Rights

Despite the constitutionally and legally enshrined promise of equality in Kosovo, differentiated citizenship together with a political context defined by an ethnic divide and past structural inequalities, as well as uneven external citizenship opportunities, contributed to the emergence of ‘hierarchical citizenship’, where some groups (communities), or ‘rights-and-duty-bearing units’, are ‘more equal than the others’. In other words, the formal equality of citizens and communities is contradicted by the socio-political reality where some communities are better off, thus leading to the emergence of a hierarchy of communities in Kosovo. 

One of the problems of equating polities with ethno-majoritarian territories, the paper argues, is their unidimensionality. This is especially true for those polities without historical precedents or strong functional logic that would underpin the territorial boundaries. This, as some of the cases illustrate, can cause numerous problems for the viability of these polities and cement ethnicity as the only criterion defining political membership as well as rights in the long run. A few cases of multi-ethnic polities still exist but these are exceptions rather than the rule. 

While contracts have been largely examined as potential new form of discrimination or, somewhat less worrisome, as a communitarian technique, it may be that they can also be explained as a neoliberal device for privileging those who possess the right knowledge and skills for the market. They are the ‘deserving’ ones who have ‘earned’ citizenship. The others may earn their rights only by learning a language, understanding the shared values, and becoming as profitable labourers as possible. Neoliberalism first, communitarianism to follow.

Although accommodating some positive changes, sexual citizenship continues to generate further exclusions. In addition to leaving different sexual practices and relations that do not comply with the new normativity out, the newly achieved gay rights are increasingly becoming a marker of “civility” and “superiority” that, together with women’s rights, serve as a means through which discrimination of migrants and military attacks are justified in the context of the “war on terror” after 9/11.

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.