and militaristic and do not speak for all people. In particular younger people, born after the war, seek for everyday (spatial) experiences beyond the war. In our search for spaces that escape the ethno-nationalist logic and that can tell a counter-narrative of post-war cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we have come across Ficibajr: a nature/leisure area that is not claimed by any ethno-nationalist group. It seems to be a common ground, where being together across differences is unproblematic, based on a shared appreciation of the area. We understand Ficibajr as a peacescape with a socio-petal function that can serve as counternarrative to the ethno-nationalist claiming of space.