Serbia

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

Another Decade of Roma Exclusion?

Though many states continue to emphasise their commitment to improving the Roma’s live, it remains difficult to assess the success of many of these initiatives, as there is usually poor monitoring of these projects’ outcomes.

The constitutions of most European countries contain some form of commitment to ensuring the rights of minorities, as do the laws of supranational bodies such as the European Union and the United Nations.

Updated on: 24 October 2012

Whose citizens? Kosovan Serbs between Kosovo, Serbia and Russia

Gezim Krasniqi

Serbs in the northern part of Kosovo remain trapped in a political dispute between Pristina and BelgradAlthough both Pristina and Belgrade treat them as their respective citizens, they were included in neither the Kosovo organised census in spring 2011, nor the one organised by Serbia in autumn 2011. While they boycotted the first one (unlike Serbs living south of Mitrovica and other minorities), Serbs from the northern part of Kosovo were left out of the Serb census. This certainly has strengthened the feeling of isolation and abandonment among this community. Therefore, the demand for Russian citizenship should be seen in this context.

(Also available at www.eudo-citizenship.eu)

Updated on: 15 December 2011

Frontex in the Balkans – security before human rights?

Even the most rigorous attempts at enforcing the EU’s borders are unlikely to prevent illegal immigration. The issue thus cannot simply be one of security and enforcement, but also how to ensure the welfare of migrants in a way that promotes social cohesion.

The notion of a Europe with increasingly porous internal borders (due to the Schengen agreement and limited visa liberalisation) has gone hand in hand with increased attempts to control

Updated on: 16 November 2011

Towards Post-Territorial Citizenship?

Francesco Ragazzi

Today citizenship is largely distributed amongst the ‘diaspora’, ministries and governmental agencies are dedicated to relations with co-ethnics abroad (who are often their citizens) and citizens abroad are increasingly included in votes for parliamentary and presidential elections. But this has not always been the case.

“The [June] elections were historical because Macedonians living abroad were given a chance to vote for a candidate to represent them, and also because they were conducted without one incident,” said Pavle Sazdov, who was elected in June and appointed as MP to represent Macedonia’s diaspora,

Updated on: 9 November 2011

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