Unemployment

Protests and Plenums in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Emin Eminagić
Bosnian protests

During these events, there was no attempt to show that precarity does not know boundaries, it just appeared that the interests of one group were exclusively their own and do not share their logic with others. This problem points to something more traumatic in Bosnian society. This is not only a consequence of the war which ended in 1995, but which is still going on, that the political elites in the last twenty years are using ethno-nationalist manipulation and threats of new conflicts on grounds of ethnicity and in this way obscuring other problems that face the country. 

The protests by the workers of Tuzla's privatised chemical industry that began on February 5th were the start of something no one expected to see happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Farewell to our social rights? Hungarian governments and their most vulnerable groups

Zsuzsanna Vidra
Homeless

In today’s Hungary the poor suffer from the attacks of the present political regime that has openly declared its intention to create a strong national middle class based on a firm work ethic principle. As the Prime Minister, Mr Orbán stated, “all countries have to undertake the correction of their welfare state. It is more difficult in the West because there they have well-established welfare regimes while it is less difficult in Central Europe because the welfare state has not been constructed here. (…) Our program is to create a society based on work instead of the uncompetitive Western type of welfare state.”

Hungary has gained a dubious reputation lately for its conservative right wing government (in power since 2010) taking a whole series of undemocratic steps.

The citizens of the future

Eric Gordy
Youth and unemployment

The general impression one gets from the research on youth is the emergence of a large group of people who do not trust institutions and try to build their lives outside of them. They could function as citizens but are obstructed in this ambition. Their state and parties are self-serving and self-sufficient, and do not want them.

There is nothing in the recent research on young people in Serbia that will be terribly surprising to anybody who has been paying attention over the last twenty years. Young people are continuing to become more marginal as the society gets older and monopolies of opportunity become more rigid.

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