Kosovo

Citizenship and education policies in post-Yugoslav States

Nataša Pantić

Although the language policies in the six states are broadly consistent with the multicultural conception of citizenship granting cultural and linguistic group rights in education, the promotion of the mutual respect principle and interethnic contact are limited, as are individual choices for the language of instruction by both majorities and minorities. The problem with homogenising groups for policy purposes – even where there is a degree of interaction between the groups – is that interactions take place between individuals who classify each other exclusively in terms of belonging to specific ethnic or cultural communities.

“All you need to know about the ways in which a polity imagines and defines its members could be found in its education” (Hemon, 2012).

Updated on: 1 November 2012

Team Building

Peter Geoghegan

A former province of Serbia, Kosovo does not have a fully-fledged national team of its own. Despite the 2008 declaration of independence being recognised by over 90 countries, Kosovo is not been allowed to apply for membership of FIFA or UEFA. For Kosovan players and fans alike, the makeshift Kosovo national side that has played a handful of low-key matches against the likes of Monaco and Saudi Arabia is no substitute for competitive international football.

A recent match between Switzerland and Albania included players whose home nation is not yet recognised by FIFA

Updated on: 26 October 2012

You're in the Army, Now...

Oliwia Berdak

For a long time, military conscription was how an exclusively male citizen’s duty was expressed, both in Yugoslavia and its successor states. This duty became extremely complicated in the 1990s in the context of the changing state borders, and thus the changing legal claims to men's bodies residing within them. Conflicting narratives about the war — sometimes portrayed as an external aggression, sometimes as a legitimate defence, and sometimes as a civil war — further complicated this matter.

2011 was the year when the last of the former Yugoslav states, Serbia, abolished military conscription.

Updated on: 29 October 2012

Europeanisation through mobility: visa liberalisation and citizenship regimes

Simonida Kacarska

Overall, the visa liberalisation negotiations have had diverse effects on the citizenship regimes of South Eastern Europe. While having contributed to resolving status-related issues of the Roma and displaced persons, there has been no major breakthrough in terms of substantive advancement of anti-discrimination policies. The pressure on the governments of the Western Balkans to take measures in the direction of limiting the freedom of movement of specific groups of citizens has added a layer of discrimination on the basis of ethnic background and social status.

“Don’t worry, I do not come from an NGO, hence, I am not interested in rights”

-EU member state expert investigating the treatment of persons illegally crossing the borders.

Updated on: 24 October 2012

CITSEE studies on “Citizens and Citizenship after Yugoslavia” published in Serbian

The volume contains the Serbian translations of the studies that previously appeared in the special issue of Citizenship Studies dedicated to “Citizenship in the new states of South Eastern Europe”. The book was promoted in Belgrade in early October in the presence of the editors.

CITSEE is pleased to announce that CLIO (a Belgrade-based publisher) has recently published the volume “Citizens and Citizenship after Yugoslavia” (Državljani i državljanstvo posle Jugoslavije) edited by Professor Jo Shaw and

Updated on: 24 October 2012

Becoming citizens: the politics of women’s emancipation in socialist Yugoslavia

Chiara Bonfiglioli

In 1946, for the first time, women’s rights as political, social and economic beings were inscribed in the new Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as a result of women’s participation in the antifascist Resistance during World War Two. In the 1970s, thirty years after the inscription of women’s rights in the Yugoslav Constitution, the country had undergone a rapid process of modernization and urbanization. Nonetheless, socialist politics appeared progressive in comparison to the process of “retraditionalisation” of gender relations which took place in the 1990s.

In 1947 Didara Dukagjini, a seventeen-year-old ethnic Albanian girl raised in a wealthy family in the town of Prizren, was told by her father that she had to abandon her feredža/ferexhe, the full Islamic veil that covered her head and face when she ventured outside the house.

Updated on: 24 October 2012

The Politics of Selecting by Origin in Post-Communist Southeast Europe

Marko Žilović

In deciding whether to seek access to a particular citizenship most people tend to be practically minded. However, the broader sum of these individual decisions, as well as the sheer symbolic potential of using citizenship to uphold special ties between a state and a particular group, have important implications for wider political issues, such as ethnic politics, the fortunes of political parties, control of diaspora organisations, and sometimes even the high international politics in the region.

This is an extended summary of a longer paper that was originally published in the CITSEE Working Paper Series and is available for download

Updated on: 24 October 2012

Sportizenship: the complex links between citizenship, sports and national identity

Jelena Dzankic

Sport is not only a manifestation of a physical contest. It is also a manifestation of cultural and national elements of a society. National sporting contests are often said to instil a sense of community in a state. By attending and supporting different sporting events, people reinforce the identity dimension of citizenship. Supporting a team emphasises an individual’s link to his or her polity, be it a city, a sub-state entity or a country.

With the Olympic buzz in the air, I often come to think about states, and flags, and the feelings that the exercise of physical competition inspires. Over the thirty years of my Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav life those states, flags and feelings have changed. Many times. I remember when at the Olympics I cheered the country whose tricolour flag had a big red star in the middle.

Updated on: 24 October 2012

The afterlives of the Yugoslav red passport

Stef Jansen

Amongst broad layers of the populations in BiH and Serbia, I found over the years, the SFRY passport allowed people to articulate resentment of their current entrapment in terms of their own past, both remembered and misremembered. Notwithstanding its uniqueness on a global stage, they asserted an entitlement to smooth visa-free mobility like the one they had lost. The red passport allowed everyone who was old enough, regardless of how much they had actually travelled, to say that they could have.'Normal lives' in Yugoslavia, then, were not only recalled in terms of living standards, order and welfare, but also of what we could call a sense of geopolitical dignity. Here, the red passport joined forces with Tito.

During a summer dawn in 2005, our šinobus, the small local train from Subotica (in Serbia) to Szeged (in Hungary) suffered engine failure in a village just south of the new EU-funded €10m high-tech Hungarian-Serbian border post.

Updated on: 24 October 2012

Subversive Forum: What is the future of Europe and its citizens?

Nick Holdstock

The 5^th Zagreb Subversive Festival included the Subversive Film Festival, an international conference named The Future of Europe at which leading stars of the local and international intellectual and activist scene will gather, such as Slavoj Žižek, Samir Amin, Tariq Ali, G.C. Spivak, Michael Hardt, Gianni Vattim, Stéphane Hessel, the Subversive Forum – a platform for alternative social mobilization, and the Balkan Forum in which over forty organisations, trade unions and individuals will come together in an attempt to lay the foundations for future collaboration and networking in both European and worldwide movements with the aim of further integration.

Nick Holdstock attended the Subversive Forum in Zagreb from May 13^th-May 18^th. In the following piece he revisits some of the themes and questions that this gathering of intellectuals, academics and activists considered during the Forum.

The European Crisis

Updated on: 24 October 2012

CITSEE Research Project