Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe: Beyond Ethnicity (Southeast European Studies) [1 ed.] 9781138086364, 9781315111049, 1138086363

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‘This insightful and wide-ranging book offers an original take on understanding youth subjectivities in Southeast Europe. In contrast to the dominant paradigms that insist on the pervasiveness of ethno-nationalist identifications in the region, this book demonstrates the full complexity of youth perceptions and behaviours in this part of the world. This is an excellent contribution based on comprehensive primary research.’ —Professor Siniša Malešević University College, Dublin, Ireland ‘As liberal democracy is being increasingly challenged by radical politics, sustained scholarly attention to ethnicity and nationalism is gaining renewed urgency. This excellent and timely volume tackles this crucial topic head-on, exploring both the complexities and limitations of an ethnocentric analytical lens. The collection challenges conventional wisdom regarding a particularly relevant demographic group: young people who will shape national politics in the coming decades and whose commitment to nationalist principles has come under increased empirical scrutiny. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the legacy of ethnic conflict in the Balkans and its implications for the future of the European project.’ —Bart Bonikowski, Professor of Sociology, Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe

What shapes the cultural, political, and ideological values of young people living in Southeastern Europe? Which identities matter to them? How are their values changing, and how can they be changed? Who is changing them? Europe’s periphery is the testing ground for the success of European values and identities. The future stability and political coherence of the Union will be determined in large measure by identity issues in this region. This book examines the ways in which ethnic and national values and identities have been surpassed as the overriding focus in the lives of the region’s youth. Employing bottom-up, ethnographic, and interview-based approaches, it explores when and where ethnic and national identification processes become salient. Using intra-national and international comparisons of youth populations of Albania, BosniaHerzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vojvodina, contributors uncover the mechanisms by which ethnic identities are evoked, reproduced, and challenged. In addition to exploring political, regional cultural generational, and class identities, the contributors examine wider questions of European unity. This volume offers a corrective to previous thinking about youth ethnic identities and will prove useful to scholars in political science and sociology studying issues of ethnic and national identities and nationalism, as well as youth cultures and identities. Tamara P. Trošt is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University in 2012, with a dissertation examining the interplay between history and ethnic identity among Croatian and Serbian youth. She has published on issues of everyday identity, populism, history textbooks, collective memory, and sports and nationalism. Danilo Mandić is a College Fellow at Harvard University’s Sociology Department, where he teaches political sociology, comparative approaches to war and organized crime, and refugees and foreign policy. He received his BA from Princeton University and his PhD from Harvard University. For his dissertation, he conducted extensive fieldwork in Kosovo/Serbia and South Ossetia/Georgia. He is developing a book manuscript on the role of organized crime in separatist movements after the Cold War, and has led a research team to investigate the Syrian refugee crisis on the Balkan Route.

Southeast European Studies Series Editor: Florian Bieber

The Balkans are a region of Europe widely associated over the past decades with violence and war. Beyond this violence, the region has experienced rapid change in recent times though, including democratization, economic, and social transformation. New scholarship is emerging which seeks to move away from the focus on violence alone to an understanding of the region in a broader context drawing on new empirical research. The Southeast European Studies Series seeks to provide a forum for this new scholarship. Publishing cutting-edge, original research and contributing to a more profound understanding of Southeastern Europe while focusing on contemporary perspectives, the series aims to explain the past and seeks to examine how it shapes the present. Focusing on original empirical research and innovative theoretical perspectives on the region, the series includes original monographs and edited collections. It is interdisciplinary in scope, publishing high-level research in political science, history, anthropology, sociology, law, and economics and accessible to readers interested in Southeast Europe and beyond. www.routledge.com/Southeast-European-Studies/book-series/ASHSER1390 Austerity and the Third Sector in Greece Civil Society at the European Frontline Jennifer Clarke and Asteris Huliaras State-Building and Democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina Soeren Keil and Valery Perry

Forthcoming titles: Electoral Violence in the Western Balkans From Voting to Fighting and Back Michal Mocht’ak Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe Beyond Ethnicity Edited by Tamara P. Trošt and Danilo Mandić

Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe Beyond Ethnicity

Edited by Tamara P. Trošt and Danilo Mandić

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Tamara P. Trošt and Danilo Mandić individual chapters, the contributors The right of Tamara P. Trošt and Danilo Mandić to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 9781138086364 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315111049 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figuresix List of Tablesx Editorsxi Contributorsxii Acknowledgementsxv

Introduction: beyond ethnicity in research on youth in Southeast Europe

1

DANILO MANDIĆ AND TAMARA P. TROŠT

PART I

New ethnic mosaics: cleavages within ethnic groups17   1 Negotiating identities in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina: self, ethnicity, and nationhood in adolescents born of wartime rape

19

TATJANA TAKŠEVA

  2 Dual citizenship and youth identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina

39

NICHOLAS R. MICINSKI AND JASMIN HASIĆ

  3 Complexity of inner belonging: notions of belonging and alienation among adolescents with a migrant background in Croatia

56

LANA PETERNEL

  4 Constructing and destructing the ethnic: discourses of ethnicity among Hungarian youth in Vojvodina KRISZTINA RÁCZ

75

viii  Contents PART II

Political participation and youth identities

95

  5 Youth politicization and de-politicization in contemporary Albania

97

ISLAM JUSUFI AND JUBJANA VILA ZEKA

  6 From foreign mercenaries to civic activists: a comparison of youth identity in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia

110

ANA ALIBEGOVA

  7 Forging civic bonds ‘from below’: Montenegrin activist youth between ethnonational disidentification and political subjectivation

127

BOJAN BAĆA

PART III

Transcending ethnic identities: comparative perspectives

149

  8 Taming conflicted identities: searching for new youth values in the Western Balkans

151

VLADIMIR TURJAČANIN, IRIS ŽEŽELJ, EDONA MALOKU, AND MARIJA BRANKOVIĆ

  9 Beyond ethnic identity: history, pride, and nationhood across socio-economic lines in Serbian and Croatian youth

177

TAMARA P. TROŠT

10 Out with the old: youth solidarity and nationalism among young Kosovars and Serbs

204

DANILO MANDIĆ

Conclusion

229

DANILO MANDIĆ

Index

235

Figures

8.1 Frequency and quality of contact with ethnic outgroups by country and ethnicity 8.2 Share of people that had rare or no contact with the ethnic outgroup by country, town, and ethnicity 8.3 Average number of direct and online outgroup friends within ethnic majorities and minorities group in the Western Balkans 8.4 Social identity complexity and inclusiveness by country and majority/minority status

159 161 164 169

Tables

5.1 Survey of Albanian youth 102 7.1 Demographic features of respondents (N = 15) 132 8.1 Correlations between different group identifications of youth in Western Balkans (N = 767) 156 8.2 Correlations between the significance of social identities and outgroup attitudes 158 8.3 Correlations between number of friends, social identity complexity/inclusiveness, and outgroup attitudes (distance and feeling thermometer) 171 9.1 Interview distribution by school and gender 179 9.2 Survey responses to multiple-choice question ‘What was the most/least fortunate era in Serbia’s history?’ Total N = 1197, 8th graders180 9.3 Survey responses to multiple-choice question ‘What was the most/least fortunate era in Croatia’s history? Total N = 847, subset of 8th graders 181 9.4 Attitudes towards several ethnic and national identity questions of Croatian youth in college-track, 4-year vocational, and 3-year vocational high schools 198 10.1 Belgrade subsample 209 10.2 Priština subsample 209

Editors

Tamara P. Trošt is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, in Slovenia. She received her PhD in Sociology from Harvard University in 2012, with a dissertation examining the interplay between history and ethnic identity among Croatian and Serbian youth. She has published on issues of everyday identity, populism, history textbooks, collective memory, and sports and nationalism. Her article ‘Ruptures and continuities in ethno-national discourse: Reconstructing the nation through history textbooks in Serbia and Croatia’ won the 2017 Nations and Nationalism Dominique JacquinBerdal prize. Danilo Mandić is a College Fellow at Harvard University’s Sociology Department, where he teaches political sociology, comparative approaches to war and organized crime, and refugees and foreign policy. He received his BA from Princeton University and his PhD from Harvard University. For his dissertation, he conducted extensive fieldwork in Kosovo/Serbia and South Ossetia/Georgia. He is developing a book manuscript on the role of organized crime in separatist movements after the Cold War, and has led a research team to investigate the Syrian refugee crisis on the Balkan Route.

Contributors

Ana Alibegova is the Director of Program Development at the Association for Education Mladiinfo International. She holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe from the Faculty of Political Science ‘Roberto Ruffilli’, University of Bologna (September 2013). Her fields of research interest, connected primarily with the area of ex-Yugoslavia, include anti-nationalism and beyond-ethnicity approaches, reconciliation and state and nation-building in post-conflict contexts, and minority reporting and diversity management. Bojan Baća is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University, Canada. In 2015–2016, he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Doctoral Fellow at the University of Gothenburg, specializing in post-socialist civil society and social movement research. His dissertation project explores the relationship between socio-economic/political transformation and civic engagement in post-socialist societies and, more broadly, the role of activist citizenship and contentious politics in democratization processes. His most recent work on youth activism, ‘The student’s two bodies: Civic engagement and political becoming in the post-socialist space’, was published in Antipode. Marija Branković is working at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade. She received her PhD from the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in 2016. Her current research interests are related to social identifications and inter-group relations, terror management strategies, as well as persuasion and argumentation research. Jasmin Hasić holds a PhD in political science from the Universite libre de Bruxelles and LUISS Guido Carli of Rome. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Humanity in Action BiH. He completed his undergraduate education at Masaryk University, majoring in International Relations and European Studies, and he graduated with an MA in Political Science from Central European University. His research interests include diaspora studies and demographic changes associated with post-conflict migration, along with peacebuilding and transitional justice in multicultural societies.

Contributors xiii Islam Jusufi is a Lecturer and Head of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Epoka University, Tirana, Albania. He studied Politics at the University of Sheffield and International Relations at the Universities of Amsterdam, Bilkent, and Ankara. He served as adviser to the President of Macedonia and to the European Union, and is a founder of Analytica think tank in Macedonia. He held fellowships at the Wilson Centre, EU Institute for Security Studies, ERSTE Stiftung, the Centre for Policy Studies, and NATO. His research interests include international, European, and Balkan politics and security studies. Edona Maloku is a Lecturer at American University in Kosovo, where she teaches Introduction to Psychology. She is a PhD Candidate in social psychology at Leiden University (the Netherlands). Her main research interests are social identity, intergroup relations, group dynamics, and self, with special focus given to post-conflict societies. Her latest publication is a book chapter in Springer’s Peace Psychology Book Series, titled ‘Building national identity in newborn Kosovo: Challenges of integrating national identity with ethnic identity among Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs’. Nicholas R. Micinski is a Research Associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and a PhD candidate in political science at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He received a BA from Michigan State University in International Relations and Political Theory and an MA in Political Science from the Graduate Center, CUNY. His research interests include civil society, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconciliation, and refugee policy. Lana Peternel is a research fellow at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. She received her PhD in anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb in 2009, focusing on ethnic identity and the acculturation process among adolescents with a migrant background in Croatia. Her main fields of interest include cultural and applied anthropology, along with interdisciplinary anthropology. Krisztina Rácz holds a doctorate in Balkan Studies from the University of Ljubljana. Previously, she earned an MA in English Language and Literature at the University of Szeged and in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the Central European University in Budapest. She works at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade. Her research interests and the topics she has published on include ethnic identification, multiculturalism, migration, and social memory in relation to Central and Eastern Europe. Tatjana Takševa is an Associate Professor at the Department of English and the Women and Gender Studies Program at Saint Mary’s University, Canada. Her current research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, deals with rape and enforced impregnation of women on the territories of the former YU during the recent war, as well as the

xiv  Contributors mothering practices of women who are raising children born of wartime rape. She is the editor of Mothers Under Fire: Mothers and Mothering in Conflict Zones, with Arlene Sgoutas (Toronto: Demeter Press, 2015). She also writes on discourses of national and ethnic identity in the Balkans. Vladimir Turjačanin is a Full Professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His professional interests are in the area of group processes, intergroup relations, ethnicity, ethnic relations, nationalism, social identity, gender stereotypes, and religious and ethnic prejudice. His latest books are Social Psychology of Ethnic Identity and Youth Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Social Science Approaches. Jubjana Vila Zeka is an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Epoka University, Tirana, Albania, and a PhD Candidate in Political Science and International Relations at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. She has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and a master’s degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Her areas of interests include conflict studies, Balkan politics, and EU security policies. Iris Žeželj is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Belgrade University. She received her PhD in 2011. Her main area of interest is social cognition, specifically biases in memory, self-knowledge, and group perception, as well as intergroup relations. She has led and co-led international research projects on attitude change, intergroup relations, and social identity, has published in top-ranked journals (BJSP, JASP, SP), and is a full member of several professional associations.

Acknowledgements

The editors have both studied ethnicity since beginning graduate school, and in this pursuit have drawn inspiration from several scholars, whom we would like to thank for their ideas: Siniša Malešević, Andreas Wimmer, and Rogers Brubaker. We would like to thank our professors and colleagues at the Department of Sociology at Harvard University, most especially Mary Waters. In addition to being a source of academic inspiration with her own ground-breaking work on ethnicity, she generously supported us throughout our careers, writing endless recommendation letters, proofreading our work, and patiently giving sage advice. Mary is an incredible human being. Our gratitude also goes out to Bart Bonikowski for his pioneering work on nationalism, and his support in conceptualizing and realizing this volume. Mandić would also like to thank all the participants and organizers of the ‘After Kosovo’ workshops in Belgrade and Priština, some of whom risked their safety to move between Serbia and Kosovo in pursuit of knowledge, dialogue, and friendship. Trošt is indebted to the teachers, staff, and students of the six Belgrade and Zagreb schools who graciously allowed her to sit in classes and talk to students and teachers during class time and breaks throughout the year, as understanding youth and their everyday concerns unquestionably requires this kind of ethnographic fieldwork. The editors would like to dedicate their chapters to those young people who inspired the subsequent study and the theme of this volume. None of the chapters in this volume could have been written without the voice of the youth, who gracefully took the time to share their experiences with the chapter authors. In the name of all of the collaborators, we thank the schools, universities, teachers, youth organizations, activists, and parents for allowing us to take your – and your children’s – time to learn more about a topic that warrants academic exploration. Working with young people is indeed a privilege, and we are grateful for the opportunity to share a slice of their worldview with the public.

Introduction Beyond ethnicity in research on youth in Southeast Europe Danilo Mandić and Tamara P. Trošt

In July 2016, the heads of governments of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia trumpeted the opening of a Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO). Based on reconciliation projects such as the FrancoGerman Youth Office for French and German youth after the Second World War, RYCO was one in a series of government-NGO collaborations purporting to address ‘the practices and phenomena of racism, xenophobia, hate speech, [and] discrimination on grounds of ethnicity’ among young people (RYCO 2015: 3). Fronted by Angela Merkel, the countries’ Prime Ministers – several of whom built their careers on ethnic chauvinism – solemnly pledged to help their countries’ young men and women ‘distance themselves’ from ethnic prejudice (ibid.). The assumption that youth are required to ‘distance themselves’ from excessive ethnic identification is often made automatically and unempirically. A pervasive dogma holds that ethnic concerns trump economic, cultural, and political matters in the minds of Balkan’s young people. Indeed, many seem to believe that if only the new generation’s ethnic obsessions were to be overcome, progress would finally prevail. Journalistic approaches mirror this perspective, routinely comparing younger cohorts unfavourably to preceding ones: ‘Children greater nationalists than their parents’ (Radio Free Europe 2008); ‘The young today are bigger nationalists than their parents who fought in the ex-Yugoslav wars’ (SeeBiz 2011); ‘Prejudice among the Youth Still Lives On’ (Slavinić 2013). A  leading analysis of youth trends in eight Southeast European countries from 2011–14 seeks to disprove ‘the widespread hypothesis that young people are more progressive and tolerant than their parents and grandparents,’ identifying ‘intolerance’ as a dominant feature of the younger generation (Taleski and Hoppe 2015). For Europe, if not globally, young people in the greater Balkan region have become a paradigm of ethnic identity gone awry. The true ‘widespread hypothesis’ is that ethnicity is the dominant lens through which Southeast European youth can be understood. Yet, very little is known about youth in Southeast Europe, a constituency significantly different from its preceding cohorts. Whereas a 20-year-old in 1995 witnessed communism, multiple ethnic wars and over a dozen regime and border changes in the region, today’s 20-year-old, by comparison, lives in a time of ethnic peace. (S)he witnessed neoliberal reforms, immigration from the Middle East,

2  Danilo Mandić and Tamara P. Trošt an LGBT amendment to traditional teenage norms and a burgeoning cyberspace where identity, leisure, and consumption are as important as offline. In these conditions, ethnic/national values and identities have been significantly complicated. After decades of being ‘lost in transition’ (Flere et al. 2015), the generation that will inherit Southeast Europe remains mysterious, as puzzled analysts label them the ‘Black Box Youth’ (Schwartz and Winkel 2016a: 16, 38). Simultaneously, recent waves of Euroscepticism, right-wing populism and disillusionment with globalization in Europe have renewed attention to young adults as citizens, consumers, voters, and workers (Hoskins, Saisana and Villalba 2015). The significance of the younger generation is thus not merely in the fact that they are the future of their respective countries. It is in their unique shared processes of socialization over the past twenty years. These processes – moulded by novel lifestyles, technologies, educational experiences, consumer/labour markets, gender norms, leisure opportunities, fashions, etc. – are vividly different from those of preceding age cohorts. In today’s world, youth globally are developing their identities in an era of rapid industrialization, immigration, and forced migration, dramatic population growth and the globalization and touristification of local cultures (Eriksen and Schober 2016). In fact, they are arguably as different  from earlier generations as pre- and post-World War II youth cohorts were from each other (Furlong 2009). Research has also pointed to the peculiarity of ethno-national understanding among youth: across diverse ethnic categories, young adults’ ethnic identification and feelings of belonging towards different generations vary considerably (Kiang and Fuligni 2009). This volume offers a corrective to previous thinking about youth ethnic identities in three ways. First, theoretically, it seeks to transcend the traditional takenfor-granted assumption of ethnic identities as primary categories of identification. Whereas ethnicity has been – for good and bad reasons – a dominant explanation of regional youth trends for decades, it cannot suffice anymore. We argue that ethnic categories are by no means dominant for youth values in Southeast Europe today, examining alternative identification processes and categories: young vs. old, educated vs. non-educated, politicized vs. apolitical, rural vs. urban, and diaspora vs. regional. Second, by selecting chapters by scholars with intimate knowledge of their local fields, the volume offers rich, thick, ‘bottom-up’ portrayals of youth negotiations of ethnic identities. While many scholars have advocated deep, field-embedded accounts of ethnic dynamics, far fewer have actually employed this methodology. The authors in this volume pursued ethnographic and interview-based qualitative approaches, providing rich insights into the worldviews and lifestyles of everyday youth. Finally, empirically, this volume examines an understudied yet critical population: youth in Europe’s ‘periphery,’ about which very little is known. These people are both conduits through which inter-generational transmission of ethnic particularism happens; but, simultaneously, they represent the only potential to tranquilize ethnic passions and perspectives among their peers. Accordingly, we suggest that youth in the ‘periphery,’ to which Southeast Europe is often relegated, represent an untapped potential for studies of broader, continent-wide phenomena.

Introduction  3 The volume thus addresses the following questions: What are youth’s cultural, political, and ideological values? How are their age-based identities different from other cohorts in the lifecycle? What identities matter to them? How are their values changing, and how can they be changed? How do they complicate, relativize, and transcend ethnic identities and values? In the following sections, we first review literature on ethnic identity questions, summarizing the main debates and rejecting the tendency to take ethnic categories for granted. Then, we discuss traditional approaches to studying ethnicity methodologically, highlighting the necessity of ethnographic and interview-based ‘bottom up’ approaches. Finally, we turn to youth socialization processes, exploring the ways in which youth across Europe are different from their preceding cohorts; as well as the particularities of Southeast European youth. We end with an overview of the contributions in this volume.

Against ethnic determinism: the dynamism of ethnicity Scholars across the social sciences have concluded that both ethnicity and nationalism require fundamental rethinking (Brubaker 2004, Malešević 2006, Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008, Goode and Stroup 2015). Traditional approaches have been exhausted, no longer able to address today’s challenges, such as the rise of the radical nationalist right, the failures and promises of multiculturalism, questions of nations without states, transnationalist movements that surpass national boundaries, etc. (Özkirimli 2017). Nationalism and related concepts have elicited endless (often politicized) inquiries into the extent of ‘realness’ of ethnicity (the constructivism/primordialism and perennialism/modernism debates), a bottomless pit that has prompted Tishkov to urge scholars to ‘forget the nation’ altogether (2000). In Southeast Europe, the conflation of ethnicity and nationalism has been especially pronounced, encouraging even more ethnic determinism by regional analysts. In contrast, a burgeoning literature has emerged on ‘everyday nationalism,’ with a renewed emphasis on ethnicity construction in ordinary experience (for a review, see Knott 2016). Following Greenfield and Eastwood (2005), we approach ethnicity and nationalism as a ‘ “perspective or a style of thought,” an image of the world’ (251) that is clearly salient to young people’s self-understanding. But it is, we recognize, only one of many ‘forms of consciousness’ (251–5). We argue that it is neither central nor predominant in youth identity and values in Southeast Europe. If we accept it as a preliminary lens through which to analyse the phenomena explored in this volume, we will miss an intriguing, complex reality. Static, groupist approaches to ethnicity largely owe their durability to competing theories of nationalism, from which many studies derive their conceptualization of ethnicity. A common division of nationalism and ethnic identity theorists is between ‘primordialists’ (Armstrong 1982, Smith 1982), who emphasize the inherent nature of historic, deeply-rooted ethnic attachments, and ‘constructivists’ (Anderson 1991, Gellner 1983, Hobsbawm and Ranger 2012), who emphasize ethnicity’s susceptibility to being ‘constructed’ without excessive grounding in pre-existing ethnic identity or culture. A third category of ‘instrumentalists’

4  Danilo Mandić and Tamara P. Trošt (Calhoun 1993, Breuilly 1994, Hechter 2000) is often postulated (Day and Thompson 2004: 16–40) to describe theorists who not only stress the malleable and coincidental nature of national identity, but describe the ways political and economic elites, as well as competing social groups, use nationalism for competition over resources and enforcement of social closure. Debates on ethnicity and ethnic identity have mirrored these dilemmas. Yet, focusing on ethnicity among youth in Southeast Europe involves the standard ‘danger that ethnic forms of identification become exclusionary and self-enclosed’ because of the ‘exclusionary and homogenizing nationalistic projects’ that gave rise to them (Norval 2004: 280). In the cases of modern state-formation of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, these have been notably brutal projects. Many approaches have been burdened with unwitting ‘essentialism’ and a failure to focus on ‘identification’ instead of ‘identity’ (for review, see Norval 2004). In the meantime, these ‘groupist’ features of ethnic identity have been dismissed as, at best, analytic confusion; at worst, politicized obscurantism (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). The recognition that ethnicity and nationality are dynamic, hybrid, and processual has become indispensable against ‘groupist’ and ‘clichéd constructivist’ approaches. Brubaker points out that ethnic common sense – the tendency to partition the social world into putatively deeply constituted, quasi-natural intrinsic kinds [. . .] is a key part of what we want to explain, not what we want to explain things with; it belongs to our empirical data, not to our analytical toolkit. (2004: 8–11) Similarly, Malešević argues that instead of using ethnic identity as an explanatory variable, we should problematize the nature of ethnic identity itself: While some researchers occasionally acknowledge that some forms of ‘identity’ are contingent, situational and instrumental, there is no self-evident rationale as to why, or justification of how, the concept of identity is necessary to explain individual’s and group’s multiple and fragmented understandings of ‘selves’ [. . .] This strategy leads to a very soft understanding of the concept which produces extreme vagueness and as such is empirically of very little value. If the concept of ‘identity’ is used theoretically to mean anything and everything, then empirically it means nothing (Malešević 2006: 5, 21). Furthermore, a contrast has been revealed between how young adults enact national identity and how they enact nationalism (Fenton 2007). While the former may be common sense and routine, ‘nationalism, banal or otherwise,’ is by no means a necessary consequence. When nationalism does come from automatic national identification, it is regularly riddled with indifference, antagonism, and ambivalence (321). Young adults are not only aware of the over-statement

Introduction  5 of national categories and exclusionary ethnic attitudes, but often take elaborate steps to distance themselves from them. With these criticisms in mind, several new approaches to studying ethnic identity have been proposed. Wimmer (2008a, 2008b), for instance, outlines the characteristics of social fields that explain boundary-making strategies by individuals enacting ethnicity. First, institutional frameworks determine which kinds of boundaries can be meaningfully and coherently drawn within a given social field. Second, the position in a power hierarchy determines the interests and inequalities that actors take into consideration during ethnic differentiation. Finally, the structure of one’s political alliances determines the inclusion and exclusion of people from one’s ethnic in-group (Wimmer 2008b). In addition to Wimmer’s boundary-making work, the ‘everyday nationhood’ approach takes as a starting point that identity ‘responds to the logics, imperatives, and concerns of the everyday contexts in which it is embedded.’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 538). Recent studies utilizing this approach have demonstrated that ordinary people’s understandings of identity ‘do not simply mimic those variants traded in elite discourse, but more often resonate with the currents and rhythms of their everyday concerns and predicaments’ (538–9, see also Miller-Idriss and Rothenberg 2012, Edensor 2002, Skey and Antonisch 2017). The task in the European periphery is thus not to endlessly investigate nationalist ‘groupness’ along traditional lines, but to examine how, where and when ethnic and national identification processes become salient (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). The most productive approaches to nationalism today seek ‘to uncover the mechanisms that reproduce the unquestioned cultural and political dominance of the nation-state and to observe the manner in which the nation is evoked in everyday practice’ (Bonikowski 2016). As this volume demonstrates, doing so can also undermine the very premise that ethnic/national categories do indeed dominate. This volume explores a number of mechanisms by which ethnicity is complicated, relativized, reinterpreted, and undermined.

Ethnicity from below: bottom-up approaches Youth in Southeast Europe are arguably the most important barometer of social change in the region. Yet the bulk of the literature on these young adults fails to incorporate interview-based and ethnographic evidence from young subjects themselves (for a sample of approaches, see Schwartz and Winkel 2016a). Studies often compare youth to elder cohorts with samples of students (Blagojević, Maksimović and Bajović 2013, Rapti and Karaj 2012), if not inferring features about the youth from features about elder cohorts. Many survey-based studies employ questionnaires modelled on preceding cohort attitudes and ideological contexts (Flere et al. 2015). In general, much of the work is unempirical; and the empirical work excludes precious bottom-up methodological approaches. The leading research effort in this area is the Maribor-based Center for the Study of Post-Socialist Societies’ Youth in East Europe (YEE) studies (Taleski and Hoppe 2015).1 These cross-national surveys in eight countries shed light on

6  Danilo Mandić and Tamara P. Trošt youth values and attitudes in domains such as lifestyle, leisure, religion, politics, social life, and national/world affairs (Çela et  al. 2013, Žiga et  al. 2015, Ilišin et al. 2013, Pasha et al. 2012, Tomanović and Stanojević 2015, Flere et al. 2015). The YEE datasets have been uniquely valuable in documenting the tremendous intra-ethnic and intra-national heterogeneity within each country’s youth population. Furthermore, given the standardized YEE questionnaire items, this research has reminded us how fundamentally similar youth values in certain domains are across ethnic and national categories. This is most acute in attitudes on employment and socio-economic outlook, which unite Southeast European young adults in their ambivalence towards the EU, their fear of job insecurity and their deep distrust of institutionalized politics. Youth values in the region, therefore, are in many ways more similar across nation-states than within each country. Intranational homogeneity of attitudes often pales in comparison to international similarity. This is all the more striking given the unyielding nationalist propaganda in politics, culture, and education in each country. Despite these pressures, ethnicity has not been as formative as many assume. Yet the YEE studies have notable limitations. First, the methodology neglects to take advantage of the nuance and depth that ethnographies, in-depth interviews, and theoretically driven sampling offer. The survey questionnaires are highly structured and standardized across sites, missing crucial gradations in values and attitudes. Questionnaire items are often poorly ordered, inducing obvious ‘anchoring effects’ through which subjects offer misleading answers (Furnham and Boo 2011). This is understandable given the comparative scope, but should be supplemented with alternative methods for better data. Second, while several items address ethnic identification processes, they do so superficially and largely by conflating them with other indicators. Ethnic distance items – such as reported violence with youngsters from ethnic out-groups, feelings towards ethnic outgroup neighbours and general attitudes towards ethnic difference and reconciliation – are scaled very modestly. Many items indirectly register preferences for in-group titular ethnic preferences at the expense of alternatives (e.g. domestic vs. foreign musical and cinema preferences) without further probing into the reasoning behind the preference. In brief, these datasets are strong in generalizability and width of scope, but they have sacrificed theoretical nuance and depth. Sociological alternatives can be very useful remedies in this area. Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008) prominently argued that everyday identity is a precious data source. Through talk, symbolic ritual, institutional engagement, and consumption behaviours, young people enact and construct ethnic and other identities – including ones that undermine or complicate national boundaries. For this kind of research, Fox and Miller-Idriss argued, interviews and focus groups are a particularly valuable tool (542). Instead of mainstream survey methods which provide ethnic categories as a given, talking to people and analysing their chosen elements of discourse lets us see into the theories that people use to make sense of their lives, into the taken-for-granted categories they mobilize when interpreting and organizing

Introduction 7 the differences that surround them, without predefining specific dimensions of identity as particularly salient. (Lamont 2000: 4) Through ethnography, interviewing, content analysis, and participant observation, we shed light not on reified, groupist ethnic categories, but on how ethnicity and nationhood are routinely practiced by ordinary young adults (see Bonikowski 2016). Works such as Brubaker et al.’s (2006) ethnographic and interview-based study of ethnic dynamics in a Transylvanian town, Wimmer’s (2004) bottomup investigation of Swiss immigrant neighbourhoods and Miller-Idriss’ (2009) examination of ethnic identity among several generations of Germans demonstrated that ethnic salience is best discovered in observation of micro-interactions and conversations about ethnicity in daily life. Elite discourses, crucially, were often found to be irrelevant to micro-level interactions. Similarly, Skey (2011) effectively revealed the mechanisms by which ethnic and national meanings are evoked and understood, reminding us that the micro-interactions and symbolic rituals that matter most are difficult to observe from a top-down view. Accordingly, this volume takes advantage of ‘interviews and fieldwork [that] capture subtlety of thinking in practice’ (Bonikowski 2016: 33) and innovative ways of approaching youth research (see Heath and Walker 2012) to complicate and even replace our focus on ethnicity among Southeast Europe’s youth. This volume collects such qualitative approaches, allowing the authors to provide ‘thick’ descriptions of ethnic identity – of how, when and in which instances it is activated, negotiated, or contested.

Youth in Southeast Europe Popular press and scholarship have deluged us with alarmist analyses of a European ‘identity-crisis,’ a ‘moral crisis,’ continental ‘soul-searching,’ and broad questions of European civilization itself – all centred around Western Europe. Authors routinely ask, ‘Is Europe Losing its Soul?’ (Vaughan-Whitehead 2015) without any reference to societies east of Budapest. Ironically, these very ‘identity crises’ often stem from outside the EU itself. Europeanization is as potent in the periphery as it is in the core (Coppieters 2004). As migration from Syria, civil war in Ukraine, crisis in Greece, and Islamic dilemmas in Turkey demonstrate, it is Europe’s periphery that is the testing ground for the success of European values and identities. As with most regional multi-national socio-political orders (including the EU’s imperial predecessors), the stability and political coherence of the Union after Brexit will be determined in large measure by identity challenges in its periphery: immigration, religious backlash, cultural assimilation, and youth values. Southeast European young adults will not only inherit their own societies’ historical trajectories. They have the leverage to redefine them. Accordingly, youth in general – and youth in Southeast Europe in particular – warrant attention for several reasons. First, research throughout both West and Southeast Europe has shown similar patterns in the differences between the older

8  Danilo Mandić and Tamara P. Trošt and newer generations, emphasizing youth’s relatively progressive outlook compared to older layers of these periphery societies. Youth-related Eurobarometer survey results show that young respondents were more satisfied than the average with the development of democracy in their countries, with market economy and with their countries’ direction towards the EU. Urban, wealthier, and male youth were found to be greater Europhiles and optimists than rural, poorer, and female young adults. More importantly, these European ‘periphery’ youth are uniquely positioned gatekeepers for historical memory and tradition – a preoccupation of Balkan studies, where the ‘perceptions of generations of people who are redefining their evaluations of the past’ are notoriously important (Todorova 2004: 13). Across Europe, youth who came of age after the 1980s understand national identity and pride in different ways than previous generations, as ‘the state’s efforts to shape national identity are always tempered and potentially transformed as each generation reacts to the official conception of what the nation “ought” to be’ (Miller-Idriss 2009). Across the globe, youth ‘tend to occupy the innovative, uncharted borderlands along which the global meets the local’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000: 308), a dynamic that is additionally intensified given the issues facing today’s youth – globalization, immigration, media consumption, and economic uncertainty (Jenkins 2004). The collapse of state socialism and increased globalization have resulted in very different patterns of life trajectories and have made transitions to adulthood more complex than was the case in previous generations (Schwartz and Winkel 2016a). Several recent volumes have empirically determined the consequences of living in a globalized world on youth values, identities, and transitions to adulthood, both across the globe (Dolby and Fazal 2008, Suarez-Orozco 2004, Skey 2011, Bennett and Robards 2014, Eriksen and Schober 2016) and especially among youth in the European periphery (Blum 2007, Kirmse 2013, Schwartz and Winkel 2016a, Leccardi et  al. 2011). In their review of new youth cultures in Eastern Europe, Schwartz and Winkel note how imaginary belongings among young people became much more fragmented and contested than in the former more gated subcultural identities, as they must constantly be negotiated and repositioned between local places and global spaces, underground and mainstream, ‘authenticity’ and commercialization (2016b: 16). Second, theoretical approaches to young adults have increasingly focused on a new stage of development, from ages 18–25, between adolescence and young adulthood. This ‘emerging adulthood’ stage is considered formative of a wide range of important social outcomes (Tanner and Arnett 2009). Recent evidence has demonstrated that youth in Southeast Europe are a particularly valuable European constituency to study precisely because of their differing experience of young adulthood compared to those in Europe’s core societies. It appears that societies in Southeast Europe have exposed their young adults to different experiences in this

Introduction  9 stage. For example, while ‘greater tolerance of premarital sex’ is taken to be a pillar of emerging adulthood (Tanner and Arnett 2009: 39), South European adolescents’ reproductive health behaviour is regionally atypical. Compared to Western and Central Europe, average age of first intercourse is 1.5–2 years higher; contraceptive use is significantly less prevalent for both married and unmarried males and females; and induced abortion rates among adolescents are – with the exception of Catholic Croatia – higher (Avery and Lazdane 2008, see also Landripet, Štulhofer and Baćak 2011, Selak et al. 2004, Stanković et al. 2009, Burazeri et al. 2003).2 Similarly, parenthood – another staple of emerging adulthood – comes significantly later to young adults in Southeast Europe than to their Western and Central European peers (Kuhar and Reiter 2010). While increased fertility postponement has been common in Europe as a whole for decades, the second-birth progression rates in Balkan countries are much lower than elsewhere. Thus, not only are young adults in this region having children later, but are slower and less likely to have them again (Sardon 2001, Kohler, Billari and Ortega 2002). Combined with the grim socio-economic outlook for the younger labour force (Matković 2006, Risteski and Tripkova 2010), this means that young adults are compelled to live in their parents’ households and off their parents’ incomes until much later than their European peers. Accordingly, nuptiality patterns and independent young married households have been exceptional. Further, Southeast European youth are in the unique position of having been born during or right after the Yugoslav civil wars and their ‘spillover’ effects in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania. Not having lived through communism, they are told about it in family oral traditions, schools, and popular culture. Meanwhile, they suffer the economic penalties for communism’s violent collapse. Nationalist bigotry is widely cited and recited by their newspapers, textbooks, and political parties as the reason for their dire situation. Yet they nurture a nuanced eye towards Western culture, politics, and economic alternatives (Roberts 2008). The popular Bosnian slogan ‘We are hungry in three languages’ reflects the recurring dominance of socio-economic and class divisions over ethnic ones. In addition, Southeast Europe leads globally among regions with the highest ‘brain drain’ of high-skill, educated young adults (Horvat 2004, Bagatales and Sergi 2003, Weeks et  al. 2003). Some of these are coupled with unusual youth migration dynamics more generally (Erdei 2010). Their exclusion from the labour market is also heightened, as ‘[y]outh in Southeast Europe are disproportionately likely to be unemployed’ (Goldstein and Arias 2013) relative to their peers in regions both to the east and west. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, young people are a minority to a significantly greater extent than in other countries due to population aging and depopulation (Aleksandrova and Velkova 2003, Lukić et al. 2012). Unlike baby-boomers, these young people are very outnumbered. In sum, there are significant demographic, social, and cultural particularities to Southeast European youth. They are a precious potential for studies that question our understanding of not only ethnic identities in a globalized Europe, but of emerging adulthood and youth values globally.

10  Danilo Mandić and Tamara P. Trošt

Chapter overview The following chapters examine youth in seven countries of Southeast Europe: Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia, including both single-case study and relational and comparative approaches. The chapters examine cleavages that arise when ethnic and other social categories (e.g. class, citizenship status, political participation) create friction or open opportunities for transcending traditional ethnic divisions. Methodologically, the chapters rely on ethnographic, interview- and focus group-based methods; they all focus on youth and adolescents. The volume opens with explorations of the peculiarities of the new regional ethnic mosaic. The ethnic wars of the 1990s, economic recession and EU integration processes have moulded several new cleavages within ethnic groups. Micinski and Hasić discuss the differences between dual and single citizen youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina, examining the ways in which citizenship of an additional country bestows dual-citizen youth with practical benefits –knowledge of languages, educational experiences, an ‘exit strategy’ for economic hardship – and its effect on youth engagement in political participation and identification with Bosnia. Takševa examines another startling postwar cleavage in Bosnia: the coming to adolescence of children born of wartime rape. She focuses on the socio-economic, generational, and ideological factors that contribute to identity construction of such youth, arguing that they represent a potential for an alternative set of values based on common civic interests beyond ethnic affiliations. Subsequent chapters examine the differences in construction of ethnic boundaries among members of the same ethnic group, in regards to their legality and status. Peternel compares five groups of youth in Croatia: host, immigrant, displaced, minority, and majority. She argues that the nature of the group boundary depends on the way in which it has been institutionalized in different domains, and that the migratory experience is formative of the adolescent sense of belonging in dynamic, unstable ways. Rácz critically examines an understudied minority constituency – the ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina – to show how ethnic boundaries are constructed and contested depending on language-sharing and availability of spaces for ethnic mixing. She demonstrates that youth culture, friendship with peers, relationships, extracurricular activities, and non-ethnicized cultural and leisure events offer opportunities for minority youth to use identities relationally, against insecurities arising from language use. Remarkably, this occurs in opposition to traditional institutions of the family, the school and the church, which employ authoritative discourse and rest on the inseparability of the ethnic culture and its language. We then turn to the interaction of politics and political participation with youth identities. Yusufi and Vila Zeka highlight the ways in which political activity complicates ethnic identities among Albanian youth, as politically activated youngsters choose among European, global, political, and civic identities. Alibegova similarly compares the effect of political participation on youth identity, pairing the engagement of youth in the JMBG protests in Bosnia with the Colourful Revolution in Macedonia. She demonstrates that both initiatives represented a

Introduction 11 generational civic awakening in their respective countries. Nonetheless, she warns that the initial bridging of ethnic lines in support of a common cause (against the dysfunctional state) in later stages led to new segregations across social – not ethnic – lines. Baća explores political engagement and the forging of civic identities among Montenegrin youth, who were active contentious actors in 2015. He investigates why ethno-national identification became obsolete for their engagement, and how, in the process, new political subjectivities and inclusive spaces emerged for cross-ethnic mobilization and solidarity. Finally, we turn to an exploration of the possibilities of new identities transcending nationalism altogether. Comparing youth across the Western Balkans, Turjačanin and his colleagues argue that attempts aimed at decreasing the attachment to traditional ethnic groups could backfire, but find a heightened awareness of alternative identifications as the existing overlap between various identities proves a more viable alternative for youth in the region. The authors document the evident resistance of regional youth to political pressure to conform to dominant norms of ethnic divisiveness and previous generations’ nationalism. The chapter suggests several alternatives, including promoting solidarity, overarching values, and examples of complex identities. Similarly, when comparing Serbian and Croatian youth, Trošt examines how national pride can be constructed in nonethnic terms, such as pride in the seaside and environment, as well as in class and gender interactions with ethnic identities: youth of similar socio-economic backgrounds often share much more in common with their across-country peers. Finally, Mandić investigates Serbian and Kosovar youth in a rare relational approach, arguing that youth solidarity transcends ethnic boundaries and is inherent to young people’s folk sociological understanding of nationalism. He develops youth solidarity through the powerlessness, youth culture, and childhood trauma that his respondents evoke to undermine ethnocentric ways of thinking, talking, feeling, and belonging.

Notes 1 The only comparable dataset comes from the Eurobarometer, which is less comprehensive by comparison. From 1990–8, the Central and Eastern Eurobarometer (CEEB) expanded to include Albania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia. The subsequent Candidate Countries Eurobarometer (CCEB) replaced the CEEB in 2001, again excluding Southeast Europe altogether (with the exception of Croatia). Thus subsequent EU work on European youth, such as the special 2003 report on ‘Youth in New Europe’ and the 2014 report on ‘European Youth in 2014,’ neglected this region. 2 Albania (and presumably Kosovo, for which data is unstandardized or scarce) is the exception, with the highest percentage in Europe of traditional (non-modern) methods of contraception by married women, one of the highest birth rates on the continent and the lowest rate of pregnancies that end in abortion (4 per cent) in all of Europe. See Sedgh et al. 2015.

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Part I

New ethnic mosaics Cleavages within ethnic groups

1 Negotiating identities in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina Self, ethnicity, and nationhood in adolescents born of wartime rape Tatjana Takševa I perceive myself as a fighter for peace . . . I think that’s me, I think I need to be that . . . because as a child who has blood from two different groups, I am able to negotiate more, and act as a peace-keeper . . . between both nations in order to overcome divisions and conflicts. What we need is to eliminate this war situation. . . . We the young ones. . . . we should not allow ourselves to become collateral damage of the enemies, of the nationalists on all different sides. Regardless of ethnic belonging, we should sign a pact that will allow for cooperation in the future. . . . That is basically what I fight for. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010b: 536)

This was spoken by Amda, an adolescent Bosniak girl, in response to her interviewers’ request to describe herself and her understanding of her identity as a child born of wartime rape to a Bosniak mother living in Sarajevo. Although Amda uses metaphors from the semantic field of warfare to define her sense of self, she does so in a way that reorganizes her ‘identification matrix’ (Volčič 2007: 69) in positive terms, casting herself as a peace-builder and a peace-keeper between ethnic groups still divided. She also perceives herself as someone who by default stands opposed to the enemy nationalists on all sides; in her statement, youth constitutes an ideological category that embodies the desire for peace, cooperation, and a shared identity beyond ethnic affiliations. Emerging as the product of a recent violent conflict in which more than 20,000 Bosniak and Croat women were kept in rape camps and forcibly impregnated, mainly by Serbian but also Croat soldiers, and based on her ‘mixed blood,’ Amda negotiates her identity in terms of being a ‘third party’ who can bridge or overcome interpersonal and social tensions in an ethnically divided Bosnia and Herzegovina, thus representing an alternative to a form of national belonging based on ‘pure’ ethnicity that remains inscribed into the country’s constitution.1 In her positive construction of her mixed ethnic identity, Amda represents an exception among the interviewed youth. She is one of two out of 19 girls who took part in two recent studies (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a; Erjavec and Volčič 2010b) who articulated a sense of self in relation to ethnicity in a constructive manner,

20  Tatjana Takševa reframing their perceived ‘outsider’ status as a potential source of strength and positive change. The remaining respondents use the same language of warfare but in ways that signal their sense of social and community exclusion and isolation. Their statements reveal their conception of their ‘mixed blood’ as an aberration, a state of being ‘unclean’ or ‘cancerous,’ having interiorized their community’s persistent attempts to assert an ethnically homogenous national identity by casting them as the tools of genocide, and as the ‘children of the enemy.’ While this perspective is tragic but perhaps unsurprising, what is surprising and important is the articulation of a positive identity alternative presented by narratives like Amda’s. Both sets of narratives come from the same population. However, while one set presents a version of identity based on pure ethnic identification, the other moves beyond this narrow affiliation. The particular issues relating to the identity of children born of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been overlooked over the last two decades. But now they are of particular relevance as these children have entered (young) adulthood, and soon will be expected to contribute to the social and political life of the country according to its strictly defined ethno-national concepts of three ‘Constituent Peoples’ (Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats) and ‘Others.’ Analysing the small body of published narratives of adolescents born of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this chapter contributes to the academic corpus on ethnicity and nationhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina by focusing on the socio-economic, generational, and ideological factors contributing to the identity construction of this particular population, especially as they are evidenced in narratives like Amda’s, where identity is envisioned as hybrid and transcending ethno-national labels. Since the nation is not only a political project but also a cognitive, affective, and discursive category deployed in everyday practice (Bonikowski 2016), I  argue that the constructively reimagined identification matrix in the personal narratives of children born of wartime rape serve not only as a direct way to explain the past and examine the present, but also as a potential discursive blueprint for a political and cultural future for Bosnia and Herzegovina where national identity can be articulated through an alternative set of values based on common civic interests, beyond ethnic affiliations. Rather than viewing nationalism only as ‘the product of macro-structural forces’ such as politics, economics, and culture in a broad sense, recent research on nationalism examines the phenomenon as ‘the practical accomplishment of ordinary people engaging in routine activities.’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 537) Studies of nationalism are increasingly focused on the ways in which nationhood is negotiated, reproduced and, in some cases, undermined and subverted through the actual practices of ordinary people in everyday life (Hobsbawm 1991, Billig 1995, Herzfeld 1997, Edensor 2002). Malešević’s position (2006: 74–6) on the complex relationship between the two levels of ideology, the normative (or official) and the operative, can help lay the foundation for an analysis of how and why a particularly vulnerable segment of Bosnian society is motivated and persuaded to believe in the specific value system that is evidenced from their statements and personal narratives, and further, under what conditions one ideological

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities 21 construction is preferred over another. The normative levels of ideology in today’s Bosnian society are in flux and still look back to the events of the recent war, with the view of moving forward and developing more constructive forms of civic coexistence (according to domestic and international political rhetoric, at least). However, the operative level, the one ‘encountered in the features and patterns of everyday life’ (Malešević 2006: 78), is still for the most part grounded in the radical nationalistic constructs regarding enemy groups that emerged before and during the war. Fox and Miller-Idriss’ examination (2008: 537) of the ways in which the ‘nation as a discursive construct is constituted and legitimated . . . according to the contingencies of everyday life’ is especially useful as a theoretical framework through which to examine the constructions of national identity based on ethnicity in adolescents born of wartime rape in Bosnia. Their mixed ethnic identity, the recent war, and the political and social organization of the county provide a context for everyday articulations of national identity. The articulations of identity found in the majority of narratives of adolescents born of wartime rape in large measure mirror the political and civic frameworks instituted by the Dayton Accord or Dayton Peace Agreement (signed on November 21, 1995) that ended the conflict and separated the formerly Yugoslav republic into three areas along ethnic lines: two entities (the Federation of BosniaHerzegovina and the Republika Srpska) and the small, neutral, self-governing territory of the Brčko District, belonging to both entities. Their perspectives reveal that the current structure and operation of most political, cultural, and civic systems in the country have only solidified the divide, leaving little discursive space to the possibility of imagining a more unified Bosnia-Herzegovina. Current institutional structures provide few ‘entry points for reducing the political salience of ethnicity’ (Simonsen 2005: 306) and for boosting social and cultural factors that may play a role in creating a supra-national identity. The intention behind the Accord was to create a temporary structure for power-sharing for the major ethnic groups in Bosnia until a better mechanism is created. However, the ongoing difficulty in creating a mechanism that would be acceptable to all groups, even more than two decades after the conflict, has left Bosnia in a situation where ethnic divisions have been made axiomatic and practically intransigent based on institutional and government organization (cf. Guss and Siroky 2012: 310). Rather than being a transitional phase in the move toward greater ethnic reintegration of Bosnian society, the political and civic frameworks instituted by the Dayton Peace Agreement seem to have cemented on a normative level a three-way ethnic cleavage of Bosnian life. This in turn seems to have conflated civic, ethnic, and larger national identities. The current constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina does not effectively recognize the category of citizen, since the individual is constituted not as a political subject but as a member of an ethno-confessional group (Perišić). According to all official frameworks, ethnicity is the single most important marker of national identity in Bosnia, and those who, like the children born of wartime rape and children born in ‘mixed’ marriages, cannot declare theirs in straightforward and ‘pure’ ways remain the abject Other in all three ethnic communities. Media reports and governmental policies in Bosnia-Herzegovina

22  Tatjana Takševa reproduce this conceptualization while often manipulating it for their own political agendas (Weitsman 2007). The mothers’ community tends to construct the children’s identity as being determined by the ethnicity of the biological father and, as such, being marked by violent, ethnically inscribed hatred (Takševa 2015, Daniel-Wrabetz 2007). Politically, they remain neglected in the development of peace and reconciliation processes (McEvoy-Levy 2007). They are not able to claim a single ethnicity, have no real access to political power and often even lack civic rights. In social and personal terms, the political structure translates into matrices of systematic exclusion, intolerance, victimization, and discrimination for those branded Other. Indices of ‘ethnic exclusionism’ or the possibility of interethnic friendship and tolerant cooperation based on survey data are (to say the least) varied in their findings. Some indicate an increase in ethnic intolerance between 1989 and 2003 (Guss and Siroky 2012: 305). According to a recent study on the social and demographic influences on interethnic friendships in post-war Bosnia- Herzegovina, just over half of Bosniak respondents (53%) reported meeting other ethnicities on a daily basis, while that figure was significantly lower for Bosnian Croats (only 18%) and Bosnian Serbs (29%) (O’Loughlin 2010:12). Correspondingly, over half of the residents of Bosnia-Herzegovina (54%) have all or most of their friends from their own ethnic group, while a 2015 poll conducted among Bosnian university students suggests that over half do not want to marry or date someone outside of their ethnic group due to the belief that children with ethnically mixed backgrounds have a ‘harder time in life because they are not accepted in Bosnian society’ (O’Loughlin 2010: 12; Brkanic 2015). At the same time, however, there are a handful of studies that aim to highlight the possibilities for reconciliation that exist within Bosnian society (O’Loughlin 2010, Simonsen 2005, Korac 2006, Guss and Siroky 2012). O’Loughlin’s study, for example, shows that almost half (47%) of Bosnian adults in 2010 wanted more friendships from different nationalities (24). What is also interesting is that the results of his study offer some insight into the economic, educational, age, gender, and religious background of his respondents. According to these statistics, those who belong to a higher socioeconomic bracket, who are older, male, less religious, who are better educated, and those to whom civic identity was more important than their ethnic one, ‘all tended to have more friends from mixed nationalities and wanted to have more’ (24). With respect to methodology, the body of published narratives that serve as a basis for the present analysis comes from two 2010 scholarly studies by Karmen Erjavec and Zala Volčič. One of them (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a) is based on in-depth interviews with 11 adolescent Bosniak girls born of rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The goal of the study is to show how these adolescents represent themselves and their life situations. The other study (Erjavec and Volčič 2010b) is based on in-depth interviews with 19 Bosniak girls. The goal of this study was to ‘contribute to the research that deals with multiple identities after traumatic events, acknowledging that people can deal within and among these identities.’ (2010a: 360) The interviews were conducted over a period of six months in 2008–09 in

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities  23 different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The two researchers report that finding participants willing to take part in their project was difficult. After having sent out invitations for participation to ‘more than 50 different women’s and children’s organizations, organizations for human rights, for adoption, orphanage and relief centres in BH’ (2010b: 527), the researchers report being contacted by about a quarter of those organizations with offers to help. The researchers further invited potential collaborators and requested help in sharing a call for participation, subsequent to which they received responses from the small group of respondents. The researchers report that there were also Serbian and Croatian children of war rape (male and female), but they draw their ‘empirical findings from interviews with Bosniak girls simply because there was a higher number of Bosniak girls who were members of organizations willing to participate in this study.’ (2010b: 527) All interviewees were between 14 and 16 years old at the time of the interview and all have pseudonyms. After Chaitin’s model (2003), all were invited to share their life stories with the researchers; the interviews lasted between two and four hours each and were conducted in spaces selected by the participants (2010a: 366). At the end of each interview, because the girls’ narratives were not always coherent with respect to their painful life situation, the researchers asked a total of four very open-ended questions connected to the study of self-presentation. The questions were: 1. How would you describe yourself? 2. Who are the most important and influential people in your life? How do you think they perceive you? 3. Which crucial events define your life, and in what ways these events affected you? and 4. How do you describe your situation? Both studies were conducted only after full informed consent was obtained from the participants and they were made aware of all the details on ‘how and why the data would be used and it was made clear who would have access to the interview material.’ (2010a: 364, 2010b: 527) It is clear that both studies are based on a small self-selected sample, which is not surprising given the vulnerable nature of the population and the traumatic subject matter they were asked to speak on. Erjavec and Volčič comment on the limitations of their project based on the ‘small sample and its ethnic/national and gender homogeneity’ but correctly state that their ‘pool of respondents was limited by the painful and controversial nature of the topic’ (2010a: 364).2 It is difficult to assess the number of children born to mothers who had been raped or who had relationships with the ‘enemy’ in the war in Bosnia. These numbers are difficult to establish partly due to the reluctance of many survivors to speak of the rapes (given that the topic is still taboo in many communities) and partly due to poorly kept statistics. It is estimated that between 25,000 and 40,000 Bosniak women and girls – the greatest number – were victims of genocidal rape and enforced impregnation, primarily by Serbian forces (Allen 1996; Sharratt 2011: 1; Skjelsbaek 2006: 374–5; Erjavec and Volčič 2010a, 2010b). When possible, many survivors chose an abortion, but anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the pregnancies resulting from war rape were carried to term (Daniel-Wrabetz 2007: 25). In some cases, upon birth the unwanted infants were killed by either the survivor herself or her close family members. Other survivors chose not to raise their

24  Tatjana Takševa children and gave them up for adoption. The number of women who found the courage to care for the children against the continued rejection by their family and community is difficult to estimate. The children themselves continue to face marginalization in their communities and struggle with their hybrid identities that most of them, just like their communities, perceive as ‘unclean.’ In many respects, the actual events surrounding the Bosnian women who were raped and forcefully impregnated by members of the Serb and Croat military forces remain taboo in Bosnian society. As pointed out by Helms (2007: 252), ‘there remains a considerable social stigma against victims of rape, even wartime rape, despite official appeals to the contrary.’ One of the studies by Erjavec and Volčič (2010a) does provide some demographic information about their respondents. From this index, it is clear that all except two of the respondents live at or below the poverty line and in a state of social and family isolation. At the time of interview, most of them were attending high school, and three of them did not attend any school. In many cases, their mothers were either retired for health reasons, or unemployed and surviving on a state pension. In cases where the mothers worked, they were mostly employed as manual or low-skill workers, with the exception of Amda’s and another girl’s mothers, whose level of education was high and who were employed as professionals (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 365). Some of the information related to demographics, especially the educational background and occupation of the mother, is relevant in trying to understand the similarities and differences that exist in the constructions of national and ethnic identity in this particular population. What is evident from their narratives is that most of the respondents experience their identity as a deeply problematic area. Their words reveal various forms of social exclusion, resulting in their inability to recognize themselves as members of either ethnic group. Their inappropriately mixed ethnic identity appears as a dynamic social product, produced, and reproduced daily in a negative, exclusionary, and prejudicial way by the adults around them as well as their peers. Zerina, age 15 at the time of the interview, says of her identity: I see myself as a scapegoat because I have Serbian blood and in this way, I am kind of . . . available for everyone to hate me. I am a channel for their sadness. . . . I am guilty for their pain. I am guilty for their misery that lives on. And no one likes me, everyone avoids me, everyone hates me. (2010a: 367) Zerina’s description of how the community constructs her identity indicates her social exclusion based on her biological status of being ‘mixed.’ ‘Everyone’s’ hatred here refers to not only the Serbs but also her own community of Bosniaks, according to which she represents a constant and unwelcome reminder of the violence that was done to this community by the Serbian military and paramilitary forces. What is interesting to observe is the extent to which the majority of Zerina’s Bosniak peers have unquestioningly adopted and identified with the exclusionary logic of ethnic nationalist identity propagated by their families. These findings

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities  25 challenge studies claiming that youth culture is marked by a process of social redefinition that includes the real and symbolic desired separation of young people from their parents and immediate family group and a resistance to the values and worldview of the older generation. Instead, in the case of Zerina’s peers, the findings provide more support for social learning theories of adolescence, where more weight is placed on the processes by which adolescents model their behaviour on the behaviour of their social group (including the adults in their family unit) based on observational learning (Steinberg 1999: 13, 98). Lejla’s statement reveals similar realities: For me this situation is a war; it’s a state of war. I don’t know any other reality, with no war. I don’t know peace. There is a continuous shooting going on. Children and their mothers shouting at me and after me that I am a Chetnik or a whore child . . . well, I got used to this. I got used to the fact that they would, sometimes, kick me or beat me . . . but the worst is that I am alone. I don’t really have and can’t have friends. No one wants to be with me . . . I’m kept out of all. (2010a: 368) Senada’s story offers an especially poignant personal example of the extent to which youth will model their behaviour and action on that of their social and family unit: It was really difficult for me when the other kids got adopted, except me. No one wanted me. Everyone got a new home except me. At the time, I did not understand why; all I know is that it still hurts. . . . But the worst was when my boyfriend . . . Jasenko . . . who was really the only one who loved me unconditionally, and him . . . well, he told me his mother prohibited him to see me since I have the blood of a murderer. He broke up with me, and since then it has been even more difficult for me. . . . He was just a coward, nothing more. (2010a: 370) Senada provides a negative judgment of what she implies is both a lack of true insight and a lack of individual courage on the part of her boyfriend, Jasenko. While youth culture is often perceived as being defined by a variety of ‘antiestablishment beliefs’ (Asa Berger 2015: 232), these examples also showcase that members of youth culture can be very susceptible to forms of mass media messages and propaganda. Jasenka’s words point to a similar discursive representation of self and identity, but with reference to how larger institutional and political realities intersect with and translate into personal ones: They don’t beat me anymore every day. Three years ago or so . . . they would beat me up every day. So now, they don’t beat me every day, but the boys threaten me that they will rape me. I am really afraid of this. . . . Whoever

26  Tatjana Takševa says that in Bosnia there is peace is lying. There is no peace. And the worst of it all is that I am the victim. I have nothing to do with the Serbs; I hate them, too, but everyone sees a little Chetnik in me. . . . They are cowards, they are cowardly enemies, because they shoot at me but they don’t shoot at the real enemies . . . who really cause their suffering. It is not my fault that they lost their fathers or their mothers. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 369) Jasenka’s narrative reveals that while at the normative level the situation in Bosnia is represented as a form of peace, at the operative level – the level that penetrates her own everyday social existence in non-institutional ways – this is not the case. Jasenka’s experience of her victimhood is based on her community’s construction of herself as an unwonted entity, a ‘little Chetnik,’ an unpleasant replica of her biological father’s nationalist and ethnic identity. While Jasenka’s words leave unclear who the ‘real enemies’ might be, those who are cited as the true cases of her own and others’ suffering, her description of self remains rooted within the realm of clear ethnic divisions and an unquestioned assumption of the existence of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ She, too, like the other Bosniaks in her community, ‘hate[s] Serbs,’ but she is not allowed to demonstrate a form of group belonging to the Bosniak community in this way due to her being crucially tainted by the enemy group. Because of this, she implies that she sees herself as being outside of both groups and unable to identify with either, a situation that causes her profound grief and that leaves her no alternatives in how she conceives her identity. In Zerina’s and Jasenka’s narratives, as well as the situations they describe, we see the everyday processes through which ethnic nationalism is constructed and reconstructed though social interaction and the practical accomplishments of ordinary people engaging in what are described as routine activities (cf. Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 537). The complex and close relationships between the normative and operative levels of ideology in the Bosnian case can also be seen from Mirsada’s narrative, where it becomes clear that the social stigmatization and violence inflicted on her by her peers serves not only as a way to show her and others that she is an ‘outsider’ due to her mixed ethnicity, but also to perform and legitimate a purer form of group belonging to a Bosniak community: The people around me, you know, almost all my classmates, our neighbours, even our relatives despise and hate me.  .  .  . My classmates, they are constantly kicking and teasing me, since in a way I am the only one who could be used for their frustrations and anger. . . . I am Chetnik girl for them, and they exclude me from their mainstream clique. And that’s why I tell you that the war has not ended yet. . . . Oh, I hate them. Yes, I hate them. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 369) In the negative social interactions that demonstrate her social exclusion, Mirsada details the process by which her peers enact shared patterns of belief about

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities 27 nationhood and ethnicity, which influence their words and social actions. Here the Bosniak ethnicity and its corollary pure form of belonging to that group are practically accomplished through discursive and physical acts of violence directed toward someone who is marked as the ethnic Other. While Mirsada does not articulate any other form of identity that she may be able to envision for herself outside of the strictly imposed boundaries between Bosniak and Serb, she does assert agency in expressing her emotional relation to those who victimize her in the form of hate and scorn. The degree to which many of the adolescents born of rape have internalized the institutionalized and everyday forms of ethnic divisions in Bosnia and their own extreme outsider status based on the category of mixed ethnicity is evidenced in statements describing respondents’ identities via metaphors of ‘cancer’ and ‘cancerous’ tissues, as well as metaphors of ‘shooting targets.’ Marina says, ‘I see myself as a cancer . . . a cancer that divides weak and sick cells in the blood and destroys the strong, the good cells. Yes, the malignant cells destroy the good ones,’ while Alma virtually echoes those words: I am the cancer that destroys the good tissues. . . . You know . . . five years ago my mother died. And it was then when my auntie Azra told me. . . . You know, it is my fault; I am like a poisonous cancer that spreads . . . and contaminates all the good tissue. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010b: 534–5) The girls articulate their perceived malignancy in response to the treatment that they and their mothers have been receiving with their Bosniak communities. The ‘good’ cells in their statements refer to not only the body and spirit of their Bosniak mothers, for whose suffering and death they see themselves as being responsible, but also for the idea of the pure ethnic being, which in its projected homogeneity appears free from outside influences seen as impurities. In an ultimate example of how social and structural violence can be reflected in forms of psychic violence, here directed against the self, their construction of self is entirely dependent on its daily reconstructions by others through negative social interaction. The malignancy discursively embodies their mixed ethnic status and negatively structures their sense of identity. The malignancy also defines through a discursive absence an alternate identity space or the range of available identity repertoires that the girls see as being (un)available to them. Similarly, a few other respondents speak of themselves in terms of being a ‘target’: I am a target that everyone uses. . . . The schoolmates exclude me on a regular basis, they shout at me “you dirty Chetnik”, they beat me up, throw stones. . . . They all attack me . . . every day, over and over, I have to fight . . . yes, I am a shooting target. (Sanja, Erjavec and Volčič 2010b: 532)

28  Tatjana Takševa Harija echoes that sentiment by saying, I perceive myself as a shooting target, because everyone attacks me all the time. . . . My life is a fight; my life is one big struggle. You know, the war here still goes on, it hasn’t ended yet. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010b: 534) Jasenka says: My classmates . . . they constantly attack me, since in a way I am the only one who could be used for their frustration and anger. . . . Every day for me is the same, every day is a struggle, a fight to survive. They are cowards, they are cowardly enemies, because they shoot at me but they don’t shoot at the real enemies . . . who really cause their suffering. It is not my fault that they lost their fathers or their mothers. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010b: 532–3) However, at the same time Sanja and Jasenka articulate and as well resist the state of being seen as ‘shooting targets.’ Being a target here implies their helplessness in the face of continued threat and violence, as well as their being exempt from the imagined blame they are seen as carrying. Through their words, we can also see that in an ethnically divided Bosnia they are perceived as living reminders of the atrocities of war committed by Serb militias against the Bosniak population. At the same time, however, while neither Sanja nor Jasenka articulate an alternative identity matrix through which they can understand themselves, they do problematize and thus undermine the ethnic nationalist basis upon which the attacks on them are based. This problematization rests not only on accepting that to fight is necessary (in Sanja’s case) but also in recognizing (in Jasenka’s case) that her own mixed biological identity is not the issue. She reframes her classmates’ actions from representing a political and social enactment of ethnic group belonging via the rituals of her exclusion to being situated only within the moral realm as ‘cowardly’ because of lack of real insight. All respondents speak about stigmatization and bullying at school. Their statements reveal that the treatment at the hands of a Bosniak community that wishes to see itself as ethnically homogenous reflects the institutional ethnic divisions represented by larger social and political structures: those who do not clearly belong to one of the ‘legitimate’ groups stand outside and have no place within those structures and everyday communal ties. However, there exists a complex and, in this case, reciprocal relationship between normative and operative nationalist ideologies at work. This relationship demonstrates that everyday forms of nationalism, which in Bosnia means nationalism based on ethnicity, can in potentially large measure shape what is in the normative domain built around principles that outline desired goals and values and provide a blueprint for the realization of those goals (cf. Malešević 2006: 92). The Bosnian education system within which the respondents grew up is a case in point.

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities  29 Until 2012, the adopted educational practice in Bosnia was represented by the so-called phenomenon of two schools under one roof, a practice of dividing Bosniak and Croat children such that they would attend school in the same building but remain separated from each other in different classrooms and be taught different curricula, including different versions of history. In 2012, the Education Ministry of the Bosniak and Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina presented a solution to the segregation by calling for the formation of multi-ethnic classes and administrative and legal acts to unite divided teaching institutions (Jukic 2012). This plan, however, initiated a number of protests by some Bosniak parents, who launched a legal case to fight this decision at a cantonal court in Mostar, and who continue to fight the decision, despite the formal ruling of the Supreme Court in 2014 to uphold an initial verdict stating that this practice is discriminatory. Recent reports show that much remains to be done to implement this ruling and to develop a common, integrated curriculum regardless of students’ ethnicity (Dzidic 2014, 2015). On a broader level, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s education system thus represents an ideological battleground upon which some citizens and educational authorities fight for and against an institutional organization that produces and propagates ethnic nationalist views of the world. In more individual terms, the stories told by Zerina, Jasenka, Mirsada, and others like them who do not fit into the ethnically pure vision of community are evidence of the harm that segregated institutions bring to Bosnian youth by systematically legitimating ethnicity as a main marker of identity. The complexity becomes clearer when we consider that Bosnia and Herzegovina has 13 educational ministries. In addition to the overall Federation ministry, there are ten cantonal ones in the Bosniak-Croatian Federation, one in Republika Srpska and one in Brčko District. This means that changing the education system also means changing the country’s complex political system (Dzidic 2015). At the same time, this reality foregrounds the complexity of the nation-building project, which takes place simultaneously at all levels, normative and operative. Despite these undeniably grim realities and ideological struggles, a more nuanced perspective on interethnic tension and division can show that the seeds for reconciliation are to be found in the very nature of the divisions themselves. The personal testimonies of these adolescents show that their mixed ethnicity provides a discursive and performative context for the Bosniak community to reconstruct an everyday perspective from which to understand the events of the past conflict, as well as to rearticulate the boundaries of group membership in an ethnically homogenous Bosniak community. A latent resistance on the adolescents’ part to this negative re-inscription of their identity can also be seen from the fact that, despite carrying Serbian blood, all of them identify themselves as Bosniak, namely, as Bosnian Muslims as an ethnic group (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 25). Recognizing, interpreting, and aligning themselves with the ethnic category of Bosniak represents their bid to redefine ethnic nationality based on kinship and primordial ties into an identity that they choose. In this sense, while they do not articulate a form of national belonging that is beyond ethnicity, their identification

30  Tatjana Takševa asserts their desire to choose to which group they belong, and to redefine the terms upon which ethnic belonging operates: from exclusive and intolerant to one that is more inclusive and more tolerant. Significantly, there are two young women among the respondents whose narratives explicitly challenge the primacy of the ethnic nationalist discourse that negatively structures the everyday response of the community to the difference they represent though their mixed ethnic status. Their narratives reveal the potential that resides within youth to redefine and reshape political realities through everyday social and cultural practice. Amda’s words at the beginning of this chapter resonate with the conviction that ‘fighting for peace’ transcends her individual circumstance and refers to a larger political reality, the desire for a common good based on multi-ethnic tolerance and cooperation. For Amda, belonging to a younger generation, one that by implication represents progress and optimism and opposes the detrimental policies of the older one, supersedes belonging to any one ethnicity defined through blood ties: We the young ones . . . we should not allow ourselves to become collateral damage of the enemies, the nationalists on all different sides. Regardless of ethnic belonging, we should sign a pact that will allow for cooperation in the future . . . that is basically what I fight for. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010b: 537) Here ethnic nationalism is cast as the harmful, warmongering politics of the older generation, against which a new politics is called for and represented by the younger generation. Amda identifies the enemies as those who try to manipulate the youth of each ethnic group for their own nationalist purposes. Amda’s ethnically mixed status provides her with an outsider’s perspective through which she can clearly see the shortcomings of an identity repertoire based on ethnicity. Her outsider status is creatively retooled into a strength that allows her to observe and critique the restrictive identity options in each ethnic community. Amda’s words have a clear political dimension in that she calls for political action (signing a pact) that would carry real weight and constitute a blueprint for a brighter civic future for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this way, Amda seeks to redefine the youth culture of her community and generate a different, more positive understanding of their role within Bosnian society. Amda constructs and calls upon a more revolutionary youth culture that claims anti-establishmentarianism as its defining feature and depends on youth’s willingness and capacity to recognize and oppose the harmful ideas of the establishment. In addition to Amda, Seada, at the time a 16-year old living in Sarajevo with her mother and stepfather, redefines the universe of nationhood options available based on her ethically mixed status and her youth: I perceive myself as a rescuer, as someone who can connect enemies .  .  . who are otherwise unable to come to the table and confront each other. Having blood of both sides in me, Bosniak and Serbian, it my duty to speak out about injustices and continuing struggles. I can work toward a better future of

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities  31 Sarajevo – it is here we could all live together, without anger and hatred. My mother always says we have to put the past behind and move on. The point is not to forget, but just somehow to forgive. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 378) Like Amda, Seada articulates her ethnic otherness as a form of strength and a position from which she can see and critique the unthinking and unquestioned everyday performances of ethnic nationalism she observes around her. She constructs Sarajevo as the location for a peaceful and tolerant future for all sides, evoking a pre-conflict Sarajevo as a city that embodied peaceful multi-ethnic coexistence. In socialist Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and its capital Sarajevo were commonly thought of as the ‘melting pot of Yugoslavism’, where citizens of different ethnic and religious affiliations ‘lived together side by side, in unity, all their lives, learning to enjoy and take pride in their diversity rather than to fear it’ (Jovanović 2014: 140, Levy 2007: 2). In both cases, the girls make reference to their mothers as role models who provided them with a broader positive perspective, on not only their own biological origins but also the way forward. ‘Putting the past behind’ for Seada implies cohabiting beyond the limits of ethnicity imposed by current institutional structures in Bosnia and the everyday practices of people that keep re-inscribing those limits. In this way, both Amda and Seada show that they are not uncritical consumers of the ethnic nationalist discourse, but that they are ‘creative producers’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 550) of a different kind of discourse beyond ethnicity that challenges ethnic nationalism and augments the repertoire of available identity options. Like Amda, Seada has found a way to reorganize her identification matrix in a constructive way, showing that her mixed ethnicity confers upon her the responsibility to ‘rescue’ those who need help, in this case those around her who are otherwise unable to ‘come to the table’ and confront their differences. Seada’s social activism gives a glimpse into the potential benefits of a broad education reform. As a young person whose social world is defined through the school environment, Seada provides a critique of that environment based on the harmful implications of its segregation. Instead, she constructs a distinct youth culture that in its nature transcends the limits of ethnic nationalism as an approved marker of identity. She puts forward an alternative youth identity based on common interests and pursuits in the social realm: How can I bring people closer? Well, in school, for example, I want to explain to my schoolmates that it is important to collaborate and to understand or get to know each other better. We should not be divided into different ethnic groups. You know, now, the Serbs have their school lessons on the second floor, the Muslims on the third floor. The Croats are on the ground floor. So we don’t intermingle. With my friends we started a rock group – I sing and write lyrics. The band is mixed – our drummer is Muslim and guitarist is Serb. We mostly sing about love. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 378)

32  Tatjana Takševa In this statement, music and making music together becomes a symbol of unity among ethnic groups and an interethnic collaborative tool. Seada’s construction of the realm of music in relation to her classmates here resonates with older European critical and cultural theories of youth subcultures that structure young people and their music against other cultures, and according to which music represents a closed semiotic space of resistance against other groups (Hebdige 1979, Hall 1992, Hall and Jefferson 1993). However, the way that Seada’s account of music functions in her statement is more closely aligned with recent North American revisions of those theories that are more inclined to see youth music culture in an interactional sense, in the context of everyday interactions between young people (and others) within and beyond these different groups (Laughey 2006: 15). As Jovanović (2014: 14) points out, ‘having the capability of grouping people, and by doing so, creating a unifying experience, popular music is an obvious tool for constructing or (re)inventing national identities’, while also having the capability of grouping people ‘in categories other than national ones.’ In the context of Seada’s narrative, music acquires a revisionist ideological function. It is through music that she suggests interethnic ‘intermingling’ is achieved, which in turn provides a positive, reformist political message for the mainstream culture in a broader sense. Although Amda and Seada share the same biological origin and circumstance with the other respondents, it is clear that they stand apart in their positive reimagining of their mixed ethnic status into a reformist ideological tool through which to transcend ethnically based definitions of identity. There are several important and interrelated demographic factors that can help explain this difference. Both girls differ economically from the other girls in the study since they come from more stable, middle-class families with higher economic and cultural capital (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 378; 2010b: 537). Seada’s and Amda’s mothers are not only ‘educated, emancipated and relatively economically stable,’ but they have also ‘resisted the patriarchal tendencies in Bosnian society to stigmatize victims of rape and treat them as guilty’ (2010b: 538). Seada’s mother is a teacher who moved to Sarajevo after the war and got married to a man who officially adopted Seada and considers her his daughter, while Amda’s mother is a translator who often travels with her daughter around the Balkans and Europe (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 378; 2010b: 538). Both mothers are social activists: Seada’s mother testified in the Hague during the war crime trials and continues to speak publicly about her and others’ experience during the war, and Amda’s mother publicly fights for the rights of raped women (2010b: 379, 538). For both girls, their relationship to their mothers and the mothers’ approach to their circumstance is crucial in providing them with a broader and positive perspective on the past, present, and future and their own identity. In both cases, mothers and daughters are engaging in everyday constructions of nationhood, but in their cases, their constructions are positioned as critiques of the mainstream approaches to national identity and as social activism aimed at helping others gain

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities  33 an alternative perspective on Bosnian realities. Seada speaks eloquently about this: You have to know that my mother is . . . a fighter. She just has a strong character. When my grandparents were upset with her, because she talked very openly about what a woman was not supposed to talk about, at least that’s what my grandparents thought, she did not surrender, but she left the city, and we came to Sarajevo. Just us two. No one helped us, we started anew. She is even more active here, and even more people listen to her. Zlatko [Seada’s stepfather] and I support her. Yes, I guess we are all active, and we feel that we have to support her. Three years ago, when my mother went to the Hague, she told me what really happened to her. She told me how she and many other women have suffered in the camp, and she also told me who my father is. I kind of . . . started to understand what the meaning of my life is. While having this discussion with my mother and all the family, we concluded that all this suffering has to have some meaning. It has to serve some purpose. Maybe to help others in similar situations? My mother decided to go public with her story – not just witnessing in the Hague but also to tell her story to a wider community here in Bosnia. I also decided to not be ashamed of it – and I started to talk about it to my friends in my school. . . . We all have to make sure this does not happen again. We have to assure there will be no repetition of these acts of violence. . . . We have to connect and build Sarajevo for all of us. (Erjavec and Volčič 2010a: 379) Seada describes a maternal practice that depends upon successfully training her daughter through words and actions to resist dominant social discourses that marginalize them. Seada describes how her mother’s explicitly agentive maternal practice enabled her to find a constructive way of dealing not only with the truth of her own identity but also with the social response that this identity elicits. In her narrative Seada acknowledges her mother’s status as outsider, as someone who stands against social and family pressure and chooses to live in a way that is deemed rebellious and dismissive of social expectations, including her decision to ‘go public with her story.’ At the same time, her mother’s outsider status in Seada’s narrative is redefined: instead of being seen as a source of weakness, it is identified with the authoritative position of someone who fights for the right cause. Her mother showed determination and strength in rebuilding her life after the war for herself and her daughter, without deference for social customs that might have kept her back from this goal. The mother’s determination to take control of her own life and to place her wartime experiences in a wider perspective is evidenced in her testifying at the International Court Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague, in speaking about what happened to her during the war, as well as in the manner in which she let her daughter know the truth about her identity.

34  Tatjana Takševa Letting her know that ‘she and many other women suffered in the camp,’ the mother identifies the events that led to Seada’s conception and birth in a broader wartime context that affected a large group of other women in the same way. By situating the traumatic events in a broader context, the mother provided Seada with the conceptual tools that enabled her to understand what happened in a way that was not focused on some imagined form of individual shame or culpability for mother or daughter. In fact, the mother models for her daughter how a traumatic event can be transformed into a source of power, self-confidence, and authority as well as an activist stance in the service of peace and rebuilding of society, and an alternative form of national belonging. Seada recognizes her mother’s authenticity and authority in noting that ‘she is even more active here, and even more people listen to her.’ It is through this model that she herself can decide ‘not to be ashamed’ of who she is but to use it as a teaching tool and a way to overcome and prevent future violence. Through her own example and perspective, the mother trained her daughter to successfully negotiate various social pressures and hostilities and emerge as an agent of her own destiny, helping mould social opinion instead of being moulded by or in deference to it.3 By providing positive and authoritative models for their daughters, Seada’s and Amda’s mothers enable their daughters to recognize social activism as a worthy political pursuit and articulate an oppositional ideological discourse that aims to transform Bosnia through the example of youth leadership. Their and their daughters’ social activism by implication calls for an alternative definition of national belonging based upon the common goals and interests of civic values rather than ethnicity. What do the implications of these findings mean for understanding how national identity can be constructed and negotiated in post-conflict Bosnia? The ethnically mixed identities of children born of war in Bosnia symbolically represent both a blueprint for explaining the past and a potential road map for the future of Bosnia, and for creating civic rather than ethnically based forms of national identity. On the one hand, by virtue of the violent past they stand for in the everyday imaginary of the Bosniak community, they serve as daily reminders of the ‘ethnification’ (Kalyvas and Sambanis 2005: 216) of the recent violence and its consequent exclusionary nationalist politics. They thus become ‘scapegoats’ and ‘targets,’ living symbols of the anger and hatred engendered through the conflict. Recognizing and asserting the otherwise invisible boundaries of the ethnic homogeneity becomes contingent on daily victimization of the children born of war through rituals of exclusion. On the other hand, in the narratives of Amda and Seada it is evident that precisely because of their ethnically mixed identity they also represent the symbolic means for overcoming that anger and hatred. If we understand their functioning within the current landscape of Bosnian ethno-nationalist politics in symbolic terms, in their ethnically hybrid position they make visible the ‘abstractions of social relationships’ (Pauker 2012: 109), thus enabling us to see and understand the ways in which relationships between individuals and groups are objectified while being enacted in daily rituals, re-inscribing the ethnic inclusion/exclusion dichotomy. Symbols also have a powerful role to play in the identity-building

Post-conflict B&H: negotiating identities  35 process. In this case, Amda’s and Seada’s reimagining of their identity though the capacity for peace-making carries the potential of reimagining for the community the repertoire of identity beyond ethnicity. The language they both use, like the language of symbols, has a proactive function (Pauker 2012: 111), as it appeals to values, refers to ideas, stirs emotions and stimulates action. Their words represent a call to Bosnian adults ‘to model intergroup behaviours that are conducive to amicable interethnic norms’ (Simić, Volčič, and Philpot 2012:12). Their perspective serves as a powerful reminder that ‘ethnic intolerance was not a precursor to the war, but its consequence’ (Matejcic 2009) and, thus, represents the possibility of overcoming it. Invoking the values of a new youth culture and highlighting its shared and politically inclusive aspects, they redefine the local ethnic nationalist reference points in presenting scenarios that would situate Bosnians in a global community of civically inspired values and aspirations. Narratives of children born of rape clearly demonstrate the dynamic character of ethnic and national identities as they can be reshaped and re-imagined according to different political agendas and ideological positions. It is within the malleable and socially constructed character of identity that hope lies for redefining the mainstream Bosnian nationalist narrative of ethno-politics. If current intervening political actors in Bosnia acknowledged this reality, they would create the conditions to facilitate a transformative movement toward a gradual reconciliation, multi-ethnic tolerance, and truly peaceful coexistence. And, finally, the mixed identity of the children born of wartime rape in Bosnia can serve as a symbolic tool for reconfiguring forms of civic identity that can help the development of overarching national identity that cuts through ethnic divisions. The narratives of adolescents born of war rape provide an important insight into youth culture in terms of both how they deal with the discrimination they encounter in their daily lives and what their statements reveal about the behaviour of the dominant youth group in their community that perpetuates discriminatory forms of thought and behaviour. In both cases, it is clear that a more nuanced understanding of youth culture is required, based on a more dynamic critical analysis that is adaptive and responsive to each particular youth context. This evidence reveals several important realities: rather than being axiomatically inclined toward anti-establishmentarianism, this particular youth group is much more susceptible to not only the influence of mass media and the ideology of the establishment but are also more likely to model their actions and behaviour on that of elders in the family unit and the community, and in ways that can resist the pressure of the dominant normative discourse. The extent to which this is problematic clearly resides within each socio-political and individual context. In the case of youth who victimize the adolescents born of rape, perpetuating the oppressive ethno-nationalist divisions represented in their society, we see the negative consequences of this modelling process. In the case of youth who are able to articulate an alternative frame of reference with regard to how they see themselves and the society around them, in response to positive modelling of a close family member (the mothers), we see the true positive potential of the process.

36  Tatjana Takševa This evidence also reveals that supporting the efforts of youth groups and subcultures working toward peace and multi-ethnic collaboration via normative institutional ways constitutes one viable ‘entry point for the reduction of political saliency of ethnicity’ (Simonsen 2005: 305) and helps legitimize alternative national discourses. The promotion of ‘cleavages cross-cutting ethnic ones’ (ibid.) via different normative discourses, including the mass media, would help change the operative discourse through which ordinary people construct nationhood in their daily lives. The words of the adolescents born of war rape give urgent personal affirmation to the need to undermine the appeal of nationalist politics in Bosnia; to desegregate neighbourhoods; to establish objective truth commissions to serve as the medium for a dialogue among the three major ethnic groups; to set up a single national curriculum; and overall to reduce the salience of national identity based on ethnic affiliation. As a group, they offer a path toward postwar democratization and engaging the citizens of Bosnia in alternative forms of national identification that promote hybridity, inter-group connections, and civic rather than ethnic politics.

Notes 1 Salzman (1998) quotes an estimate from the Bosnian Ministry of Works and Social Affairs that 35,000 women of primarily Muslim but also Croat origin were impregnated through rape and released only when abortion was impossible. The exact number of children who were born of wartime rape remains unknown due not only to poorly kept and sometimes deliberately destroyed records, but also because many of the women who have chosen to keep their children refuse to speak about it. 2 I wish to acknowledge the sensitive nature of this material, as well as the fact I have not gathered the material myself. To the best of my knowledge at the time of publication, the statements I analyse here and reprint with permission of SAGE Publications, Ltd., are authentic. 3 For a more detailed analysis of agentive maternal practices of mothers raising children born of war in Bosnia, see Tatjana Takševa, Raising children born of wartime rape in Bosnia: A  maternal philosophy perspective. In Tatjana Takševa and Arlene Sgoutas (2015) Mothers Under Fire: Mothering in Conflict Areas, Toronto: Demeter Press, 155–80.

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38  Tatjana Takševa Levy, P. 2007. Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and PostYugoslav Cinema. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Malešević, S. 2006. Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism. New York: Palgrave. Matejcic, B. 2009. Cruel wars cast shadow over mixed marriages. Balkan Insight, 30 October. [Online]. Available at: www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/ cruel-wars-cast-shadow-over-mixed-marriages. McEvoy-Levy, S. 2007. Human rights culture and children born of wartime rape, in Born of Ware: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones, edited by R.C. Carpenter. Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, 149–79. O’Loughlin, J. 2010. Inter-ethnic friendships in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina: Sociodemographic and place influences. Ethnicities, 10(1), 26–53. Pauker, I. 2012. War through other means: Examining the role of symbols in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Peace Psychology in the Balkans: Dealing with a Violent Past While Building Peace, edited by O. Simić, Z. Volčič and C.R. Philpot. New York: SpringerVerlag, 109–28. Salzman, T. 1998. Rape camps as a means of ethnic cleansing: Religious, cultural and ethnic responses to rape victims in the former Yugoslavia. Human Rights Quarterly, 20(2), 348–78. Sharratt, S. 2011. Gender, Shame and Violence: The Voices of Witnesses and Court Members at War Crime Tribunals. Farnham: Ashgate. Simić, O., Volčič, Z. and Philipot, C. 2012. Peace psychology in the Balkans: In times past, present and future, in Peace Psychology in the Balkans: Dealing with a Violent Past While Building Peace, edited by O. Simić, Z. Volčič and C.R. Philpot. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1–14. Simonsen, S.G. 2005. Addressing ethnic divisions in post-conflict institution-building: Lessons from recent cases. Security Dialogue, 36(3), 297–318. Skjelsbaek, I. 2006. Victim and survivor: Narrated social identities of women who experienced rape during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Feminism  & Psychology, 16(4), 373–403. Steinberg, L. 1999. Adolescence. 5th edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Takševa, T. 2015. Raising children born of wartime rape in Bosnia: A maternal philosophy perspective, in Mothers Under Fire: Mothering in Conflict Areas, edited by T. Takševa and A. Sgoutas. Toronto: Demeter Press, 155–80. Volčič, Z. 2007. Scenes from the last Yugoslav generation: The long march from Yugoutopia to nationalisms. Cultural Dynamics, 19(1), 67–89. Weitsman, P.A. 2007. War babies and the politics of identity, in Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones, edited by C.R. Carpenter. Bloomfield: Kumarian, 110–27.

2 Dual citizenship and youth identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić

Introduction While many researchers have focused on ethnic identity as an explanatory factor that led to conflict in the Balkans, few studies focus on the new social cleavages that were created as a result of conflict, displacement, and repatriation. Around 1.2  million Bosnians fled the war in 1992–95, with many seeking asylum in neighbouring countries or in Germany, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, the US, Canada, and elsewhere. The active phase of the conflict ended in 1995 with the Dayton Accords, and some host countries began to encourage voluntary repatriation to Bosnia, leading to the return of almost one million displaced people, while more than a million Bosnians remain abroad (including those who had moved during the pre- and afterwar migration waves). During their time in exile, some Bosnians who were granted refugee status were also allowed to apply for a second citizenship in these countries. This created new cleavages within the Bosnian society that intersect with ethnic identities. For example, there are Bosnian citizens who live and work locally and have never left; Bosnians who fled to Europe but never gained dual citizenship, and returned; Bosnians who fled, became dual citizens, and returned to Bosnia to live and work; and those who fled, became dual citizens, and now return to Bosnia only to visit. These new social cleavages emerged after the war and within the politics of post-conflict Bosnia. This chapter examines the role of dual citizenship among young Bosnians. How does dual citizenship impact the way young Bosnians understand their identities and politics? How do the duals living in Bosnia and abroad perceive the advantages and disadvantages of dual citizenship, and what is the impact on political participation for both groups? How do diaspora youth with only host citizenship differ from their peers with dual citizenship? This chapter contributes to both citizenship and diaspora studies by examining the ways in which dual citizenship impacts young people living in Bosnia and the diaspora. We find that dual citizenship acts as a safety net for Bosnian youth living in the country. Some young Bosnians conceptualize dual citizenship as a safety net because ‘duals’ can relocate if the economy worsens or if the country slips back into conflict. This safety net has implications for how youth with or without dual citizenship perceive their relationship to the future of their country.

40  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić While the transience of young duals impacts Bosnian society, dual citizenship is also an important source of social capital for young people in Bosnia because it impacts where they can study, travel, or work, and the resulting connections and opportunities that stem from those experiences outside of the country. Young dual Bosnians can study at many European universities, and these degrees increase their skills, social capital, and future earning potential. Young duals can also leverage their additional citizenship to work in other countries without applying for work permits. These factors also make young people with dual citizenship more desirable for marriage or employment. Finally, young duals also carry different experiences and cultural understandings because some were born and most spent their childhood in other countries like Germany, Slovenia, the United States, or the United Kingdom. Growing up as refugees outside of Bosnia influences their approach to political participation and Bosnian politics. Because of these reasons, young Bosnians with dual citizenship have unique identities and approaches to politics that are often understudied. Based on thirteen in-depth, semi-structured interviews with young people living in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) and in the diaspora, this chapter argues that young Bosnians conceptualize dual citizenship as a safety net that enhances their social capital and questions to what extent their personal ethnic or political identification changes because of their dual status. The chapter first describes the historical origins of dual citizenship for the young Bosnians. Second, we present the empirical findings from our interviews with young Bosnians. Finally, we conclude that while ethnic identities continue to be instrumentalized by national and international authorities, dual citizenship is an increasingly important social cleavage among young people in Bosnia. Young Bosnians with dual citizenship have access to more economic, educational, travel, and marriage opportunities than single citizenship Bosnians. For some, dual citizenship fosters a greater connection to their homeland, but complicates their identities. Finally, there are indirect effects of dual citizenship that shape the way young duals participate in politics. History of displacement, diaspora, and dual citizenship Emigration from Bosnia and Herzegovina can be divided into four waves since the 1960s. The first wave was largely economic migration of unskilled labour as part of the guest worker (Gastarbeiter) programs in Germany beginning in the 1960s. The second wave in the 1980s was a result of the economic boom in Switzerland, Sweden, and other European countries, and the corresponding need for more workers. During this wave, the Yugoslav population in Switzerland almost tripled between 1980 and 1990, and Bosnians unofficially made up to 20 per cent of the population. The third wave of migration is connected to the 1992–95 war, when more than 1.2 million people fled to other countries, and thousands were internally displaced (MHRR 2012). Finally, the fourth and current wave is postwar migration that is motivated by the political instability and poor economic conditions in Bosnia. For example, Germany recorded an increase of labour migrants from Bosnia from 100,000 in 2000 to 144,000 in 2006 (Kupiszewski 2009: 55).

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H  41 This chapter mostly focuses on people displaced as a result of the 1992–95 war. The type of violence during the war was often localized and village based, driven not by primordial ethnic hatred but by competition over land and control of territory (Woodward 1995: 236). Ethnic cleansing strategically used violence to push out, displace, or kill people from the ‘wrong’ group that might threaten their right to land. In this way, displacement was not a by-product of the war, but one of its main goals. Between 1992 and 1995, nearly 810,000 people were internally displaced in Bosnia (Tabeau and Bijak 2005: 210). People displaced during the war were most likely to become refugees and more likely to qualify for dual citizenship. As a result, their children became dual citizens of B&H and are a specific cohort of young Bosnians today. These four waves of migration created a large Bosnian diaspora, particularly in the United States, Germany, Austria, Scandinavian countries, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Australia, and Canada (Nenadić et al. 2005: 48). The World Bank estimates the number of all Bosnian migrants outside of the country in 2010 at 1.46 million, equal to 38.9 per cent of the Bosnian population (Ratha et al. 2011). For instance, in Austria, Bosnians are 18 per cent of all minorities and the third largest group; while in Sweden, Bosnians make up 5 per cent of all minorities and the fifth largest minority. By 2013, more than 150,000 Bosnians had gained status of long-term residents in European countries, and over 280,000 had acquired citizenship in a European state.1 The top six European countries in which Bosnians acquired citizenship between 1991–2013 were Sweden, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, and the Netherlands. In the United States, more than 118,000 Bosnians gained legal permanent resident status by 2007 (USDHS 2008). More importantly, the majority of Bosnians acquiring European citizenship between 2008 and 2014 were younger than 35 years old. In 2008, 51 per cent of Bosnians acquiring citizenship in European countries were people between 15–34 years old, while 43 per cent were adults between 35–65 years old. These statistics show the importance of understanding the role of dual citizenship in the lives of young Bosnians. Applying for dual citizenship During their displacement, many Bosnian refugees applied for long-term legal status or dual citizenship, when available. Following the war, Bosnian citizens were defined as individuals who acquired citizenship in B&H under previous laws, as well as persons who were citizens of the former Yugoslavia and lived in the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as of 6 April 1992.2 B&H citizens are allowed to have dual citizenship only if B&H has a bilateral agreement with other countries, but as of 2016, only three bilateral agreements had been signed with Croatia, Serbia, and Sweden.3 The 1997 Law on Citizenship states that those individuals who acquire citizenship in countries without bilateral agreements will be stripped of their Bosnian citizenship,4 and anyone who had previously acquired dual citizenship had five years to renounce the other citizenship or be stripped of their Bosnian citizenship.5 These requirements created an administrative loophole, which some Bosnian diaspora used, where refugees could apply for dual citizenship while living abroad and never renounce

42  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić their Bosnian citizenship.6 Several interviewees discussed applying for Bosnian passports or national IDs while being back for summer holidays, without informing the Bosnian government of their other citizenships. In addition, there were no institutionalized mechanisms for checking dual citizenship. Official estimates from the Ministry of Civil Affairs note that between 50–60,000 people renounced their citizenship from 1996 to 2013 in order to be able to acquire another citizenship (Nezavisne 2014). Since 2011, Bosnia’s citizenship laws have been challenged in the constitutional court. The restrictions on dual citizenship were found unconstitutional and were removed from the citizenship law in 2016.7 Each host country has different requirements for Bosnians to apply for citizenship: for example, in the United Kingdom, once a Bosnian was granted refugee status, he/she had to wait at least five years before applying for British citizenship, in addition to passing a language and cultural exam. In many countries, minors are included on the refugee application of their parents. In other countries, like Germany, many Bosnians were resettled under temporary protection, but the government never expanded this protection to a permanent solution. As a result, 246,000 people repatriated to Bosnia from Germany between 1996 and 2005 (Valenta and Stabac 2013: 10). Many Bosnians living abroad were on temporary residency permits and did not acquire dual citizenship, but for those who did, we identified three paths to dual citizenship. Through the first path, interviewees were naturalized and became dual citizens. This group consisted mostly of refugees who fled the 1992–5 war and, depending on the host countries’ requirements, were able to apply for citizenship after several years. This group consisted of both adults and children who fled the conflict. Interviewees on the second path acquired dual citizenship from their ancestry. In this group, interviewees had parents or grandparents that passed on another citizenship through jus sanguinis citizenship. For instance, one young woman we interviewed had both Bosnian and American passports, although she had never lived outside of Bosnia herself. Her father was a refugee and got citizenship in the United States, which qualified her to apply for American citizenship as well. Another interviewee acquired an additional citizenship from Slovenia from his ancestry, saying: ‘I never left the country. I lived in Banja Luka almost all my life. I was granted [Slovenian] citizenship here in Bosnia’ (28-year-old male living in Bosnia). The third path to dual citizenship was through marriage with a foreign national. In many cases, these were marriages between a Bosnian with dual citizenship in an EU country and an individual with only Bosnian citizenship. Of these three paths to dual citizenship, the most common among our interviewees was through naturalization after fleeing the war as a child. This was a common theme, as the displacement and integration into a new society were formative experiences for many interviewees. They felt they had lost something in their lives because of the war, but were young enough to learn a new language, attend a new school, and build a life in a new country. Some interviewees emphasized the difference between their displacement as war refugees and the more recent economic migrants from Bosnia: For a refugee, there is a mutual benefit for the country taking in the refugee and for the refugee who is benefiting. For the Bosnian who is leaving their

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H  43 country [for economic reasons], it is their choice. They will either make it or not. (30-year-old female living in Bosnia) This interviewee explained that countries hosting refugees find ways of supporting and integrating them, while economic migrants are often on their own and migrating for different reasons.

Data and methodology Because our study sought to understand how dual citizenship impacted both dual and non-dual youth, we selected interviewees through a broad recruitment strategy after sending an invitation to participate to diaspora Facebook groups, email listservs and Bosnian youth groups, and also through snowball sampling. After interviewing thirteen young Bosnians, we transcribed and coded the transcripts. Youth were interviewed between March and May 2016, and were of both genders, between 19 and 35 years old. All were born in Bosnia, except for one participant. The sample consisted of dual Bosnians who live abroad (4) and dual Bosnians living in-country (9). The duals in our sample had citizenships from Canada, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia, Italy, the US, and the UK. The interviews were semistructured and lasted for forty-five minutes to one hour. The questions were aimed at discovering the positive and negative effects of dual citizenship on their lives, and how dual citizenship impacts their identity and political participation. The sample does not include young duals who acquired Croatian or Serbian citizenship, because it is beyond the scope of our study. Those youth were excluded from our sample because their dual citizenship is connected to their specific constitutional position in Bosnia and their respective neighbouring kin-states of Croatia and Serbia. Instead, our focus is on young Bosnians who acquired dual citizenship from countries that are not neighbouring kin-states. The topic of Croatian and Serbian dual citizens has been examined in detail elsewhere (for example, Kasapović 2010a and 2010b, Davorin 2010, and Obućina 2010).

Findings This study found four major themes throughout our interviews: 1) the strategic use of dual citizenship, 2) dual citizenship as a continued connection with Bosnia, 3) dual citizenship that complicates young Bosnians’ understanding of their ethnic identity, and 4) the by-products of dual citizenship. The following section explores the question of who returns to Bosnia, followed by further discussion of the above four themes. Returning to Bosnia According to the UNHCR, more than one million displaced people returned to live in Bosnia between 1995 and 2012.8 The majority of returns took place after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, when the temporary humanitarian

44  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić protection status of Bosnian refugees in third countries was withdrawn by a number of governments.9 In the case of Germany, most returnees to Bosnia did not acquire dual citizenship because they were on temporary status. Our interviewees had different experiences of the return. Some returned every year for about a month during summer holidays, but lived abroad for the rest of the year. Others moved back for what they described as temporary return in order to go to university in Bosnia, help a sick family member, get married, or work on a social justice project. Some of them also returned indefinitely. Of the young dual Bosnians who returned for the summer or temporarily, many spoke of disappointment and disillusionment with Bosnian politics, which demotivated them from staying permanently. Young people’s opinions of Bosnian politics mirrored those of the larger population. For example, a 30-year-old Bosnian man living in Germany said: Who should I vote for? I can’t find a single Bosnian political party that I can trust. This is because I am so disappointed by the political government in Bosnia . . . For me, the problem in Bosnia is that you can still feel the emotional scars of the war. The people act like they have many scars. There is disappointment in life, and this is not a good feeling if you are there for a long time. As a young dual who lives abroad, he was disappointed that Bosnian politics were corrupt, and that his family continued to see politics through the legacy of the war. He was happy to visit his family in Bosnia occasionally, but could not imagine returning to live there permanently. Another interviewee (26-year-old male living in Canada) said he never seriously considered ‘settling down’ in Bosnia, because he saw his future back in Canada. These young duals emphasized their frustration and lack of support from the wider system. One interviewee, a 32-year-old female who returned to Bosnia from Sweden, indicated that, Not much motivates me to stay apart from my willingness to try to enhance the capacities of local students – something I  have been doing for the last three years with very limited success due to the lack of broader systemic support. Some young people with dual citizenship successfully return to Bosnia, but on a temporary basis. One interviewee came back temporarily in 2015 and took a job with a German democracy promotion foundation. Though he continues living in Bosnia (as of 2016), he does not intend to stay in the country permanently. He grew up in Canada in a ‘very Bosnian family,’ speaks the language fluently with no discernible accent, and is very familiar with the politics of the country and region. During his time abroad, he claims he felt very ‘Bosnian.’ He said, ‘Upon returning to B&H, I realized I was incredibly westernized in many aspects. I  feel very much like a Canadian ex-pat rather than a “returnee” ’ (29-year-old male living in Bosnia). In this respect, his position as a dual citizen is reflected in

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H  45 his identity as an ‘ex-pat’ and in his social capital to be able to live abroad if he chooses. Those young duals that return often come with the goal of improving the country or bringing back knowledge from abroad. One interviewee, who returned from Italy, said: ‘People always say to me “Why did you come back? Are you crazy?” I think I would be crazy if I left my country at the moment that we need a new generation to take it over’ (23-year-old male living in Bosnia). This view is representative of many other interviewees who spoke about returning to Bosnia in order to contribute to the future of their country. Theme 1: strategic dual citizenship Young Bosnians acquire and use their dual citizenship in strategic ways. Interviewees described their motivations for acquiring dual citizenship as strategic in order to make bureaucratic processes smoother or to use it as a safety net. They discussed the advantages and disadvantages of dual citizenship as a specific package of social capital, including economic, educational, mobility, and marriage benefits. Young dual Bosnians explained that their two citizenships gave them specific legal advantages, in addition to the unique opportunities and cultural knowledge, which expanded their networks of people and institutions. Both dual and non-dual interviewees described this specific package of expanded social capital for dual citizens. The most common reason cited by interviewees was that dual citizenship was useful. Having a second citizenship made life easier for young Bosnians because they were able to travel without visa restrictions, probing questions at the border, and additional costs. One interviewee referred to his second citizenship as just a piece of paper that allows me to have fewer problems when I travel abroad. It is the same with the Bosnian one. Both are just two pieces of paper that somebody that lived before me decided I have to own as part of my identity. (23-year-old male living in Bosnia) This is an instrumental understanding of dual citizenship: they strategically acquire second citizenship in order to increase their social capital and make life easier. Another interviewee insisted on using the word ‘passport’ instead of ‘citizenship’ (25-year-old female living in Bosnia). She considers her passport to be ‘a membership card or a token,’ but not something that contributes to her sense of belonging or identity. In this way, dual citizenship was considered a commodity – something she could own and use, rather than representing her identity as a member in a political community. Another common reason for applying for dual citizenship was for protection and a guaranteed safe place to live. As many of the interviewees were refugees who fled persecution during the Bosnian war, dual citizenship in the host country allowed for some stability and safety. One interviewee described his family’s

46  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić urgency: ‘We had to find a way to stay. It was very dangerous for my family because my father is a Croat and my mother is Muslim. You are safe if you get dual citizenship’ (30-year-old male living in Germany). Another interviewee described her family’s motivation to get American citizenship because they did not have Bosnian passports and could not get a passport from the Republika Srpska (RS), which was responsible at that time for issuing passports in their region of B&H. Without dual citizenship, they would not be able to travel internationally and did not feel like they could rebuild their lives. This sparked further local integration and participation in their new country: voting was an important factor, and part of my parents’ decision to take dual citizenship was because we lived in a small state, where people were very focused on local politics, and my parents wanted to vote in order to decide their local politics. (28-year-old female living in the United States) Other interviewees described their desire for dual citizenship in order to be further integrated in their new country’s culture and communities. Many young Bosnians we interviewed referred explicitly to their second citizenship as a safety net. For example, one interviewee said: ‘It is a safety net for myself because I can leave’ (30-year-old male living in UK). Another interviewee explained that ‘safety net means if anything happens in Bosnia I have a way out . . . because I can leave the country any time I want because I would just be going back home’ (30-year-old female living in Bosnia). They both understand their dual citizenship to be a ‘safety net’ because they can use their second citizenship to find a safe place to live. To one young man, dual citizenship means that he has ‘somewhere else to go, another place to seek work or refuge, which many people in Bosnia don’t have’ (29-year-old male living in Bosnia). It should be noted that many of these young people either fled the conflict themselves as children or their parents fled and became refugees. It is not surprising that young Bosnians understand dual citizenship as connected to safety, refuge, or protection, because many acquired their dual citizenship as a result of their original displacement. The most common advantages for dual citizens were the potential to get a job, develop a career, avoid taxes, or receive a pension. Young Bosnians with dual citizenship used their legal right to work in a different country (usually one that is relatively more economically prosperous than Bosnia) for economic gain. This also meant leveraging their social and professional networks from abroad to get a job. Because non-duals did not spend time outside of Bosnia, they did not have the same exposure to diverse professional contacts, especially outside of the Balkans. One interviewee explained: ‘It is always easier to navigate with two membership cards. When you belong to more clubs, you can draw benefits from both’ (28-year-old male living in Bosnia). Another young person called dual citizenship an ‘economic upgrade. If you go with a German passport, it is much easier to get a job’ (30-year-old male living in Germany). Particularly because of Bosnian’s poor

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H 47 economy and high youth unemployment rate, this ‘economic upgrade’ allows young duals the possibility to build a career. Young duals do not necessarily leave the country to use their ‘economic upgrade’ because international companies seek employees for whom they do not have to bother with papers but who are still able to travel easily for work. Some interviewees described the advantage of dual citizenship as a way to avoid bureaucracy, which in turn either saved money or helped to get a job. For example: ‘I applied [for dual citizenship] mainly because I wanted to work in Bosnia and having citizenship made living and working here much simpler’ (29-year-old male living in Bosnia). Another person said dual citizenship ‘makes dealing with many things easier, such as administering wills, taking care of property in Bosnia, or getting pensions’ (29-year-old male living in Bosnia). Several interviewees were concerned about the right to reclaim property and inherit land from their family in Bosnia. One interviewee said, the property that my parents had would have been difficult to pass on to me if I didn’t have Bosnian citizenship, especially in the Republika Srpska. I was sure that the RS would do anything possible to make it so that those in the diaspora without Bosnian dual citizenship could not pass on their property (30-year-old female living in Bosnia) The ‘economic upgrade’ of dual citizens has a large impact on the Bosnian economy because the Bosnian diaspora sends home more than two billion US dollars in remittances every year (Ratha et al. 2011). In some circumstances, dual Bosnians need to stay abroad in order to continue sending remittances and to support their family members in Bosnia. One interviewee mentioned that the dual diaspora are able to give more generously to charity work in Bosnia because they earn much more money, but that they often donate naively to poorly organized groups that do not reflect the needs or politics of the community. Finally, some interviewees spoke mundanely about their passports as ‘only papers, like a credit card with a higher cash limit on it’ (25-year-old female living in Bosnia). The underlying meaning was that some citizenships or passports are financially worth more than others. Another advantage for dual citizens was education opportunities abroad, through a more critical curriculum, advanced training in university, or simply language skills. Many young dual Bosnians said they learned critical thinking skills, which were not taught in Bosnian schools. They argued that critical thinking was essential for reforming Bosnian politics. Other interviewees used their dual status to attend universities in the EU or, for one, to come back to Bosnia and receive a master’s degree on scholarship. Many young Bosnians described their frustration with the difficulties of travelling abroad – for work, study, and leisure. Dual Bosnians had a very different experience because they were able to travel on their second passport. One young dual said that dual citizenship ‘allows me to have fewer problems when I travel abroad’ (23-year-old male living in Bosnia). Some interviewees spoke of

48  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić discrimination or intensive questioning at borders when they travelled with the Bosnian passport but no questions at all when using their second passport. One young man with Bosnian and Canadian citizenship explained the main benefit [of dual citizenship] is ease of mobility. My Canadian passport thankfully allows me to enter many countries without needing a visa, while having Bosnian citizenship makes it possible for me to live here without applying for a visa. (29-year-old male living in Bosnia) Duals use their two citizenships to both travel abroad and to make living in Bosnia easier, which would be more difficult if they renounced their Bosnian citizenship when applying for another. Dual Bosnians can also stay abroad and work indefinitely, whereas non-dual Bosnians must reapply for visas every three months. After 2010, the EU permitted visa-free travel for Bosnians, which decreased the travelling advantage for dual Bosnians. We noted another phenomenon when two dual Bosnians marry each other: the couple decides a strategy of which citizenships to renounce in order to secure the most social capital. For example, 25-year-old woman with American-Bosnian citizenship described how she and her fiancé (Slovenian-Bosnian citizen) decided to both renounce their Bosnian citizenship so that they could both become dual US-EU and get the benefits of both. Another couple who were settled in Germany decided that only one of them would get German citizenship and the other would keep their Bosnian citizenship because they thought at least one parent should have the same citizenship as all of their children. Theme 2: continued connection with Bosnia Some young duals said that dual citizenship meant being closer to their homeland and gaining a stronger Bosnian identity. One interviewee said: ‘if we lose [our property rights], then we would be foreigners in our own country. This is not just a passport. It is an identity as well’ (30-year-old female living in Bosnia). Another respondent described discrimination and negative experiences with some locals in Sarajevo: ‘Slovenia can offer to those who are willing to work and learn some great opportunities. My parents still live there and I frequently go back to visit. Certain things about my ‘homeland’ are simply irreplaceable’ (19-year-old female living in Bosnia). Other young people talked about dual citizenship and their deep sense of connection with their homeland. One interviewee said: I had always the feeling I was in exile from my native land. I came back to Bosnia only for one reason: that it was what my heart wanted, and not what the society or system obliged me to do in order to follow common criteria. For the first time, I  decided to move to a place not for a job or work, but because I wanted to feel well with myself (23-year-old male living in Bosnia).

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H  49 For this young person, dual citizenship and returning to live in Bosnia were an important part of discovering his history, family, and identity. However, for some of the interviewees, the decision to become dual citizens was made by their parents, who wished their children would remain emotionally attached to Bosnia; a desire than some of those children did not share once they became older. One 23-year-old man living in Bosnia explained that for his parents, dual citizenship was both instrumental and to embed a connection with their ethnic identity but that he personally does not feel that deep connection. One 30-year-old man living in Germany said: For me it is just a piece of paper, it doesn’t have anything to do with my identity. Maybe not for my parents – they grew up in Bosnia. They have a much bigger emotional connection. For me, I am from somewhere in between this. His parents’ decision to apply for dual citizenship for both themselves and their son was both emotional and strategic, but the son does not have the same desire for his citizenship to reflect his family’s heritage. This was a common theme that emerged during interviewees: parents applied for dual citizenship because they wanted a connection to their homeland, while the same desire was not necessarily present for young dual Bosnians, even if they continued to benefit from the strategic advantages of dual citizenship. Similarly, we heard about the phenomenon of young duals returning to Bosnia in order to get married, usually encouraged by their family who wanted their children to maintain connections with Bosnia. This is seen as beneficial to the Bosnian diaspora, who want to maintain close Bosnian families, and beneficial to the local community who lack mobility and economic opportunities. Many informants suggested that it was very common for young dual diaspora to return to Bosnia in hope to meet a prospective partner, but all interviewees expressed cynical opinions about this practice. One interviewee complained: This is one of the biggest viruses to a proper economic revival or sustainable revival. Most young people just go to get married. Most then come back to the UK. I  get disappointed when I  meet people my age who do this. . . . Your family wants you to marry someone who looks like you and thinks like you (35-year-old male living in Bosnia). Interviewees described this dynamic as originating from their parents or family, not necessarily the younger generation of Bosnians. Theme 3: complicated identities Dual citizenship complicates young Bosnians’ understanding of their identity: they feel westernized while in Bosnia, but they feel Bosnian when living abroad. This tension makes negotiating their identities difficult, particularly considering their homeland’s contentious relationship to ethnicity.

50  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić Most interviewees began our interviews by claiming that dual citizenship does not relate to ethnic identity and indeed, superficially it does not necessarily. This is because Bosnians from all ethnicities have dual citizenship. A  second analysis, however, reveals a few key points. First, some interviewees suggested that ‘dual citizenship transcends the ethnically limited focus of identity’ (32-year-old female living in Bosnia) because it allows space for individuals who do not fit neatly within state borders. Focusing on citizenship also allows states to accommodate heterogeneous populations that are not exclusively one ethnic identity. For instance, ethnic identity did not change when a person who was born a Yugoslav citizen in the 1960s, could have become Bosnian citizen after the war in 1990s, but actually became a German citizen. This same hypothetical person would have acquired three citizenships and none of them based on ethnicity. Other interviewees stressed different kinds of connections between dual citizenship and the ethnic identity of young Bosnians: one, for instance, said ‘I don’t think that having dual citizenship . . . diminishes one’s sense of ethnic belonging’ (28-year-old male living in Bosnia), while another interviewee (30-year-old male living in UK) observed the difference between diaspora and local dual citizens that ethnic identity ‘is more of a cultural identity abroad but it is a more political identity in Bosnia.’ Another important factor is that Bosniaks are the only ethnic group in B&H that could not easily get a second passport, unless they were refugees abroad.10 One interviewee said: ‘Bosnian Muslims feel that they haven’t got a second option. We can’t easily travel to other countries. If you are Croat in Bosnia, [at least] you can get a Croatian passport’ (35-year-old female living in Bosnia). Both Serbs and Croats living in Bosnia after the war had the option to claim a second citizenship in Serbia or Croatia, but no other countries offered citizenship to Bosniaks living in Bosnia. Some of our interviewees suggested that they do not think their Serb or Croat friends claim the second passports because of a strong ethnic identity; rather their friends are more interested in the mobility and social capital that comes with an additional passport. For Croats, this became particularly appealing after Croatia entered the EU in 2013. When young dual Bosnians returned to Bosnia, many of their colleagues or friends pushed them to emphasize their ethnic identity. But when they went back to the US or Germany, their colleagues and friends could only understand them as Bosnian-Americans or Bosnian-Germans. This frustrated a few of our interviewees who did not identify with ethnicity while living abroad, but were forced to do so when they returned to Bosnia. Young dual Bosnians often grew up in more tolerant countries that embedded an appreciation for diversity and tolerance of different ethnic communities. These individuals knew from experience abroad that different ethnic groups could coexist together peacefully. One interviewee said: In general, too much attention is paid to how [Bosnians] re-make their new homelands (e.g. Little Bosnia in St. Louis) and not enough on the question of how American and Canadian experiences can and should help people remake B&H (29-year-old male living in Bosnia).

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H  51 These young duals return to Bosnia having lived in more tolerant and diverse countries. Some were also taught a critical perspective in school that enabled these young duals to question their own ethnic identities and their place in their communities. One 32-year-old woman currently living in Bosnia said: ‘Critical and analytical thinking are not part of education in Bosnia as opposed to my education in Sweden, UK, and US.’ When they returned to Bosnia, they also returned with this knowledge and experience of living in other more tolerant societies. Another issue that complicates young duals’ identity is how Bosnian society perceives the privilege associated with dual citizenship as a safety net. For example: ‘I often hear: “It’s easy for you” [lako je tebi] . . . others realize that [American citizenship] is an advantage, one of the best passports in the world’ (25-year-old female living in Bosnia). Another said: ‘I am perceived as more privileged, but I don’t necessarily perceive this myself’ (28-year-old male living in Bosnia). Young duals often felt torn because they knew their dual status gave them some security but they did not want this to undermine their connection or commitment to Bosnia. One young woman argued: ‘I am concentrated on being Bosnian, being local. My US passport is only valid when circumstances become grave and unavoidable’ (25-year-old female living in Bosnia). These young duals did not want their loyalty to Bosnia to be undermined because of their privileges as dual citizens. In contrast, one young Bosnian said, ‘There are also commitment issues among young people with dual citizenship. They think about their return, but also think about leaving the country again as soon as possible’ (28-year-old female living in the United States). This interviewee was describing the way young diaspora duals romanticize the idea of returning to Bosnia but may not be as committed to rebuilding the country because they can leave whenever things get tough. For young people who grew up and have the majority of their friends outside of Bosnia, it is to be expected that young duals may have difficulty adjusting to life in Bosnia. While ethnicity is not the main driving factor with dual citizenship, there are some important interactions between dual citizenship and ethnicity that complicate their identities. Some young duals feel that dual citizenship lets them transcend ethnic identity. Others emphasized that Bosniaks made up the majority of the displaced, who later became qualified to apply for dual citizenship. Young duals also understand that the rest of Bosnian society perceives their dual citizenship as a privileged safety net. The politics of ethnic identity are even more complicated when applied to young dual Bosnians because they struggle to find their places in both host and Bosnian societies. Theme 4: by-products of dual citizenship One by-product of dual citizenship is that young dual Bosnians are able to participate and vote in both their new country and Bosnia. Since the 2001 election law, B&H citizens temporarily or permanently residing abroad must re-register for each set of elections in order to vote from abroad.11 One of the questions driving this research project was whether dual citizenship influenced when and how young Bosnians participated in Bosnian politics. We found evidence for three ways in which dual citizenship impacted political participation. First, dual

52  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić citizenship increases young Bosnians’ connection with Bosnia and increases their participation in Bosnian politics. Second, young dual Bosnians can draw on other political cultures and bring back lessons of how to be more politically active. Third, young duals leverage their social capital from dual citizenship to become involved in the NGO sector in Bosnia. Among the young duals we interviewed, there were mixed feelings toward the impact of dual citizenship on their identity and commitment to Bosnia. As discussed previously, some interviewees used their citizenship strategically and claimed that it did not change their attitudes toward Bosnia. However, other interviewees saw their citizenship and identity as an entry point for politics. For instance, one explained that ‘becoming a citizen of B&H made me feel more personally involved in the political battles going on here, whereas before I felt like an observer. It’s made me more active here, although in civil society only. I wouldn’t ever dream of entering the poisoned sphere of B&H politics’ (29-year-old male living in Bosnia). This young dual’s perspective changed from an ‘observer’ to a participant when he acquired his Bosnian citizenship. The second way that dual citizenship influences political participation is that young duals learn the political culture from their host country and attempt to bring it back to Bosnia. This was reflected in only a few of our interviewees. For example, a 30-year-old Bosnian-American living in Bosnia said: Because of my dual citizenship I can be more critical. I don’t think the Bosnian politicians are representing me. I know that the country can be better because I have lived in a democracy. The US is not a perfect democracy but my rights as a citizen were respected and still are. Her experience living in a different country helped her to contrast the politics and problems of Bosnia and imagine improvements. Another interviewee said: The agenda of B&H politicians with dual citizenship is more reliable than those who are just Bosnian [single citizenship], because they bring experience and new outlook to the local politics. They should not be trusted just because they returned, but they seem more accountable than locals (25-year-old female living in Bosnia). From this person’s perspective, politicians with dual citizenship learned a different way to do politics by living abroad and are more accountable for their actions. The third way dual citizenship impacts political participation is a situation when young dual Bosnians leverage their social capital from their dual citizenship to start or participate in NGO projects or international advocacy. One interviewee described diaspora dual Bosnians who started NGO projects that ‘don’t touch politics. But those projects are just the tip of the iceberg. It is not actually addressing the problem but it is using the money from the diaspora and distorting the picture of what is going on the ground’ (30-year-old female living in Bosnia). These diaspora duals use their social capital to fundraise because they have access to professional networks and Bosnian communities living abroad who are

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H  53 financially stable. Some NGOs work, for example, in non-political spheres on art, craft goods, or science and astronomy education. This can have a positive effect because the donations from diaspora provide much-needed humanitarian resources, like in the spring 2014 when Bosnia experienced the largest floods in the region in decades. Other dual Bosnians use their second passports to be engaged in international advocacy by travelling to lobby foreign governments or by participating in international forums. One interviewee explained: My passport allows me to travel to America whenever I want. It is a really important tool in my toolbox. I don’t go as a tourist. I travel for political reasons because it allows me to campaign and use my influence to change things. (35-year-old male living in Bosnia) His ability to travel allows him to lobby the US government about policies related to Bosnia, to raise awareness with the Bosnian-American community, and speak to groups around the world. Other interviewees spoke about their participation in events with the EU, like consultation meetings of the European Commission on Balkan Integration, in part accessible because of their social capital and networks from their dual citizenship.

Conclusion In this chapter, we found that dual citizenship acts in important strategic ways for young Bosnians: young duals leverage their second citizenship as a safety net for economic, educational, travel, marriage, and political advantage. Young duals can use their second passport to relocate and live indefinitely in another country. Dual citizenship also adds to the social capital of young people because young duals have the social networks and international connections that can be leveraged to their advantage. Duals often have more educational experiences and have acquired foreign language skills. Some duals also use their dual citizenship to travel for work, education, or leisure without visas or for longer than three months. In addition, dual citizenship can be an important factor for marriage because the greater economic and educational opportunities can be attractive for a prospective spouse. Finally, dual citizenship impacts their political participation because, for some, it increases young dual Bosnians’ commitment to or identification with Bosnia, it exposes them to different political cultures, and it gives them greater social capital to leverage through NGOs or international advocacy. These factors amount to a bank of social capital that is embodied in dual citizenship. While young duals are not defined by their ethnicity, dual citizenship complicates the ways some understand their identity and enables some to transcend ethnicity. Young people told us that they felt Bosnian while in the diaspora and felt westernized when in Bosnia. They felt other Bosnians perceived their dual citizenship as a privilege and they did not want their second citizenship to undermine their connection with their homeland. Some young Bosnians felt that their dual citizenship and a critical perspective helped them to transcend their ethnic

54  Nicholas R. Micinski and Jasmin Hasić identity because they grew up in another country that was more tolerant of many ethnic communities. While an additional citizenship does not change their identity, dual citizenship presents a new cleavage among Bosnians, created out of the displacement during the war. Dual citizenship represents a form of social capital, including economic, education, mobility, marriage, and political participation. The roles of displacement, return, and dual citizenship are crucial to understanding young people and their identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Notes 1 Eurostat, Tables ‘migr_acq’, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-datasets/-/ migr_acq. 2 Article 41 of the Law on Citizenship: All persons who were citizens of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina immediately prior to the entry into force of the Constitution, including all persons who were citizens of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina up to 6 April 1992, become the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the citizenship of persons naturalized in the period from 6 April 1992 to January 1, 2006 will determined in accordance with articles 43 and 44 of the Law. See: Law on Citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 16 December 1997. Available at: www.refworld.org/ docid/3ae6b5174.html. 3 Registry of International Treaties, Ministry of Civil Affairs of BiH, www.mcp.gov.ba/ akti/?id=5418. 4 Article 17 of the Law on Citizenship. 5 Article 39 of the Law on Citizenship. 6 For instance, Austrian government requires that new citizens give up their original citizenship as their legislature does not provide for dual citizenship. As a consequence, Bosnians had to choose whether to retain their Bosnian citizenship or accept Austrian citizenship. 7 Court Decisions, 28 September  2012, The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina: http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1101457414082-269/ Citizenship+Law.pdf. 8 See statistical packages of UNHCR Representation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Statistics Package. December  2012. http://unhcr.ba/2013/04/statistics-package-december2012, 2. 9 Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees 2011. ‘Informacija o Povratku Izbjeglica i Raseljenih Osoba u BiH Za Period 1995–2010. Godine (Data on the Return of Refugees and Displaced People in BiH from 1995–2010)’. Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees. www.mhrr.gov.ba/PDF/Izbjeglice/INFORMACIJA%20O%20POVRATKU%20DO%202010.pdf. 10 Some Bosniaks acquired Croatian citizenship from 1995–2001, mostly coming from Krajina, when the citizenship laws of Croatia were very open and with low administrative barriers. 11 Central Election Committee, Frequently Asked Questions and Answers, available at: https://izbori.ba/Default.aspx?CategoryID=472&Lang=3&Tag=131#.

References Central Election Committee. 2016. Frequently Asked Questions and Answers. [Online]. Available at: https://izbori.ba/Default.aspx?CategoryID=472&Lang=3&Tag=131#.

Dual citizenship and youth identity in B&H  55 Court Decisions. 2012. The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 28 September. [Online]. Available at: http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/ file/1101457414082-269/Citizenship+Law.pdf. Davorin Rudolf, D. 2010. Hrvatska i Hrvati u Bosni i Hercegovini (Croatia and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina). Adrias, 17, 221–34. Kasapović, M. 2010a. Hrvati, hrvatski državljani i dijaspora (Croats, Croatian citizens and diaspora). Political Analysis, 1(2), 21–4. Kasapović, M. 2010b. Tko i kako predstavlja ‘dijasporu’? (Who and how represents ‘diaspora’?). Political Analysis, 1(3), 15–19. Kupiszewski, M., Kicinger, A., Kupiszewska, D., and Flinterman, FH. 2009. Labour migration patterns, policies and migration propensity in the Western Balkans. Central European Forum for Migration and Population Research (CEFMR). Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees. 2011. Informacija o povratku izbjeglica i raseljenih osoba u bih za period 1995–2010. Godine (Data on the Return of Refugees and Displaced People in BiH from 1995–2010). [Online]. Available at: www.mhrr.gov. ba/PDF/Izbjeglice/INFORMACIJA%20O%20POVRATKU%20DO%202010.pdf. Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees (MHRR). 2012. Informacija o Stanju Islejenistva Iz BiH (Information on the Migration Situation from BiH). [Online]. Available at: www.mhrr.gov.ba/iseljenistvo/aktuelnosti/Informacija%20o%20iseljenistvu%20iz%20 BiH_dec%202012.pdf. Nenadić, M., Džepar-Ganibegović, N., Lipjankić, M., Borovčanin, D., Spasojević, N., Kovač, D. and Pobrić, A. 2005. Comparative Analysis on Access to Rights of Refugees and Displaced Persons. [Online]. Available at: www.mhrr.gov.ba/PDF/Uporedna AnalizaEngleski.pdf. Nezavisne. 2014. Državljanstva BiH odreklo se 63.557. Nezavisne. [Online]. Available at: www.nezavisne.com/novosti/bih/Drzavljanstva-BiH-odreklo-se-63557-osoba/248908. Obućina, V. 2010. Hrvatski transsuvereni nacionalizam u BIH (Croatian Trans-sovereign and Nationalism in BiH). Political Analysis, 1(4), 21–4. Ratha, D., Mohapatra, S. and Silwal, A. 2011. The Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011. [Online]. Available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPROSPECTS/ Resources/334934-1199807908806/Bosnia&Herzegovina.pdf. Tabeau, E. and Bijak, J. 2005. War-related deaths in the 1992–1995 armed conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A critique of previous estimates and recent results. European Journal of Population, 21(2–3), 187–215. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (USDHS). 2009. 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. [Online]. Available at: www.census.gov/library/publications/2009/compendia/ statab/129ed/population.html. Valenta, M. and Strabac, Z. 2013. The dynamics of Bosnian refugee migrations in the 1990s, current migration trends and future prospects. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32(3), 1–22. Woodward, S. 1995. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

3 Complexity of inner belonging Notions of belonging and alienation among adolescents with a migrant background in Croatia Lana Peternel Introduction Research on ethnicity shows that a sense of ethnic identity develops throughout the life span and includes the emotions of self-esteem, pride, belonging and security. The sense of ethnic identity becomes more complex and demanding in youth when the range of possible identities is wide and various answers to questions about the self are asked (Erikson 1994). Identity formation has an idiosyncratic status as the most important developmental task, especially during adolescence (Erikson 1968). Furthermore, the developmental model of ethnic identity (Phinney 1996, Roberts et al. 1999) shows that the sense of ethnic identity rests on the process of investigating the meaning of belonging as one of the developmental tasks. In this way, ethnic identity becomes an important indicator of different processes of cultural transmission and social transformation, both at the individual and group levels (Schachter 2005). In this chapter, I argue that the structure of the inner ethnic boundary depends on social interaction and experiences based on individual interpretations of diverse indicators of ethnicity. It is especially challenging when young people have to ethnically identify themselves according to prevailing cultural values, norms and strategies in specific social and political circumstances. In the literature, analysis of qualitative data shows that a sense of belonging for young people is a contested site, which echoes diverse ethnic symbols and indicators from a wide social and political agenda (e.g. Wimmer 2013). Their subjective interpretations show how imposed social and political circumstances of, for example, post-conflict aftermath, reflect boundaries and prejudices in complex social interactions. This chapter argues that the sense of belonging or alienation can only be studied if focused on diverse social and cultural changes. The ethnographic data draws upon two fieldwork studies in Croatia in three sites: Zagreb (the capital), Knin and Vukovar. Vukovar and Knin are two cities with a complex and devastating war history during the 1990s, in which the pre-war population (with predominantly Serbian and Croatian ethnic background) was forced to leave their destroyed homes and flee. During the last decades, the three cities in which the research was conducted underwent significant demographic changes.

Complexity of inner belonging  57 My fieldwork starts in Knin, where the predominantly Serbian and Croatian prewar population was exchanged with refugee/displaced populations claiming both Croatian and Bosniak ethnicity (Leutloff Grandits 2006). The ethnically diverse region of Knin had been the area of conflict between Croats and Serbs from 1991 to 1995. Purposely expatriating the Croatians, destroying and/or occupying their houses, the Serbian army occupied the area and declared it to be Serbian territory (Leutloff-Grandits 2006). Four years later, the Croatian army returned the Knin region under the country’s jurisdiction. That turmoil was followed by war casualties, relocation and deportation of the inhabitants of Serbian ethnic background. In 1995, almost all of the Serb population fled the area and became refugees in Serbia and neighbouring countries. First, Croatian law legalized taking possession of Serb houses by the newly immigrated Croats from Bosnian areas suffering from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Leutloff-Grandits 2006, cited by Rubić 2008: 1243). The majority of the host population, mostly Serbs and Croats in Knin, left their homes and had not returned yet.1 Though Zagreb, the capital and the second fieldwork site, did not experience demographic devastation, the war aftermath, political and social transition changed demographic and cultural structure of the city. A considerable number of regional immigrants, refugees and displaced persons with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds settled there in search of new life opportunities, schooling, jobs, housing, etc. My third fieldwork site was Vukovar. In early autumn 1991, when conflict between the Croatian and Serbian armies escalated, the city experienced catastrophic human losses and material damage. In 1991 in Vukovar, thousands of people lost their lives, many were displaced, and billions of kuna of war damage was done to housing units and communal and transport infrastructure, which devastated the future of the city (Živić 2008: 49). The numerous and complex consequences of the war still represent a negative determinant of postwar reconstruction and revitalization of the demographic, cultural, social and economic context of Vukovar (Živić 2008: 49). The echo of destruction is still noticeable in many domains. The topic that I explore is how the young perceived these dramatic demographic, social, political and cultural changes, and how they are related to the ethnic boundaries between them. In the theory focused on ethnicity, regardless of the interdependence between different cultural elements, human relationships (i.e. the construction of borders) had the most important role in defining ethnicity for a long time. Symbolic and cognitive aspects of borders can be conceptualized in various ways, but Barth (2000) specifies three key levels of meaning and defining: 1) literal meaning, borders divide space i.e. territory; 2) abstract meaning, borders are obstacles or limitations between social groups and different people; and 3) borders of human consciousness that are similar to forms of dividing and separating specific ethnic categories. (ibid: 17)

58  Lana Peternel Barth (1969) argues that it is important not to identify the concept of boundaries with the concept of ethnic categories or the feelings of belonging. The structuring of boundaries often includes different cultural meanings, and oversimplification and linear understanding of these cultural concepts should be avoided. In other words, ethnicity is a basic concept for non-bureaucratic defining of borders between social groups (Barth 2000: 30), and the experiences of cultural differences between groups are different schematic models, so-called cognitive models, which should be represented as dynamic with respect to the expansion of existing cultural variations. Wimmer’s paradigm (2013) is based on carefully designated categories of already known intergroup relations and boundaries, and it emphasizes the importance of already mentioned indicators and categories such as self-identification through time and space. Wimmer (2013) discusses known insights about ethnicity and boundaries through all-encompassing comparative analysis of ethnicities and border construction that includes theoretical discourse and comparative analysis of group relationships on a synchronic and diachronic level. This approach to boundaries is more complex because it is based on describing the process of their formation between the communities, while at the same time taking into consideration the complexity of social, political and cultural factors (Wimmer 2008a: 1044–5). Thus, this approach is appropriate for understanding Croatian youth ethnic identity construction because it is focused on context and/or transformation of ethnic identity symbols through different time periods that have a central place in the research.

Context, presumptions and aims Regarding demographic status in Croatia, Croatians are the host population and the ethnic majority. Traditional minorities are historical ethnic groups (e.g. Italians, Hungarians and Germans), while former Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) nationalities are perceived as ‘new’ minorities, a status referring primarily to Serbs, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Montenegrins and Macedonians. The ‘new’ minorities, as well as people with migration history from neighbouring countries, dominantly Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, could have different statuses depending on the circumstances that provoked diverse institutional interpretations of legal norms. Bosniaks (ex-Muslims in the former Yugoslavia), for example, have at least four different statuses in Croatia: i) autochthonous national minority; ii) non-permanent immigrants; iii) permanently inhabited foreigners (previous forced immigrants who immigrated during and after the war in the 1990s); and, from the other side, depending on working permits, iv) temporary foreign workers (Čičak-Chand 1999: 455, Škiljan 2011). However, a different legal and social status applies to the immigrant population that belongs to the younger generations. They often identify themselves as the ‘host’ or majority population – i.e. Croats by ethnic origin and Roman Catholics by religion – which makes their inclusion into society easier. Furthermore, due to specific life stories, they claim close connections to the Croatian mainland by

Complexity of inner belonging  59 mutual cultural and social ties, especially if they migrated from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Official and legal recognition is mostly inclusive and public perception varies from segregation to assimilation practices, while the subjective orientations of the host population vary from being positive towards and accepting the people as the ‘host’ population’ to being negative towards and rejecting them as ‘others’ (e.g. Winland 1995, 1998, 2000, 2007, Hayden 1996, Grbić 1997, Čapo Žmegač 1999). Serbs are the most numerous minority in Croatia. Their social position and identity is described by Škiljan in his article ‘Identity of Serbs in Croatia’ (2013), in which he concludes, based on the analysis of historical facts and ethnographic interviewing: By following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Serb identity in Croatia has been through an ambivalent process. On one hand, there is a process of retraditionalisation and ‘reviving of identity’, which had been neglected in the times of Yugoslavia. On the other hand, due to the war of the 1990s, the Serb ethnic community in Croatia has been significantly reduced, and there are new fears – especially of the trend of assimilation. Many Serbs have left Croatia and will not return. Thus, it is possible that the Serb community is facing disappearance. (Škiljan 2013: 134) In the context when the population is demographically and culturally multiethnical, where migration for various reasons is an integral part of life experience for many generations, the strategy to identify someone only according to their demographic, social or cultural markers is misleading. The fact is that the majority of the Croatian population throughout history has migrant or minority experience due to numerous factors, mostly connected with a war aftermath. This study focuses on young individuals between 16 and 20 years old, with diverse kinds of migration experience and ethnic self-identification strategies. This social position of youth with any of these characteristics, i.e. minority or immigrant background, is especially challenging today. They are exposed to a continuous process of acculturation, and the final outcomes are diverse forms of identities. Therefore, I aim to describe the structure of the ethnic identity of adolescents with a migratory background living in Croatia. Different approaches to ethnic belongingness will be illustrated by comparing one to the other, showing that common categories of ‘Host’ and ‘Other’ rest on the same elements and symbols of locality, religiosity, descent and heritage. Furthermore, the specific goal is to show how these broadly used ethnic symbols transform and disassemble into fragments, thus gaining a new role in the construction of ‘group’ or category membership (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). From my perspective, individuals use fragments or parts of common ethnic symbols for description and interpretation of the group/category/class boundary structure in specific social circumstances (e.g. Eriksen 2007, 2010, 2013, Lamont and Molnar 2002). I  demonstrate that youth, in the process of self-identification and collective identity construction,

60  Lana Peternel and in the construction of boundaries, refer to broadly accepted cultural or social tradition and historical resources, but also to recent personal experience.

Methodology The first phase of the ethnographic study was carried out from 2002 to 2005 as a part of a European Community project (EC INCO-Copernicus Programme ICA2CT-2002–10006)2 at the Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb, Croatia, as a part of my PhD thesis, and summed up 18 months of fieldwork in a larger sample in Croatia (Peternel 2009). The second phase is a continuation of the earlier study and it took place from 2011 to 2013 in the capital city of Zagreb and the cities of Knin and Vukovar, and includes three months of fieldwork. In both phases of fieldwork, the methodology included two stages of data collection: participant observation and semi-structured interviews with students. The interlocutors for the second stage of the fieldwork were snowball-sampled during participant observation. Diverse ethnic self-identification categories (Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian) were selected with applied quota sampling. Informed consent forms were signed by study participants and their parents. The interview topics included family history, personal migration experience, ethnic belonging issues and acculturation experience. Conversations were taped and selectively transcribed. I focus on 16 interviews (ten in the first phase and six in the second fieldwork phase) with adolescents of both genders (nine girls and 11 boys). I selected seven interviews from Knin, four from Vukovar and nine from Zagreb. I  also included quotations from the seven representatives of the elder generation, mostly the parents of my interlocutors whom I interview in their homes. The interlocutors were mostly socially integrated and well-informed representative male and female students. During the first phase, the protocol for choosing students for the interviews was the same in all schools. All interlocutors were students between 16 and 20 years old, and both genders were equally represented. In accordance with social categories or socio-economic status, the interlocutors were typical representatives of the teenage culture; they participated in high school activities and were active in their communities. The names of interlocutors are replaced with pseudonyms. Below I present selected data from the semi-structured interviews relying on content analysis. The analysis includes codes resulting from the examination of anthropological markers of identity such as religion, place of birth and language, as well as experiences of trauma and notions of home and unity. Content analysis is a suitable form for analysing ethnicity, as a fluid phenomenon, as well as ethnic belonging from an impressionistic, intuitive, interpretative approach. In each fieldwork site, the interviews were conducted in accordance with the protocols, which had special questions for the members of the majority, or locals, and the members of the minority, or ethnic ‘Others.’ The protocols had common questions about sociodemographic data, adjusted stress-confrontation and acculturation, as well as questions relating to cognitive and emotional aspects and

Complexity of inner belonging  61 contents, predictors and structures of ethnic identity. Examples included: ‘What is your nationality?’; ‘To what extent do you feel like a minority (or majority)?’; ‘Who are the locals and who are the immigrants in your city/place?’; and so forth. The differences in the protocols were obvious in the quantity of specific subquestions about ethnic discrimination, violence, ethnic boundaries and social distances. For example, the questions about ethnic violence and discrimination were intended only for members of the minority or immigrants. I prepared myself for the interviews by gathering information about the life histories, social status and ethnic origin of my interlocutors, and I decided beforehand on the type of protocol (minority, majority) for the interview. The conversations would always begin in a relaxed manner, and we would talk about general demographic or socio-economic topics. However, when I asked questions about ethnic issues, existing categories and assumptions that were clear indicators of ethnic categories (whether majority or minority, immigrant or host) the categories would begin to overlap and confusion arose. Individual perception and definition of personal ethnic status of youth interlocutors were more complex and unpredictable than among older generations included in the conversations during my fieldwork.3 In the continuation of the earlier study, i.e. in the second phase, I came back to the same places and to the same schools where the previous research was conducted, and I looked for interlocutors who were all of the same age. In this chapter, I will attempt to present an analysis that is both reflexive and substantial. Identity indicators are structured through negotiation and questioning about different phenomena and dimensions of emotional experience, simultaneously using core cultural symbols and different perceptions of the youth. In that respect, I build on Wimmer’s theory of multiple-choice selection based on various elements (Wimmer 2008b). Instead of defining our identities as key elements or predictors of boundaries, it is necessary to explore small fragments of different symbols involved in their construction in order to better understand the structure of ethnic boundaries.

Findings: symbols of boundary crossing In the following paragraphs, I describe different and even opposite meanings of fundamental and traditional cultural core concepts such as a home and a place of birth. By presenting quotations from the interviews, I show subjective voices and interpretations of the young generations with migratory experience. Every fragment that I describe differently presents common cultural knowledge and discourse. Fragment 1: home Although the war in the 1990s was the main push factor of migration in the Balkans (Franz 2003), forced migrants belonging to the Croatian ethnic corpus from Bosnia and Herzegovina frequently interpreted their arrival in terms of ‘the

62  Lana Peternel historical return to national roots.’ During my first fieldwork between 2002 and 2005, people from Bosnia and Herzegovina used to emphasize that ‘they had actually returned home.’ Most often, however, ‘the return’ to the mother country concealed the exile or forced displacement. Summarizing the experience of his family, Ante, an adolescent from Bosnia and Herzegovina, claimed: Due to the war, in 1994, we came to Croatia; our whole family. Why to Croatia? Because we are Croats. Croatia is our mother country. Here we are at home, with our own kind; one’s own people in one’s own country. (Ante, 17, Zagreb) The perceived ‘return’ to the ancestors’ homeland was one of the indicators of their acculturation assimilation strategy oriented toward Croatian belongingness and self-perception as the ‘hosts’. Moreover, the interpretation of the exile as ‘the return to the roots’ became the fundamental indicator of their Croatian identification in the new environment as Croats. My interlocutor Ana claimed: We left because of the war, and after the exile we were forced to return – Croats to Croatia. Here we obtained all the necessary papers: certificates of Croatian citizenship, passports, etc. (Ana, 18, Zagreb) However, the process of integration into the new/historical homeland was not perceived in the same form by other population categories. The following quotations reflect negative orientations toward migrants with Croatian background from Bosnia and Herzegovina: ‘They [author’s comment: members of the host population] told me that we are not really Croats; we are different; we do not integrate’ (Ante, 17, Zagreb) or ‘I’ve been told that I behave as I am a “God,” as if I had been here from time immemorial!’ (Marko, 18, Zagreb). During my second fieldwork in 2012, the perception of Home as a place ‘shaped by feelings of emotional distress that become central to the production of identity’ (Kokanović and Božić Vrbančić 2015: 130) was constructed as a multidimensional and complex phenomenon encompassing notions of protection, bounding, belonging and abandoning. The perception of home mirrors fragmented symbols in relations to the place of current living along with the place of origin. As Gordana (18), the young girl who immigrated to Knin after she was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, described to me: You know . . . me for example . . . I am from here, from Knin, but I am not in the same time. We got an apartment here, also we have a house there [author’s comment: in Bosnia and Herzegovina] . . . I am also at home there. Although the house is still destroyed due to the war and it is impossible to live, sleep or cook . . . we have cattle there. You know . . . We used to go there almost every weekend. It is really cosy. I like to go there with my brothers and my daddy. It is impossible to have cattle here in Knin. I am from Knin, I live here and

Complexity of inner belonging  63 I am not from here in a way. No one is from here. Well, no one has his or her own apartment here. I am from Bosnia as well. Actually when I think about that, I am from Bosnia first, and then from Croatia. (Gordana, 18, Knin) Unlike the younger generation, the older generation pursued social integration and emphasized that they have to assimilate and adopt. During both fieldwork phases, parents of my interlocutors usually made comments when they heard that we aimed to talk about their ethnic belongingness. During our informal conversation they usually claimed: ‘Well, we are Croats here . . . we found our new home’ or ‘We are here at home, on our own, although we are from Bosnia.’ They rarely openly problematized their legal status in the new environment. From the other side, during the fieldwork in 2003, the girl Vlatka from Knin clearly illuminated irregular and illegal practices and consequences of the war aftermath and emphasized the housing problems in the 1990s that included exchange, destroying, expulsion and abandonment of both people of Croatian or Serbian background: ‘You know, no one lives in his or her own place here in Knin’ (Vlatka, 19, Knin). Alternatively, during my second fieldwork phase, I  noticed that members of the younger generation with migratory background never describe themselves as ‘foreigners’; moreover, they frequently claim a double identity: Today I feel more natural here in Zagreb, than in Bosnia. Well, when I travel to Bosnia, I miss Zagreb. Yeah, I go to Bosnia very often, I am at home there as well. You know, I’ve grown up in Brčko. (Kristina, 18, Zagreb) At the same time, in 2013, the interlocutor, a member of the older generation in Knin, made the comment: Sometimes it was natural that your home is where you were born and where you live. Today, after the war, the host population is settled after 1995, and “indigenous people” with diverse ethnical backgrounds are out of the focus and their status is rarely problematized explicitly. (Parent 1, ~50, Knin) Such multidimensional interpretations of the ‘historical belonging to one place’ blur the picture of ‘national unity’ usually proclaimed in vivid political discourse during past decades. The young participants of this study perceived and experienced ‘home’ by emotions. Emotional connection to the concept of ‘home’ reflects social reality and constant possibility of change. Fragment 2: place of birth In research, the concept of ‘home’ is frequently defined by a demographic category, such as a place of birth. The content of ethnic identity is typically presented

64  Lana Peternel to interviewees in order of importance as follows: origin, religion, language, citizenship, place of birth and duration of stay in Croatia (Sujoldžić et  al. 2005). There are, however, differences in the hierarchy of values among the interviewees, depending on the city or the place that was studied (Povrzanović 1995). In 2004, for migrants in Knin, place of birth is eliminated from the group of important indicators for one’s identity (Sujoldžić et al. 2006). As a young student, Samir (16), during my first fieldwork in Knin, said: I was born in BH [author’s comment: Bosnia and Herzegovina], but I have lived here [author’s comment: in Knin] all my life. I do not know what Bosnia looks like at all. In my heart I am a Croat, but I am Bosnian by birth. Anyway, place of birth is not important. I could have been born anywhere. . . . I would still claim Croatian nationality. (Samir, 16, Knin) However, according to other interviews, the place of birth often became the key element for ethnic labelling in social contact between individuals who did not know each other, i.e. in a case of identifying someone else’s nationality. For example, a young boy Alen (16) interviewed in 2003 described his experience after he joined a school in Zagreb in 1990s: It was my first day at the new school. The teacher did a roll-call and when she called out my name she read that I was born in Serbia. For some pupils it meant that I was a Serb. After school I was physically attacked by several of them. My mother then went to the school and this was solved somehow. I am a Croat, a Catholic, on both maternal and paternal sides, yet for them I was just a Serb. (Alen, 16, Zagreb) The adolescents with migratory background identify themselves according to common cultural elements, although these examples show contradictory and inconsistent interpretations and practices depending on circumstances. The example above shows that some young migrants in Knin consider place of birth to be the least significant indicator of ethnicity, while for others place of birth was a significant marker in determining someone else’s ethnic identity, and was an indicator for discrimination and trauma. Additionally, it seems that even among the so-called host population, there is more than one interpretation of ‘us as hosts’ based on experienced immigrant trauma. In 2012, when I went to Knin for the second time, I met Stevan (19), who had just finished school and was unemployed. He said: The hosts are Croats from Bosnia. . . ; they get jobs before us from Croatia do. Through the prism of work relations and priority in getting a job I feel discriminated by the immigrants from Bosnia. They are the hosts now.

Complexity of inner belonging  65 According to this interpretation, the migrant-host or Croatian-‘Other’ relationships in Knin were converted into new and old citizens. The trauma and the inevitable relation to social capital, through getting a job, for example, structured new social classes between people. Conversely, during the fieldwork in 2004 in Zagreb suburbia, the parent of my interlocutor Sanela (18), a member of the autochthonous Islamic community in Zagreb in her early forties, experienced discrimination, primarily in the domains of job seeking. She discussed experiences of segregation, marginalization and isolation when she tried to find a job according to her educational level and working experience. Perceived exclusion from the labour market influenced her perception of a long-lasting feeling of alienation. She said: I was born as the Zagrebčanka [author’s comment: female native in the city of Zagreb]. My whole life I live here with my whole family. Yet, all of the doors were closed to me because I am Muslim. Currently I am unemployed as a graduate psychologist with no opportunity to find a job. I am so disappointed in the whole political hierarchy that discriminates against me. (Parent 2, ~40, Zagreb) Different experiences illuminate different concepts of the construction of belongingness and different connections with the symbols of belongingness. Another example is a parent of Bojan (18), a refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina who settled in Zagreb. When I visited the family at their home in Zagreb, where they had lived for two and a half decades, he claimed his strong belongingness to the Bosnian culture was a phenomenon without territorial roots: It is not a life here in Zagreb without ćevapi and sevdalinka [author’s comment: Bosnian cuisine and folk music, key symbols of Bosnian traditional culture] which I had in Bosnia . . . a life without my neighbourhood and my language at the place of my birth. Food, music and language became the essential categories of our Bosnian culture here in Croatia . . . like my parallel life. I am only physically absent from Bosnia. (Parent 3, ~50, Zagreb) Unlike the concept of a home being built through experience of belonging, place of birth is the demographic fact important in the construction of a sense of belonging. Younger generations are exposed to different kinds of changes, struggling with imposed prejudices and stereotypes. But, also, they are in a position to be open and to create new identification strategies regardless of demographic facts. Despite the demographic facts, the lack of inclusion strategies and the lack of recognition in the everyday context affects the perception of internal displacement among them. For elderly with minority or migratory backgrounds, according to these quotations, a place of birth is transposed into the remote, distinct or very different and unknown. The lack of cultural recognition resituated them

66  Lana Peternel in the position of being foreigners or in the position to create a parallel cultural community. Fragment 3: religion Religion was found to be an undeniable identity construction element (Ecklund 2005). Almost 87 per cent of the Croatian population claims Catholic religious affiliation (Croatian Bureau of Statistic 2011). In the construction of category boundaries (especially between Roman Catholics, Orthodox believers and Muslims), one expects to find monolithic group boundaries (Safran 2008). Despite this broadly accepted view, one of the adolescent interviewees, Tarik (18), who was born in Croatia, claims Islamic denomination along with a Croatian ethnic identity. I spoke with him in 2013 during the second fieldwork phase in a Zagreb Mosque, and he explained to me: According to my ethnic identity I feel like a Croat of Islamic denomination. I am a Croat, but my faith is Islam, and I am proud of that as well. I could be both, Croat and Muslim, at the same time. (Tarik, 18, Zagreb) As opposed to this quotation, which implies blurry boundaries based on religion and nationality, people in post-socialist societies rarely see religion as a national predictor. Based on the ethnographic case study in Zagreb, the boundaries between ‘us, Catholics’ and ‘them, non-Catholics’ among the young population born with multicultural backgrounds were not determinant. Sanela (18) is a student at the Zagreb Madrasah (a private Islamic secondary school). She wears hijab at school, but at the same time identifies with her peers who do not attend the same Islamic religious school. She is fully integrated into the majority community in her neighbourhood. Her clothes, lifestyle and habits do not significantly differ from those of other young people of the same age in the city. ‘In spite of the fact that my whole family and I were born here, I am a Muslim but a Croat as well,’ she said when asked to describe her belongingness in 2003. Thus, there are examples of mosaic identification from both sides of the boundary based on religion. Moreover, religiosity becomes a symbol of belongingness among young people and their interpretation of cultural change in comparison to older generations. During the fieldwork in 2012, I met Mirza (19), a member of the Islamic community born in Zagreb as a host fully integrated among peers in his school environment. His self-perception as a Muslim and Bosnian and as a member of Croatian society by his birth in Zagreb mirrored his integrational strategies in the diverse cultural domains of everyday life. His integrational and assimilation orientations occasionally trigger misinterpretations among the older family members, he said: There are difficulties, yes . . . with parents. Sometimes it is hard to explain to them some things. They are afraid and they do not understand that my

Complexity of inner belonging  67 religiosity is not under question. Sometimes I feel that they do not believe me. I think they are afraid I will not follow our cultural tradition. (Mirza, 19, Zagreb) In this study, religion is a stable indicator of identity, although being transformational in less formal ways of manifestation and declaration. Fragment 4: language The fourth important ethnic indicator, language, has the same blurry role in the identification process as religion and place of birth (Noels, Pon and Clement 1996, Bucholtz and Hall 2004, Fought 2006). Unlike religious differences, those between Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian languages are not significant at the manifest level, although they are three separate South-Slavic languages (Greenberg 2004). Indeed, until recently, Bosnian was not a standardized language, and people in Bosnia spoke one of the then-officially recognized languages: Croatian, Serbian or Serbo-Croatian. However, participants in this study in both fieldwork periods, when they spoke about their mother tongue, claimed Bosnian, Serbian or Croatian: ‘I speak Bosnian, and I cannot see the differences between the Bosnian and the Croatian language. My greatest difficulties were connected with local dialects’ (Vlatka, 19, Knin) or ‘I am a Croat, because I speak Croatian from my very birth. It just happened to me’ (Josip, 17, Vukovar). In fact, members of the language-based majority or minority ‘group’ found differences not only at the declarative level (Bosnian, Serbian or Croatian language), but at the communication level as well. Marko (18) from Zagreb in 2014 explained to me that his mother tongue was Bosnian as he said: ‘My mother tongue is Bosnian, at the beginning the hosts corrected my pronunciation. Even now I say ‘mleko’ instead of ‘mlijeko’ [Eng. milk]. After a while, one gives up. I speak Croatian instead of Bosnian.’ Young people often claimed language problems as one of the most important elements in the construction of boundaries. Even though they were aware, as in Marko’s quotation, that differences between the languages are totally insignificant for mutual understanding. Marko said ‘mleko,’ and he explained that was Bosnian language, but according to linguistic criteria it could be Serbian or Croatian as well (Greenberg 2004). This makes the role of language in the construction of boundaries relevant and inevitable, even though the people understand each other successfully and communicate without linguistic barriers and obstacles. In previous studies, language self-identification, language proficiency and use of Bosnian, Serbian or Croatian languages were found to be a strong predictor of identity, as well as cultural change among the immigrant or minority population in Croatia (Sujoldžić et  al. 2005). From the linguistic perspective, differences among the languages are not significant at the same level as the differences among perception in ethnic cultures. Commenting on Predrag Matvejević’s4 remark in an interview, a parent in Vukovar said: ‘You know what Predrag Matvejević said? He said that in this part of the world, a child is born and he or she immediately speaks

68  Lana Peternel three languages’ (Parent 4, ~50, Vukovar). Despite these ambiguous language differences, my interlocutor, a daughter of Parent 4, Ivona (17), during the second fieldwork study claimed that the way of speaking is a strong indicator of origin and identity. Yet, acquiring the local language and accent is a challenging process. Ivona explained to me how she struggled with her ‘wrong accent’: Although I speak Croatian, and I am a Croat, the most demanding task was acquiring the local speech or dialect. They [author’s comment: the host population in her community] frequently laughed at me because of my pronunciation. (Ivona, 17, Zagreb) To my question of how she managed to change her ‘wrong language,’ she explained that she was not doing ‘anything special,’ it just ‘happened’ to her. Fragment 5: trauma During a conversation in 2014 with Domagoj (17), a student from Vukovar born in Zagreb, about criteria of ethnic belongingness, he emphasized the connection between ethnicity and religion: ‘I am a Croatian because I am Catholic, and consequently they are Serbs because they are Orthodox.’ On the other hand, he was aware that in a different community or context different interpretations of ethnic belongingness may arise. He emphasized the complexity of the construction of ethnic identity by denying any ethnic predictor: The most significant criteria for my ethnic identification is my experience and my feelings of belonging. It is not my geographical belonging, nor my Vukovar origin, parents, religion, language, nothing. It is only my experience and emotions. That is what I find significant, I am Vukovarac [author’s comment: a person who was born and live in Vukovar, but who experienced trauma of the war as well]. (Domagoj, 17, Vukovar) Among the older generation, experiences of belongingness are contested through the trauma of displacement and refugee experience. My interlocutor, the parent of Alen (16) in Zagreb, during my first fieldwork phase in 2004 said: Look, everybody knows why we Sremci are here. We exchanged our own house in Vojvodina with a Serb from Zagreb suburbia. We were expelled by the members of Radical Party. When we confirmed the house exchange, we passed through Bosnia to Zagreb. We were in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Bosnia, and I saw a little cottage house in a field. My children were sleeping and I said to myself ‘Dear God, please give me a cottage like this, please, to be our own . . . our home.’ (Parent 5, ~45, Zagreb)

Complexity of inner belonging  69 This traumatic experience was usually just the beginning of a series of traumatic experiences that influenced the interlocutors’ subjective perception of belongingness or alienation on different levels. Experiences such as enduring struggles for a job, reconstruction of the exchanged or destroyed house or apartment, integration into a new social and cultural environment, all enhanced their insecure and invisible position in searching for a feeling of belongingness. In both cases, Domagoj and Alens’ parents spoke about their trauma as the strongest factor of their identity, Domagoj as Vukovarac and Alens’ parent as Sremac. One of my local interlocutors working in a public school in Knin explained how he referred to the newcomers: ‘They are bre5-Croats’ (middle-age person around 58, Knin). During the interview in school with Katarina (18) in Knin, she confirmed to me that she been called a bre-Croat and she said: ‘Yes it is a trauma for me, I cannot understand what it means to be “wrong” or “bre” Croat.’ Previous research has indicated that violence in wars can be a means to structure and make salient national group boundaries and create a social order very different from that which had existed prior to the conflict (Jones and Kafetsios 2005). The use of violence creates impermeable divisions between groups’ members, and it is a strong catalyst for group formation (Leutloff Grandits 2006). Social status, such as a former refugee or a displaced person, among both immigrants and hosts influences strategies of self-perception and identification. This was described in 2003 by Jasna (18) in Zagreb who, as a young adolescent, avoided identifying herself with any ethnic label in our interviews. In fact, she always spoke of herself as a refugee or as a victim of ethnic conflict. I was alone, away from my environment, from my happy childhood [. . .]; there was no one with whom I could share my fear [. . .]; . . . It is difficult for me to talk about how I was accepted in Zagreb as a refugee from Sarajevo since I was in a state of shock, traumatized by the war in Bosnia. I was preoccupied with myself and with the terrible news from Sarajevo, so I was unable to objectively perceive Zagreb and its inhabitants. (Jasna, 18, Zagreb) Her long-lasting status of a young person without a home has become her identification marker. This issue is revealed in one basic question in the semi-structured interview, formulated as follows: ‘Can you please describe the relationship between you and the immigrants?’ The answers reflect the complex structure of relationships and perceptions, in which the social boundaries between the ‘groups’ do not reflect national or ethnic belonging as a predictor. Moreover, individual trauma (displacement or refugee status) has prevailed over ethnicity as the main identification predictor in the construction of social boundaries. Families’ stories were full of trauma caused by refugee and immigrant experiences, of longing for their home, frequently a few kilometres from the building which they were ‘offered’ to live in (Leutloff Grandits 2006). They never identified with the host or majority population except in the context of being traumatized as people who originate from a particular place.

70  Lana Peternel The other aspect of the continuous experience of traumatic alienation, as it is explained by a student Hrvoje (17) from the Vukovar high school in 2011: Everything could be different for us here in Vukovar . . . there is the possibility of going to nursery school together in the same class group. Such a situation is so complicated now. It is a catastrophe. We Croats are in the same school at the same time along with Serbian students with no official interaction among us. We are schoolmates and we have similar interests, we like football and music, and we are segregated from each other in separate classes under the same school roof. It is not a pleasant situation; it is trauma for everyone. According to the education policy regarding the opportunity to study in the languages of national minorities, which is promoted by the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the European Union, schooling programs in Croatia enable schooling in Serbian as the minority language.6 The intention of the system is integration with focus on the preservation of multicultural and multi-ethnic society, but unfortunately, the result could be the opposite – a parallel society. Students have to choose the schooling program according to their ethnic orientation. Different schooling programs are conducted in the same school building at the same time. There is Model A for the Croats, i.e. the schooling program for the majority, and Model C, the schooling program for the minority, in this case for the Serbian minority in Vukovar. As my interlocutor, the professor of psychology who worked with students throughout the whole of Croatia for decades, claimed: ‘It is so sad. There was no single class in any of Vukovar’s schools with students who chose Model B that includes schooling in both Croatian and Serbian language’ (Daria, 44, Zagreb). According to the interviews that I conducted among young people, trauma as an experience per se emerged as a cohesion factor in the construction of their social identity. It is frequently described as ‘We who experienced war or immigration or segregation in schools,’ ‘We who experienced trauma.’ A trauma became an indicator of social interactions among different classes. The experience of living in a tense war aftermath is not only a psychological or social task per se; it is a condition that promotes questioning of concepts of belonging, of home or place of birth, questioning of one’s own religiosity or language.

Conclusion The goal of this chapter was to describe the structure of the identity and the inner boundaries between the youth based on the analysis of ethnic identification symbols in Croatia. The nature of the group boundaries depends on the way in which they have been institutionalized in different domains, some of them correlated with an ethnic distinction but not constitutive of the distinction itself (Vermeulen and Govers 1994, Alba 2005). To illustrate this argument, I  compared different concepts concerning adolescent notions of belonging in multiple settings,

Complexity of inner belonging 71 applying content analysis. Due to the multidimensionality of elements, it was hard to predict on which ‘side’ of the boundary an individual would place herself/himself. The boundaries change their structures from fixed/bright to fluid/blurry in different interpretations from both ‘sides’ of the boundary. Even in such an ethnically homogeneous society (almost 90.5 per cent of the Croatian population claim Croatian ethnicity),7 the process of the construction of group boundaries between people from outside and inside lacks consistency. The elements of national and ethnic identities reverse the picture of a homogeneous national society and show heterogeneity at practical, interactive and manifest levels (Mewett 1999). Moreover, I found that the fragments of the identity symbols are much more important than the symbols themselves. In fact, the fragments represented the boundaries’ changing nature as they are internalized through subjective interpretation. In a theoretical sense, boundaries are a standard metaphor for interethnic relationships. As a result of modern migration, they have become an increasingly interesting analytical, rather than just a symbolic or a mental, concept (Lamont et al. 1996). This research encompasses a large quantity of information and data relating to the problems of identity, and its goal is to describe ethnic boundaries in terms of contemporary theories. This becomes especially challenging in the research of young people and their interpretations of ethnic belonging. The construction of youth identity illuminates current cultural practices that have the potential to change future social and cultural core structures. In my opinion, Wimmer’s approach (2013) has in an original way avoided fixed formulas and has described often unpredictable multi-layered changes and processes through complex constructions. The multidimensionality of each constituent of ethnic structure, recognition process and identification has indeed remained unexplored and warrants further research (Peternel and Škiljan 2016). The examples of identification I discussed above emphasize the dynamic of transformation of ethnic categories as well as the blurring of boundaries. Therefore, I believe that fixed predictors in research often confirm existing ethnic models and theories, either by using dependent or independent variables or by deconstructing them. However, without in-depth analysis of the context, it is not possible to understand the real dynamic of the construction of the future social group boundaries. Cultural concepts of home, language, religion or place of birth, as well as the experience of trauma, show how ethnic boundaries among youth with migratory experience in Croatia are dynamic and unstable. Youth with migratory experience differently perceive and construct their belonging by creating unique ideas of ‘host’ and ‘other’. The host is not necessarily the majority, and the other is not always the minority or immigrant. The categories are mutually connected and dependent. The voices of the youth in this study illuminate the importance of the change of public discourse. Public discourse needs to adopt a different view of and deconstruct the firm structure of host or immigrant categories, as well as Serbian, Croat or Bosniak ethnic perspectives as a minority or majority. Moreover, it is necessary to clearly emphasize that multi-ethnic and multicultural strategies promote cultural heritage and do not indicate its decline among young generations.

72  Lana Peternel

Notes 1 The war-related conflicts in the region of Knin and in other parts of Croatia were closely connected to the progress of war and related conflicts in the other republics of the former SFRY, primarily Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also Serbia and Kosovo during the last decade of the twentieth century (Leutloff Grandits 2006). 2 The scientific project coordinator was Dr Anita Sujoldžić. 3 Whenever it was possible and appropriate, I tried to include different perspectives into my fieldwork agenda and modified my research protocols towards an older generation. Although the facts were the same in many cases, different perspectives on and descriptions of specific circumstances vary among people that participated in the interviews. 4 Predrag Matvejević (7 October 1932–2 February 2017) wrote Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape (1987), a cultural history of the Mediterranean region, which has since been translated into more than 20 languages. 5 Bre is a typical and common buzzword in Serbian language. ‘Bre’ is always connected to the citizens of Serbia, or to a person who belong with Serbian nationality. The meaning of the word ‘bre’ is ‘hey you!’, ‘you there!’, ‘well!’, ‘just’ (Joseph 1997). 6 ‘Members of national minorities are guaranteed the right to education in their language and script as defined by the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, constitutional law on the rights of national minorities and the law on education in the language and script of national minorities’ (http://public.mzos.hr/Default.aspx?sec=3194). 7 Croatian Bureau of Statistics (www.dzs.hr/default_e.htm)

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4 Constructing and destructing the ethnic Discourses of ethnicity among Hungarian youth in Vojvodina Krisztina Rácz Introduction This chapter discusses a case study of the discourses of young people from a predominantly Hungarian village in Vojvodina, Serbia. The focus of the chapter is on how they relate to interethnic communication, how they as members of an ethnic minority see their present and future, their community, and members of the majority ethnic group. The method of gathering data is interviews; the analytical lens is Critical Discourse Analysis. The results of the research point out the crucial role of the state language (Serbian) for the personal and public identity of the members of the community, as well as the ways in which dominant discourses of ethnic separation can be transformed into more integrative ones. The chapter explores negotiation between young and older members of the community, life in the village and elsewhere, Serbia and Hungary, and those from the community and members of other ethnic groups. Major debates on ethnic identification The primordialism vs. constructivism debate on ethnic identity construction has led to an agreement about the modes by which ethnic identities are conceptualized. Ethnic identity is understood as situational, and the main sites of identitybuilding are the family, school, the media, and various forms of governmentality (Burchell, Gordon and Miller 1991). Ethnicity is built through interactions among the members of the group as well as the members of other communities. Identity, thus, means identifying with the in-group members and also differentiating oneself from the out-group (Bakhtin 1981, Taylor 1992, Wodak et al. 2009). Identity formation is determined by how one sees the other: ‘my own identity crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others’ (Taylor 1992: 34, cf. Feischmidt 1997, Lindstrom 2003, Petrunic 2005). However, when speaking about ethnic membership, as Brubaker (2004) argues, it is important to distinguish between analytical and practical ethnic experience. Barth’s theory of ethnic boundaries (1969) has been criticized for focusing exclusively on ethnic borders and ignoring the cultural content that, even though symbolic, is seen as characteristic of the group (Prelić 2009). Acknowledging the

76  Krisztina Rácz constructed nature of ethnic identification, Geertz (1993) also reminds us that ethnic attachments, very real for the group members, seem to remain cultural givens. Just because the cultural stuff is imagined, it does not mean that it is imaginary (Jenkins 1997). Domestificating youth Youth is seen as a specific time of identity formation, a peculiar life period of great potential and power but also social constraints and impotence (Hall and Jefferson 1975, Brake 1980, Bennett and Kahn Harris 2004). This period of human life has a special cultural significance, and it is during youth when ‘social groups develop distinct patterns of life and give expressive form to their social and material life-experience’ (Brake 1980: 10). Young people are often seen as vessels into which cultural patterns, memories, and national identities are infused top-down, and who have little agency in creating their own distinct norms, attitudes, beliefs, and identities. For instance, related to the case study discussed in this chapter, Hungarian minority youth in Serbia are often presented in politics as the trustees of the nation’s future. In the educational development strategy of the Hungarian National Minority Council (MNT 2016), Hungarian youth are seen as passive recipients of top-down policies: festivals and events are organized for them, a newspaper is published for a youth readership, a dormitory has been founded by the Hungarian National Minority Council for students, etc. Yet, looking at the great variety of youth cultures, be they defined in terms of taste, style, fashion, music, gender, ethnicity, or other factors, there are myriad possibilities to express identities. New information technologies and media offer elements of multiculturalism and global interculturalism; they constantly inform young people of new cultures and lifestyles. All this results in a widening of young people’s world and liberates them from traditional conservative cultural ties and patterns. But, on the other hand, this same world is particularising and individualising their common problems and offers only substitutes and not solutions to real-life dilemmas and problems. (Ule 2012) Youth are thus not only the safeguarders of tradition, but also those who actively negotiate existing cultural patterns, resist them, and develop alternatives. Studying youth is therefore more than studying a specific generation. This age group has power in both creating new cultural patterns and reflecting the existing schemes of society: they are ‘a direct consequence of political modernization . . . [and] . . . also its mirror’ (Ule 2012: 29). However, young people are still often explored through the discourses and practices of the members of older age cohorts, and their ethnic identification seems relatively solid. On-the-ground observation suggests that even among youth, ‘community is [often] sought as a shelter from the gathering tides of global

Constructing and destructing the ethnic 77 turbulence’ (Bauman 2011: 142). In post-socialist Europe, global culture that would enable fluid group membership and negotiated identities does not always match the everyday realities of young people. Individualization has become economically difficult and insecure, which has led to a new ‘domestification’ of youth (Ule 2012). For many young people, thus the suggestion that the collectivity in which they seek shelter and from which they expect protection has a more solid foundation than notoriously capricious and volatile individual choices is exactly the kind of news they want to hear. (Bauman 2011: 100) Youth in minority For members of an ethnic minority, ethnic membership is usually a more salient fact than for the majority members. Minority youth, when they are outside of the family and their local environment, are constantly reminded that their native language and culture are different (T. Mirnics 2001 in Badis 2008). Minority status thus makes ethnic identity marked (Brubaker et al. 2006) and more salient than other components of their personal identities. According to the logic of the constructivist paradigm, ethnic identity is understood in terms of inclusion and exclusion. In the case of a minority ethnic group, these processes are double. Who is considered a minority and on which grounds is determined by both the majority and the minority communities. This raises two important issues related to the definition and experience of ethnic groups. The first is the problem of the power to ascribe; the second is the problem of the ‘right to exit’ (Kymlicka 1995). The first problem is related to the power to declare a group to be minority and to determine the basis of it. Minority is determined not only by census figures but also by a group’s difference in one or another cultural trait deemed important in a social context, be it ethnicity, religion, language, gender, sexual preference, etc. Often this power belongs to the majority group, as it has institutional support to make and keep groups separate. Yet, knowledge of their own ethnic culture and tradition also gives power to members of minorities to mobilize it and exercise control over the members of their group (Lyman and Douglas 1973 in Putinja and Stref-Fenar 1997). Related is the question of how strongly tied its members are to the minority culture, how much of ‘loyalty to culture’ (Hasan 2010) they have, and whether ‘those who might want to cut loose in the name of some individual goal or selfdevelopment’ (Taylor 1992: 58) have the possibility to do so. Communal ties often have such dynamics that disable or make leaving the group to which they have been ascribed risky (Bauman 2011). For ethnic minorities, the choice of leaving the community is made difficult from both the inside (the minority community) and the outside (the majority). It follows that communalism, i.e. seeking solidarity with one’s own group and maintaining solid boundaries between groups defined

78  Krisztina Rácz on the basis of ethnic difference, comes as a natural choice for many young persons from ethnic minority communities. Voluntarism, individual freedom, self-assertion are only synonyms of the emancipation from communal ties, of the capacity to disregard the inherited ascription – and this is precisely what they have been deprived of . . . . Members of ‘ethnic minorities’ are not ‘natural communalists’. Their ‘really existing communalism’ is power-assisted, the result of expropriation. (Baumann 2011: 96) Thus minority youth in Serbia are in fact facing ‘triple transition’: what Tomanović (2012) calls the ‘double transition’ to adulthood as a generational experience for all youth worldwide, and the consequences of the socio-economic transition of the Southeast European countries, such as precarity, poverty, lack of job opportunities, scarce housing, inadequate social security, etc. are heightened by minority status.

Background: Hungarian youth in Vojvodina Strong communal ties among minority youth in Serbia are often neglected in the literature. Existing quantitative research focuses almost exclusively on the majority nation (c.f. Radivojević and Vučević 2008, Tomanović 2012, Tomanović and Stanojević 2015), while studies on minority youth lack the contextualization of the population under study with relation to majorities (cf. the Mozaik, Kárpát Panel and GeneZYs researches on Hungarian diaspora youth conducted in 2001, 2007, 2011, and 2015 by various institutions from Hungary and/or Serbia). Thus, in the former case, Hungarian youth in Vojvodina are an invisible minority in Serbia; in the latter, they are seen in a decontextualized and essentialist manner. Both cases lock them into their minority status. Vojvodina is often seen as a textbook example of multiculturalism in a postsocialist state, highly heterogeneous in terms of ethnicities, with more than 20 national communities. Serbs are both the absolute and relative majority in the province: according to the 2011 census, 67 per cent of the inhabitants of Vojvodina declared themselves Serbs. People of other ethnic identities and those who did not declare themselves ethnically made up the other 33 per cent. Out of this, 13 per cent, or 253,899 individuals, are Hungarians (Stanovništvo prema nacio­ nalnoj pripadnosti i polu, po opštinama i gradovima 2012), who are the second largest ethnic group in the province and the most numerous ethnic minority (Đurić et al. 2014). The size of the Hungarian community in Serbia has been shrinking since Yugoslav times due to low birth rates, emigration, and assimilation (Gáb­ rityné Molnár 2007). Vojvodina Hungarians are a national minority in Serbia with collectively ascribed rights. Because of their minority status, for many of them the concepts of nationality/citizenship and ethnicity are separate, and the home country does not have such emotional value as to members of majority ethnicity, but rather

Constructing and destructing the ethnic  79 becomes merely a geographical term (Badis 2008). Even though they have relatively strong ties with their kin-state, they are a specific ethnological-ethnic group which has a strong group consciousness and differentiates itself from other Hungarian communities. This ‘us’ consciousness is present both in geographic and cultural terms and is explained by the effect of Serbian culture on Hungarian communities (Papp 2007). Papp cites research which found that instead of national, Vojvodina Hungarians rather have strong local identities (Komšić 2003 in Badis 2008, Hódi 2003 in Badis 2008).

Data and methods The fieldwork site, Mali Iđoš, in Hungarian Kishegyes, is situated in the central Bačka region, 12  km south of Bačka Topola, around 45  km from Subotica and 55  km from Novi Sad. Kishegyes and the two neighbouring villages Lovćenac and Feketić form a municipality. The 2011 census showed that in this municipality there were 6,486 people who identified themselves as Hungarians (Stanovništvo prema nacionalnoj pripadnosti i polu, po opštinama i gradovima 2012). In the elementary school in Kishegyes, there are two parallel streams in every generation in which Hungarian is the language of instruction, and in 1995, to cater to the needs of the Serbian-speakers who arrived as refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, a stream in Serbian language was opened. The Serbian stream is also attended by the newest group of inhabitants of Kishegyes, the Egyptian community, even though their mother tongue is a dialect of Romani. Exploring ethnic identity among youth in such a context not only foregrounds them as a generational group and ethnic minority community, but also contributes to scarce research on youth in rural areas. Research in locations such as ClujNapoca, which served as the site of Brubaker’s study on Hungarians in Romania (Brubaker et al. 2006), produces great insights into ethnicity construction among urban diaspora Hungarians who live in towns with a sizable proportion of members of the majority ethnicity. However, looking at a population that lives in an ethnically fairly homogenous village can lead to a more complex picture of the dynamics of ethnic identification across places of residence, socio-economic status groups, or locations of various ethnic compositions. In the second half of 2012 and the first half of 2013, I conducted 30 interviews with approximately equal numbers of female and male Hungarian-speaking interlocutors aged between 15 and 18 who lived in Mali Iđoš and attended secondary schools in Bačka Topola, Subotica, Srbobran, Senta, or Novi Sad. Interviews were conducted in informants’ or my homes, cafes, or places where extracurricular activities were held; in Hungarian language; and were based on a predetermined set of loosely-defined themes. These related to life in the village; everyday experiences in the family, among friends, in relationships, at school, and in free time; attitudes towards Serbia and Hungary, the in-group, and members of other ethnicities; plans for the future, etc. Interview transcripts were translated to English and analysed using the method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).

80  Krisztina Rácz In their seminal work using CDA, Wodak et al. (2009) see nations not as objectively defined, but – going back to Anderson’s (1991) conceptualization of national communities – as communities only ‘by the way they are imagined’ (Wodak et al. 2009: 15). In analysing ethnic identification, CDA offers a toolbox for exploring ideological nuclei, discursive strategies, and linguistic means of realization that interlocutors use in their utterances. I understand utterances (henceforth marked as U1, U2, U3, etc.) as ‘units of language production (whether spoken or written) which are inherently contextualized’ (Schiffrin 1994: 41). In the following subchapter, I employ the methodology used by Wodak et al. (2009) and by Ilić (2014) in order to explore Vojvodina Hungarian youth’s discourses1 of ethnic identities, values, norms, attitudes, views of their own ethnic group, and interactions with members of other ethnicities. In doing so, I emphasize the modes in which established discourses are altered or destructed and ethnic categories are transcended.2

Findings and analysis: the world through ethnic lens ‘Reversed demographics’3 is a situation in which an ethnic minority on a national level is a majority on a local level. In such situations, a minority has the experience of majority and sees its own language and culture as the dominant one and as the norm. Because of this, interactions with members of other ethnic communities are seen as a threat to their social dominance, and ethnicity becomes an important focal point through which spatial, temporal, and social relations are understood. Thus, I see ethnicization as an ideological nucleus that indexes ‘structures of power in a more or less systematic and coherent way’ (Tsitsipis 1998 in Ilić 2014: 271). Within this, the issues of ethnically defined places, time, and social relations are discursively articulated. When speaking about these issues, another ideological nucleus emerged, that of the knowledge of Serbian as the state language. In the following sections, I discuss these ideological nuclei, the strategies, i.e. conscious or unconscious ‘more or less accurate plan[s] adopted to achieve a certain kind of objective (political, personal, psychological, etc.)’ (Wodak et al. 2009: 31–2), and, in some utterances, I point out the means of realization. Through these, I understand the specific ways in which the given objective is achieved, such as the use of deictics (pronouns that point to the location, protagonists, time, etc. of the story and that cannot be understood without the knowledge of the context), narratives (sequences of events with a complicating action (Labov 1976, 1982)), indirect speech, ethnonyms, hedging devices (using a personal disclaimer and a clause that contradicts that), stereotypes, comparisons, negations, etc. Ethnicized space The strategy of construction of an ethnicized space is employed when interlocutors refer to spaces such as towns, villages, cafes, or bars as Serbian or Hungarian.

Constructing and destructing the ethnic 81 In doing so, they present the residents of these places or the patrons of the entertainment objects defined by their ethnic belonging. U1: This bar can be called a Serbian place, so the owners are Serbian and usually the organizers are Serbs, but Hungarians go there as well as Serbs, but I hang out with the Hungarians mostly. U2: Researcher: Who goes to this place? Interlocutor: To be honest, mainly Hungarians. . . . Well, and actually the owner is Hungarian, and so mainly people who know him, those go there. . . . I think a lot depends on what nationality the owner of a club or a disco is, so for instance in Bačka Topola, I have been several times, there is a raft in Bačka Topola, Sky Bar . . . that is a totally Serbian place. Hungarians go there very rarely, one or two groups, so almost . . . when I go there with my girlfriends then it’s only us Hungarians. U1 and U2 are utterances related to places for entertainment, while the following U3, U4, and U5 deal with Kishegyes as a village. The last two utterances of this section, U6 and U7, are related to the secondary schools interlocutors attend. U3: We don’t like any of them [Egyptians living in the village]. I mean not us, the family, but rather the village. Because this is basically a Hungarian village, so this village doesn’t really like the others. But they are still here. And the problem is that there are more and more of them. U4: I am open to everyone. But they don’t open, or maybe they are afraid to open. . . . It seems to me that they [Egyptians living in Kishegyes] don’t really want to accept the relationship. . . . They are probably afraid of . . . Well, they are a minority so to say here and maybe they are afraid that they won’t be accepted. U5: These Muslims keep coming, and spawn, there are more and more of them. And well, all the refugees, a lot of refugees come here, and so the village is becoming a bit Serbianized. In U1, the interlocutor refers to a bar as a ‘Serbian place’. Like him, the interlocutor of U2 also claims that the ethnicity of a bar owner determines the ethnicity of the patrons, thus excluding the option of a space free from ethnic categorizations. Speaking of Kishegyes, the interlocutors of U3 and U4 refer to the local Muslims as a ‘minority’ (U4) in a ‘Hungarian village’ (U3) and thereby discursively construct their ethnic group’s ownership over space. Lastly, in U5, Serbs and Muslims are discursively unified and homogenized into a single category, contrasted to the autochthonous Hungarians in the village. While U1 and U2 construct social spaces frequented by youth (bars), in U3, U4, and U5 generational differences are overwritten by ethnic identities, as interlocutors homogenize inhabitants of various ages as (residents of) the ‘village’, meaning its Hungarian-speaking inhabitants.

82  Krisztina Rácz Leaving the ‘Hungarian world’ (Brubaker et  al. 2006) of the village makes certain interethnic connections possible and necessary. Hromadzic writes of the ethnically segregated grammar school of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Croatian and Bosniak students alike use the toilet for smoking cigarettes and socializing during the breaks. She calls it ethnic mixing, a ‘cultural practice of interconnectedness and intermingling among ethnic groups’ (2011: 268). It is a transgression of ethnic categories that assign a particular place in the social and physical world to each ethnic group. Similar to what Hromadzic describes is the case in the secondary schools I have visited during my fieldwork in Bačka Topola and in Subotica that students from Kishegyes attend. During informal conversations, I was told that in one of the high schools where there are two yards, one is typically used by students from the Serbian streams and the other by those from the Hungarian streams; thus, Serbian and Hungarian students spend the breaks in different spaces. Students of other schools also cited many examples when youth of different ethnicities spend their school hours apart, not only during teaching hours but in breaks, too. Smoking, though, seems to be an activity done in ethnically mixed spaces, and interlocutors mentioned smoking bringing together students from the different streams: U6: In the grammar school in Bačka Topola I really know everyone regardless of whether they are Serbs or Hungarians, so some ninety per cent of the grammar school I know by name who is who. So, well, in the breaks we go out to smoke, so that’s where friendships are born. U7: R: I have heard about the grammar school in Bačka Topola that Hungarian and Serbian students don’t know each other . . . I: It happens. I know them because I am out in the breaks, many of them are out too, so we make friends in the break, and then I get to know their friends. The interlocutor of U6 uses assimilation strategy to homogenize the students of the school. My question related to ethnic distance U7 answered conformingly, but speaking from her personal experience, like the interlocutor of U6, she emphasized friendships, including interethnic ones, being born among smokers in the schoolyard. In the discourse of these two interlocutors, the ethnic distance is not as large as in the previous five utterances. For the interlocutors of U6 and U7, the physical and social location of school becomes an ethnically mixed space, and their discourse misses the clear-cut ethnic divisions characteristic of several other young people’s utterances. Ethnicized time When discussing religion, most of my interlocutors claimed to be religious, largely Roman Catholic with a few exceptions of Protestant – those whose parents come from the neighbouring village, Feketić, where the large majority of the Hungarian population is Protestant. Very few of them attend church, though, and the reason

Constructing and destructing the ethnic  83 for this appeared to be a general dislike of the local priest. Therefore, for most youth, being religious means believing in a higher power, occasional praying, and observing religious holidays. As the members of the Serbian and Egyptian communities in the village are Orthodox and Muslim respectively, Catholic holidays, or as they are often referred to, ‘Hungarian holidays’, are of special importance for delineating one group from another. The holidays all of my interlocutors observe irrespective of their level of religiousity are Christmas and Easter. Their primary importance is in the family, but they are also significant because the school calendar and the holidays in Vojvodina are arranged to accommodate believers of all religions. However, most young people I have spoken to are not aware as to why the school calendar is set in such a way, and some are in fact oblivious of the date of Orthodox Christmas or that the number of days in the Julian calendar, which believers of the Serbian Orthodox church follow, differs from the Gregorian calendar observed by Catholics. In this respect, for the age cohort of my interlocutors, there is little mutual influence of cultures upon each other; at times, in fact, there is unawareness of even the existence of other religions, traditions, or cultures. This knowledge usually expands in adulthood after having more experience with members of other ethnic groups. In U8, the interlocutor employs the strategy of mitigation to present the two ethnic groups as separate but not in animosity with each other. U8: I know about them [non-Hungarian holidays], but we don’t go to friends of other religions. I mean, not because they are of other religions, but because we have no such friends. An event or a holiday does not have to be religiously marked though to be considered ‘ours’ or ‘theirs’; secular events such as weddings and birthdays were also discussed in the interviews. A few young people I interviewed had the experience of attending events that are considered Serbian. As one of my interlocutors who has attended a wedding in South Serbia noted: U9: It [a Serbian wedding] is not totally different, but there are things that are different from a Hungarian wedding. By using deictics such as ‘them’, ‘they’ (U8), and ‘there’, and an ethnonym (U9) to refer to the wedding (‘Hungarian’) as means of realization, the interlocutors employ the strategy of dissimilation to emphasize the social distance between the members of the two groups, at the same time unifying and homogenizing them. Another interlocutor shared her experience of a celebration at a Serbian relative’s place in the neighbouring Lovćenac, constructing it as a narrative. Here, too, participants of the event are generalized and referred to with ethnonyms or deictics (‘Serbs’, ‘Hungarians’, ‘they’, and ‘we’). The complicating action of the narrative describes a habitual event that has taken place several times in a similar

84  Krisztina Rácz manner, involving the same participants, while the evaluation is formulated in a hedging construction with a negation (‘I don’t want to say . . . but . . .’). U10: I: At their place, when we go to the Serbs, it’s like this: we sit down, and immediately there is meza,4 and customs are different. So if they don’t have, but they have even a little, they give it and everything, it can be noticed that . . . R: Do you think that Hungarians aren’t like that? I: I don’t know. Now, I don’t want to say who is hospitable and who isn’t, but they . . . I don’t know, so . . . so . . . it’s different when we go there, then you explicitly feel that . . . not that they are happy to see you but . . . still, he tries to . . . I don’t know, to be, I don’t know what . . . he tries to share what he has. Then the Hungarians, not everyone for instance, there are stingy people and . . . I don’t know. Hospitality is one of the internalized stereotypes in Serbian national mythology (Georgevitch 1917, Simić 2000), and it is often expressed informally and in different media. In case of the interlocutor of U10, hospitality is a stereotype used as a positive attribute that differentiates ‘Serbs’ from ‘Hungarians’. She uses dissimilation of the two ethnic groups, and in the predication strategy employed, she evaluates the interethnic encounter as a positive one attributing the other group higher value. However, she uses a positive characterization of members of the majority ethnic group, not with regard to her peers but to adults, thus ascribing positive attributes to a certain authority that comes with age. Even though she constructs the two ethnic groups as separate, and refers to an older age cohort in a positive manner, the interlocutor transforms and inverts the established order in which the in-group is attributed higher qualities, thus deconstructing conventional ethnic hierarchies. Ethnic others and other languages The importance of the mother tongue and national traditions are rightly argued for in various studies on ethnic minorities. In the same time, it is vital to emphasize the role that knowledge of the state language plays for minorities in their everyday interactions with members of other ethnic groups. In this section, the ideological nucleus of the knowledge of Serbian language is explored as one of the most important discursive cores. As the reason for the absence of ethnic mixing, interlocutors often mentioned the lack of means of communication. As few members of Serbian community speak Hungarian, the only possible means of communication among Serbian and Hungarian peers is Serbian. In Kishegyes, this presents a problem for Hungarian youth, and the responsibility for the lack of knowledge of the state language is put on various factors: education system, teachers, lack of opportunities to practice, lack of self-confidence, etc. As one of the teachers explained, the education system is based on the fact that Hungarian students do not speak

Constructing and destructing the ethnic  85 Serbian. It often happens, she told me, that the same teachers teach in both the Hungarian and the Serbian streams and they give the students identical tests that only differ in language. Yet, students almost never ask for the test questions from their peers from the other stream that has already had the test, ‘and that’s what the teachers count on’. The strategy employed by the teacher and also, seen in the following utterances, by the youth is the perpetuation of an existing social system that rests on the social, temporal, and spatial division between languages and their speakers. When describing their own language competence in Serbian, interlocutors constructed themselves as incompetent speakers or speakers with limited competence. U11: Well, it needs to be noted that I understand almost everything in Serbian but I can’t speak. U12: The problem is that I don’t like to speak Serbian because . . . I don’t know . . . when I make a mistake in terms of grammar, and then I start [speaking] a bit . . . hesitantly. U13: Let’s say that the majority of things, most of it, I understand, but when it comes to answering . . . For instance the suffixes, it is a problem, and sometimes it’s interesting that I know the word and it’s simply like forgetting it, I can’t remember it. U14: I: The thing is that some things I understand, but if I have to answer, then I freeze. But if someone is speaking really fast, then I don’t even understand. R: Are you shy to speak or you really don’t know? I: I don’t know, and sometimes I am shy because I freeze, and then the words don’t come out of my throat. In the interviews, the phrase ‘I don’t speak Serbian’ denoted various things: that the interlocutors’ vocabulary was poor, their grammar was incorrect, that they did not feel confident enough to speak, that they refused to speak, or any combination of these. The issue of speaking the state language often triggered emotional responses, such as expressions of shame or insecurity. Apart from evaluating their knowledge of Serbian, interlocutors almost always explained the reasons why it was poor, and thereby employed argumentation strategies, as well as a predication strategy to qualify the school curriculum, teaching aids, or teachers of Serbian as insufficient, inadequate, or limited. U15: And at school, I couldn’t have [learned Serbian] because what we did was to read a text and then just answer the questions. . . . Of course the teacher answered, we just wrote it down, and then . . . we learned it by heart, and had a test. So we didn’t learn from this. . . . We should have maybe learned it more seriously, talk and so, not what you can learn by heart. This interlocutor uses a narrative in which the sequence of clauses describes her stream’s typical learning process, while the result of the narrative is that ‘we didn’t learn from this’.

86  Krisztina Rácz Another theme was the lack of modern teaching aids for learning Serbian. An interlocutor described textbooks as inadequate and not motivating as follows: U16: A  thousand-year-old texts that they are trying to infuse into us and because of this I lose my will for [learning] it. Teachers were also often considered incompetent for transferring the knowledge of Serbian to their students. U17: The Serbian teacher we have, she can only speak Serbian perfectly, and she can’t speak Hungarian. And she has weird things, and well . . . so . . . very different views on things and well, she’s different, I don’t know. In general, teachers, curriculum-makers, textbook authors, i.e. members of the adult society, are seen as responsible for the lack of knowledge of Serbian. On the other hand, Serbian-speaking peers are rarely considered as individuals with whose help the state language could be informally mastered. The assumed malfunctioning of education system is seen almost solely as an institution through which Hungarian youth from Kishegyes would gain competency in Serbian. As a result of the insufficient knowledge of the state language, young members of the community are reluctant to establish friendships with Serbian peers (as expressed in the following U18), to get into relationships with them (U19), and, in general, they do not see their future in Serbia (U20 and U21). The interlocutor of U20 uses argumentation to explain her pursuit of higher education in Hungary with regard to being unable even to enter the university as the entrance exam is in the Serbian language, while in U21 the interlocutor justifies not returning to Serbia after university in Hungary because of the lack of professional vocabulary in Serbian. U18: When I was in eighth grade there was this boy, his name was Miki,5 he . . . with him I tried to talk, but I didn’t know Serbian well, so we were just on greeting terms. U19: I can’t imagine a relationship with a non-Hungarian girl because I can’t speak Serbian. U20: R: Haven’t you considered [studying in] Novi Sad? I: Because of the language I  haven’t. Originally I  was thinking about that, Novi Sad, academy of arts, but with the language I have problems, right, and I wouldn’t dare to start and I don’t believe I had much chance to pass the entrance exam. U21: Then when it comes to getting a job, well, I don’t want to come back then to Serbia because I won’t have learned the professional vocabulary so I can’t get on. The above utterances demonstrate how the lack of knowledge of Serbian affects not only the present but also the future of the members of the Hungarian community in Serbia: their choice of friends, partners, career options, and places to study, work, and live.

Constructing and destructing the ethnic 87 Ethnicized social relations According to a survey conducted among elementary and secondary school students of various nationalities in Vojvodina, young people of almost all ethnicities have the majority of their friendship ties within their own ethnic community, and it is the Hungarian ethnic group among which young people have the highest number of friends (Radivojević and Vučević 2008). Yet, as seen in the previous sections, there are situations when ethnic mixing does occur. Extracurricular activities emerged in the interviews as sites for ethnic mixing. They are usually not separated by language; instruction, if needed, is provided in both languages. An interlocutor spoke about the school choir in her school, employing perspectivation to present her point of view on interethnic relations there. As the following utterances show, this strategy is generally employed when speaking about personal experience of relationships with non-Hungarian peers. U22: There was choir in the first and second grade, then Serbs, Hungarians were together, right, then we met a few [Serbian] girls, so we know them somewhat. . . . We meet with those from the choir, and then we say ‘hello’, and that’s all. There are no big conversations. Even though she employs assimilation strategy to refer to the two ethnic groups, she notes that there are no deep friendships in this particular occasion of ethnic mixing. A common theme of the interviews was also the interlocutors’ relationships with and attitudes towards members of other ethnic groups. An interlocutor constructs the difference between Hungarians and Serbs (or Montenegrins, as is the case with most of the inhabitants of Lovćenac, who are often referred to as Serbs by Hungarians from Kishegyes, thus employing discursive unification) as positive for the Serbs in terms of a higher level of solidarity among peers: U23: They [youth from Lovćenac] stick together. Because in Kishegyes for instance . . . let’s take fights as an example, differences between Kishegyes and Lovćenac. . . . It always happens that everyone stands and watches how they are beating up his best friend. Those from Kishegyes. But with those in Lovćenac there is no such thing. For instance if someone sees, let’s say from Lovćenac, that anyone whom he knows [is being beaten] . . . He goes there immediately and helps, or they talk about the things. They stick together. . . . I am also among Serbs, those Serbs from down there [the town where he attends school] are even more different, they stick together even more. The strategy employed here is predication: attributing positive value in the members of the other group, ‘sticking together’; according to Papp’s research, faction is the strongest negative self-stereotype of Hungarians in Vojvodina (Papp 2007). The means of realization the interlocutor uses are comparison and hypothetical narratives. This way, employing dissimilation, he constructs the out-group as better, more positive, occupying a higher moral position than the in-group.

88  Krisztina Rácz As presented, when speaking about Serbs, interlocutors often employ dissimilation. But there are also oppositional voices that transform established discourses of ethnic separation and use assimilation of distinct ethnic groups. Apart from the above-presented utterances about ethnic groups in general, other interlocutors have also employed a transformative strategy in their discourses about Serbs whom they personally know. U24: Well, mostly these Serbian friends of mine are such that they understand Hungarian too but they don’t speak. So they talk to me in Serbian and I talk to them in Hungarian. U25: We were such good friends that once a week or twice a week when I visited him they even invited me for Sunday lunch. In Kishegyes. U26: My grandfather from Feketics6 made me swear not to get married to a Serbian, just a Hungarian, ‘look for the greatest Hungarian,’ he said, and so. I said ‘enough’. U27: I: I don’t listen to Serbian music often, but I like it. And when I hear it, I am not outraged that ‘oh my God, this Serbian music’ and all this. R: Why, are there those who are? I: Yes, a lot of them. For instance my roommate, she is also from Kishegyes, she doesn’t like Serbian music, if she hears it . . . for instance she was looking at the music on my phone and she heard Serbian music, then she said ‘oh, God, what is good about this Serbian music?’ and all this, that she doesn’t like it. R: Why so? I: I don’t know . . . maybe it’s from elementary school, because the Serbs were, I don’t know, nagging at her or something. U28: At the moment I have a single one Serbian acquaintance, he is a singer in one of the bands, but . . . He makes more friends with Hungarians, and his girlfriend is Hungarian too, but he doesn’t speak Hungarian at all. With him I speak English; I actually met him this summer. He is the first Serbian acquaintance I have ever had in my life. Not because I had any bad feelings towards him . . . them, but I simply can’t talk with them. But with him, because he speaks English, he speaks English perfectly, and me, so-so. We speak in English, and because we have many common interests we found a common ground, and I met him in the summer, but since we meet regularly. Interlocutors of U24, U25, and U27 used assimilation as a strategy to point out the binding elements between individuals of various ethnicities. The interlocutor of U24 presents his experience with Serbian friends who understand Hungarian, which makes communication possible. The interlocutor of U25 also describes a friendship with a Serbian peer and expresses his surprise at being treated on friendly terms. He uses intensification. Yet, by emphasizing the unusual (at least for his age cohort) situation of being invited for a meal to a Serbian home, he perpetuates existing discourses of social distance. The interlocutor of U26 employs indirect speech as a means of realization. This refers to what Bakhtin (1981) calls

Constructing and destructing the ethnic  89 authoritative discourse, a discourse that ‘is already acknowledged in the past by a certain authority (religious, political, moral, ancestral, generational, the word of teachers, etc.)’ (Ilić 2014: 34). Authoritative discourse in this context is therefore the discourse of the older generation that calls for ethnic purity. The interlocutor rejects her grandfather’s advice on endogamy that is set as a norm for the minority group members, especially young females (cf. Ilić 2010, Hisa 2015), using a destructive discursive strategy. In U27, the interlocutor refers to her friend’s discourse about not liking Serbian music. She uses indirect speech and counters it, but she also employs argumentation strategy to justify her friend’s dislike of Serbian music. In U28, the interlocutor uses personal experience narrative to refer to the possibility of a friendship between Hungarians and Serbs. He introduces his Serbian acquaintance by focusing on some of his positive characteristics (‘[he] is a singer in one of the bands’, ‘[he] makes more friends with Hungarians’, ‘his girlfriend is Hungarian’, and ‘he speaks English perfectly’). In the complicating action, he describes their way of communication. The interlocutor makes two evaluative points: in the first, he explains that actually language was the barrier for not having Serbian friends before, and in the second, he justifies making friends with a Serbian peer by having common interests. Unlike the interlocutor of U24, U28 describes a situation in which English is the transnational language of communication, which overcomes ethnic barriers and reinforces them at the same time: interethnic encounters are possible but not in the local national frames and languages (i.e. not speaking Serbian and/or Hungarian). The interlocutor uses assimilation to discursively create similarities that operate not on an ethnic but on a global level. He depicts his Serbian friend as similar to himself in frames of global youth culture, e.g. they listen to popular music and speak English.

Conclusions: transforming the ethnic world The utterances discussed in this chapter are characteristic of youth as a generation and are in dialogue with the authoritative discourses of the older age cohorts. Their issues and situations are relevant for young people: extracurricular activities, going out, fights, friendships with peers, relationships, and music. These are the contexts of youth culture in which ethnic identities are constructed, perpetuated, and also transformed and destructed. A Serbian and a Hungarian young person speaking English to each other is, even though not a typical scenario of interaction, symptomatic of the lack of means of communication between young people of different mother tongues in parts of Vojvodina where ethnic communities live in homogenous settlements. It is in the case of youth that sharp ethnic divisions are possible. The institutions that govern the lives of older age cohorts, especially the workplace, are more ethnically varied. For youth, though, the education system in Serbia, with streams differentiated according to students’ mother tongue, which almost always coincide with their ethnic belonging, arranges space, time, and social relations based on ethnic identities. In the families as well, young people are expected to follow authority. They learn to differentiate among their peers and adults primarily along ethnic

90  Krisztina Rácz lines, and their everyday interactions take place in mainly ethnically homogenous environments. Thus, even though nominally encouraged, young people’s ethnic mixing happens largely on their own initiative. If language knowledge, which is the primary means of communication, is lacking, interaction is scarce. This in turn negatively influences attitudes towards ethnic Others. This way, young people who belong to an ethnic minority are enclosed and defined by adults in the institutions of the majority as well as in their own ethnic worlds. Their everyday experiences are shaped by the constant social stigma (Goffman 1963) of being a minority, without the right to exit from the ‘Hungarian world’ (Brubaker et al. 2006). Their scarce interactions with peers from other ethnic groups strengthen ethnic boundaries, promote self-ghettoization7 of the group, and foster fear from members of the out-group and their perception as threat (Badis 2008). However, even in locations that are ethnically closed, it is not possible to totally avoid interaction with ethnic Others. Youth is the time when ethnicity is cemented, but is also the site of transforming and countering ethnic identities. Young people leave Kishegyes to go to secondary school and to university, they travel, they interact with Serbs and Egyptians settling in the village. Even though rare, sites and opportunities for ethnic mixing among youth exist. This implies that identity is not completely cemented in the ethnic micro-universe but is on occasions used strategically. It is negotiated to position individuals in various contexts and social environments. It is in locations of ethnic mixing where young people develop more positive attitudes towards members of other groups and where it is possible to go beyond ethnic identities. In order to discursively construct occasions of ethnic mixing and strategic ethnic identities, interlocutors in this research employed the linguistic strategies of transformation and destruction of the established discourses of ethnic homogeneity and the salience of ethnic identities. They used perspectivation to present their points of view, attribution of positive value to occasions of ethnic mixing, and assimilation of members of certain groups regardless of ethnic belonging. Through the means of realization of indirect speech, narrative, comparison, deictics, ethnonyms, etc., young Hungarian-speaking interlocutors from Mali Iđoš carve out spaces for interethnic relationships and creative discursive ruptures in the ethnic world set out for them by adults as the dominant ideological matrix. As seen from the examples discussed, the settings that are the most suitable for ethnic mixing and the negotiation of ethnic identities among youth are interethnic encounters with peers and, most prominently, free time and entertainment activities. Youth culture, friendship with peers, relationships, extracurricular activities, places to go out, and cultural and leisure events that are not framed in ethnic terms offer opportunities for minority youth to use identities relationally, and to go beyond perceived language barriers and the insecurities arising from them. Traditional institutions of the family, school, the church, etc. often use authoritative discourse and rely on the inseparability of the ethnic culture and its language, draw young people’s mental maps in ethnic terms, and use established discourses of ethnic distance. It is the members of the older generations that define the community, and they offer little space for youth – socialized in post-socialism and

Constructing and destructing the ethnic  91 with experiences of education, the labour market, popular culture, friendships, relationships, etc. very different from those of their parents and grandparents – to act outside the ethnic world. However, young people use the possibilities created by youth cultures and their agency strategically in creating non-ethnic spaces. Oppositional voices of youth are heard that destroy and transform the ethnic universe, or at least draw its boundaries in more nuanced ways.

Notes 1 Unlike most CDA researchers, who take all social practice to be discourse, I restrict the term ‘discourse’ to the verbal, i.e. oral or written utterances. 2 According to Wodak et al. (2009), discourses about nations and national identity rely on the following four general discursive strategies: a constructive strategies – refer to how national identity is established, e.g. by promoting unification, solidarity or differentiation from others, b perpetuation – refer to how national identity is reproduced, protected, and preserved, c transformative – refer to how national identities are changed, d destructive – refer to how national identities are dismantled. Discursive strategies can also be classified according to the objective of the interlocutor. Those that appeared in this research are: e predication – the qualification of persons, things or actions, f argumentation – justifying claims or actions, g perspectivation – locating the interlocutors’ point of view, h intensification or mitigation – modifying (strengthening or weakening) the force of the utterances. With reference to the group they are employed for, strategies can also be: i assimilative – creating sameness or homogeneity in relation to a group, j dissimilative – creating difference or heterogeneity among subjects. 3 I am thankful to Sherrill Stroschein for coining and using this term in her presentation Ethnic parties in enclave cities: Hungarians in Serbia, in the workshop After empires: Mapping the state-of-the-art in contemporary Vojvodina, held in Palić, Serbia, May 20–21, 2016. 4 Fingerfood or starter in Serbian. 5 The name has been changed. 6 The colloquial Hungarian name of Feketić; the official Hungarian name of the village is Bácsfeketehegy. 7 Öngettósodás in Hungarian, a phrase commonly used for the inward-looking attitude of the Hungarian community in Vojvodina.

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Part II

Political participation and youth identities

5 Youth politicization and de-politicization in contemporary Albania Islam Jusufi and Jubjana Vila Zeka

Introduction It has been almost three decades since the collapse of the communist dictatorship in Albania. Through the first half of this transition period, Albanian youth witnessed the collapse of communism, neoliberal reforms, extensive emigration to the west, wars in neighbouring Kosovo and Macedonia, and a revival of blood feuds.1The political history of Albania of the first decade of transition to democracy presents a range of cases when youth were important actors in crucial historical events and changes. These included the overthrow of the communist dictatorship 1990–2; the initial democratic transition between 1992 and 1997; and the struggle for consolidation of democratic gains from 1998 to the present day (Elbasani 2016). A milestone in Albanian history was youth’s very active role in the student movement of 1990, which initiated the collapse of the communist dictatorship in the country. Sixty per cent of the members of the movement were Albanian youth between 18 and 22 years old (Fjerza, Gega and Mermaj 2014). Youth also played an important role in the 1997 crisis when the country was on the brink of a civil war. In all these struggles, the imprint of youth was visible; they show extensive youth engagement in the first decade of Albania’s transition. In the second and third decades of post-Communist transformation, compared to the first decade, Albanian youth or Albanian millennials have been living in a relatively peaceful and stable environment. Contemporary Albania’s youth have passed through different positive experiences, including growing economic wealth and information society, growing connectedness of the country with globalization and modernization processes, NATO membership and EU integration process, and the gradual improvement of the position of Albanians in wider region of the Balkans. Yet, during the conflicts of ethnic Albanians living in neighbouring countries, like the Kosovo conflict in 1999 and the conflict in Macedonia in 2001, ethnic identity was the main basis of Albanian youth identity (Biberaj 1998, De Waal 2005). Accordingly, as Mandić and Trošt mention in their Introduction, the popular press and electronic and social media frequently emphasize ‘nationalistic and radicalized Albanian Youth with tendencies towards a ‘Greater Albania’, almost all of which lack empirical evidence (Deliso 2007).

98  Islam Jusufi and Jubjana Vila Zeka In this chapter, we focus on Albanian youth identification and politicization vis-à-vis their ethnic identity in contemporary Albania. We argue that ethnicity remains important, but no longer holds monopoly in the definition of Albanian youth identity. This chapter aims to show that since the domestic and foreign policy context has changed, ethnicity is no longer the sole identity dominating the lives of Albania’s youth. An analysis focusing on youth in Albania is additionally important as the population of Albania is very young compared to other countries. The 2011 Census defined the average age of the resident population in Albania around 35  years old. Statistics show that in Albania, youth aged between 15 and 24 comprise 18.1 per cent of the population (CIA 2017. In addition, Albanian aspirations to join the EU are resoundingly supported by youth: 87 per cent of youth would vote in favour of Albania joining the EU (Cela, Kamberi and Pici 2015). In such a context, the examination of youth identity formation and politicization in Albania is particularly important. The Albanian government has been active in the development of national policies for youth, ‘including their participation in politics and decision-making’ (Berisha, Hazizaj and Strata 2015: 30). Starting from 2005, it has embraced the National Strategy for the Young and the National Action Plan for the Youth, and the last government that came to power in 2013 continued to draft a five-year plan. Among the six main objectives of the plan, the first is the encouragement of youth participation in democratic decision-making processes (Berisha, Hazizaj and Strata 2015: 30). Despite all goals and efforts, much about youth engagement in Albanian politics, including the motives and outcomes of their participation, is still problematic and unclear. This chapter examines the youth population in Albania with a focus on their identity and political engagement or politicization.2 In addition to issues of ethnic identification, we are particularly interested in the frames through which youth in Albania understand current political issues. Politicians in Albania routinely frame these issues in contested and combative political terms, though increasingly rarely in ethno-nationalist terms, as a gesture towards an EU integration process that finds its legitimacy in non-ethnic issues. We examine the extent to which Albanian youth have distanced themselves from these ethnic appeals. How do they identify themselves, and how do they understand their own identities? Are they are engaged in politics or not? Do they engage in political issues in ethno-national terms? How are different political issues in Albania framed and understood by youth?

Context and background Albanian youth participation in political life has shifted from active participation at the beginning of 1990s to withdrawal and apathy, occasionally swinging back to active participation during political crises. As revealed by the study conducted by Cela, Kamberi and Pici (2015: 150), only 7 per cent of youth are very interested in politics, 20.8 per cent are interested, and 41 per cent are not interested. Youth who claim to lack interest in politics say they cannot trust political parties

Youth (de)politicization in Albania  99 and are disappointed by them, have a negative perception of politicians, define politicians as a copy of old political elites, do not find politics attractive, and are more interested in other issues happening in the country. While some research has pointed to low youth engagement in political activities organized by political parties in Albania (Cela, Kamberi and Pici 2015: 205), the existing study demonstrates that Albanian youth have recently been increasingly involved in activities organized by political parties, and less so in civil society. The reason behind this behaviour is youth’s perception that membership in a political party is the main way to secure employment, and they are ready to award their loyalty to the political party in exchange for a job. Political mobilization, political positions, and family have an important influence on youth political behaviour. Youth political choices are thus not based on political programs and platforms but on short-term interests and profits. Even though an emphasis on youth involvement in politics might be used to gain support during electoral campaigns, it might push politicians to turn their focus to youth in exchange for their votes. On the other hand, party membership might contribute to the development of youth or might disengage them once they do not find a friendly environment within the political party (Berisha, Hazizaj and Strata 2015:24). However, studies show that only 4 per cent of youth trust political parties, while 75.1 per cent either trust them a little or not at all (Cela, Kamberi and Pici 2015). Youth membership in political parties is strongly related to political party commitment and the probability of the political party winning elections. In the last elections, held in 2013, youth engagement in political parties was mainly based on pragmatism rather than idealism, and this is a recent popular trend in Albania (Fjerza, Gega and Memaj 2014). At the same time, youth are aware that youth forums are very important in electoral campaigns. In some parties like Social Movement for Integration (Levizja Socialist per Integrim or LSI), youth forum members have a more active and influential role since they can vote for party leadership. Also, for most young adults, membership in youth forums is considered as an important ladder into a political career (Berisha, Hazizaj and Strata 2015). In terms of voter turnout, the number of young (18–29) voters in 2011 was 720,692, or 32.4 per cent of the population (Instat 2013). Such a percentage is high enough to make a difference in helping a party win elections and to shift political parties’ attention to youth interests and ideas, not only during elections but also during the rest of the political process, with the purpose of increasing their voting turnout (Berdufi 2013: 5). This acts in addition to the above-mentioned finding that youth in Albania today tend to behave in line with a system of values based on materialism (Inglehart and Baker 2000), indicating that pragmatic voting behaviour is indeed more prevalent in this group (Berdufi 2013: 5). In the European context, older generations have a stronger attachment to their national identity compared to youth. As shown by Eurobarometer surveys, young people have a stronger European identity compared to older ones (European Commission 2012). Most European youth consider European Union membership an element of their perceived identity, possibly because they have developed their identity during the EU integration process, are more attached to EU citizenship,

100  Islam Jusufi and Jubjana Vila Zeka and are more informed about rights and duties coming from EU membership (European Commission 2012). The same trends can be observed in Albanian youth. As mentioned above, 87 per cent of Albania’s youth would vote in favour of Albania joining the EU (Cela, Kamberi and Pici 2015). Yet, very little is known about the degree to which Albanian contemporary youth have been engaged in politics, and how their political involvement relates to their ethnic identifications. In this chapter, we aim to shed light on youth’s identification and political participation, as well as question whether ethnic identity still forms the exclusive dimension of the identity of contemporary Albanian youth. Our data below show that despite the continuing salience of ethnic identity among youth, it has been limited to situations regarding ethnic Albanians in neighbouring Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Evidence shows that the Albanian youth has indeed become increasingly politically engaged; and they are reproducing their ethno-national identity while also establishing new identities, such as European, global, political, and civic.

Methodology In this chapter, we rely on research that incorporates empirical evidence from interviews, surveys, and classroom discussion, attempting to unpack the Albanian youth’s identities through the frame of youth politicization. For the purpose of this research, we use the United Nations’ definition of youth as the age cohort between 15 and 24 (UN DESA). This definition is additionally appropriate because of Albania’s demographic structure with youth aged 15 to 24 comprising 19.6 per cent of the population. We limited the sample to include youth between the ages of 18 and 25, as 18 is the minimal voting age in Albania. While in the survey and classroom discussion, 60 per cent of the participants were female and 40 per cent were male, we had an even distribution between genders in our interviews. Research was conducted with youth studying at different departments at Epoka University, one of Tirana’s main universities, from April to June 2016. The sample included in-depth interviews with ten young adults, a survey with 34 participants, and a classroom discussion with 25 students. The data were collected by recruiting student volunteers to the interviews, the survey, and the classroom discussion. All of the respondents live in Tirana, but come from various parts of Albania, rural and urban. In the survey, interviews, and classroom discussion, we examined the ways in which the Albanian youth talk about the following set of issues: self-identification focusing on ethnic or Albanian vs. other types of identities; attitudes towards politics, focusing on their political behaviour, including political party engagement and voting behaviour; their positions towards the situation of their co-ethnics in Kosovo and in neighbouring Macedonia and Montenegro; and their perceptions of Albanian priorities in domestic and foreign policy. In our analysis, we also draw on participant observation and more indirectly elicited interview data to situate the youth’s responses. Survey data were evaluated through statistical analysis using data on youth selfidentification with different types of identities, their party membership, and their

Youth (de)politicization in Albania 101 voting behaviour. The data collected through classroom discussion and interviews were examined through text analysis. Text analysis was employed to elaborate on information on youth understanding of their own identities and ethnic/Albanian identity; their approach to political engagement in Albania; their position to the situation of co-ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro; and their perceptions of Albanian foreign policy priorities. An important limitation of this study is that it was conducted in a private institution attended mainly by youth with a higher standard of living, and thus might not show the complexities of ethnicity understandings by youth belonging to different socio-economic classes in Albania.

Results Ethnic vs. global and European identity We find that Albanian youth are conscious of their nationality and tend to identify themselves ethnically when prompted, and, as previous research has confirmed, when asked to rank the most important identity in a survey, most students identified themselves ethnically. However, our findings reveal that Albanian youth identify with a range of other identities. In the classroom discussion, youth pointed out ethnic, religious, political, civic, European, global, economic, cultural, and regional identities as their main identities. An important role was assigned by interviewed youth to global and European identities, as well as non-ethnic values. Some of the interviewees explained their identification with Albanian identity first: ‘I identify more with Albanian ethnic identity because I feel I belong to that identity since we share common features like ancestry, language, territory, history, culture, religion’ (girl, 25). However, others identified more with global and cultural identities. For instance, one respondent said ‘I identify myself more with global identity . . . With this identity, I place my identity of a global community above my identity as a citizen of a particular nation or place’ (girl, 25). Similarly, one interviewee stated: ‘I identify more with cultural and social identities, because I believe they have a large impact in shaping personal character’ (girl, 24). The importance of cultural identity was emphasized by another interviewee, who defines cultural identity as ‘a social group to which people belong or a region to which you belong or related to language dialect’ (boy, 20). European integration, continuous emigration and immigration and return of migrants, the expanding Albanian language sphere, the growing reach of the diaspora’s influence, the inherently transnational nature of the Albania’s tourism sector, and globalization in general were mentioned by participants in the classroom discussion as elements that reinforce the conviction among them that the world is moving beyond ethnic identities. We asked respondents to rank four main forms of identities: ethnic, global, European, and cultural (see Table  5.1 above). Cultural identity, drawing from Chandler and Munday (2011), includes a blend of cultural and subcultural categories, which include ethnicity, nationality, language, religion, and gender (p. 84). It was included in our list of possible identity affiliations in order to understand

102  Islam Jusufi and Jubjana Vila Zeka Table 5.1  Survey of Albanian youth Survey question

Answers

Ratio of respondents

1

How do you identify yourselves in terms of ‘identity’?

2

Did you vote in last elections held in Albania?

3

Would you vote in next elections?

4

Are you a member of any political party?

5

Do you think that Kosovo issue is solved?

6

Do you think that situation of Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro is improved?

Ethnic Global European Cultural Other Overall Yes No Overall Yes No Overall Yes No Overall Yes No Partially Overall Yes No Partially

14/34 8/34 5/34 4/34 3/34 34/34 27/34 7/34 34/34 31/34 3/34 34/34 5/34 29/34 34/34 3/34 31/34 0 33/34 13/33 19/33 1/33

Percentage of respondents 41.2% 23.5% 14.7% 11.8% 8.8% 100% 79.4 20.6 100% 91.2% 8.8% 100% 14.7% 85.3% 100% 8.8% 91.2% 0% 97.1% 38.2% 55.9% 2.9%

how much Albanian youth understand their identities as complementary rather than as substitutes to each other. Cultural identity in the Albanian context is understood as an amalgamation of ethnic, religious, regional, gender, generational, linguistic, and class values, mainly expressed through common customs, traditions, worldviews, and lifestyle. Cultural identity is often used in different contexts to delineate both the differences and similarities that the Albanians feel to have with Europe and with others. As mentioned above, many youth – 41.2 per cent of our sample – selected ethnic identity as their first choice of identity. Interviewed youth defined ethnic identity firstly in ethno-cultural terms and synonymous to the citizenry as a whole. As one of the interviewees points out, ‘I am an Albanian, ethnically, as I am a citizen of Albania’ (boy, 22). These youths provided an interpretation of core Albanian ethnicity as the legitimate ‘owner’ of the state, which is conceived as the state of the Albanian nation. Secondly, they defined it as a trans-border identity or ‘whole Albanian sphere identity’ (girl, 22). One of the interviewees felt ‘firstly, as Albanian; then, as Albanian from Albania’ (boy, 22). Through this understanding, they emphasized Albania’s right and obligation to monitor the condition and promote the rights and protect the interests of ‘their’ ethno-national kin in other states. ‘Albania needs to protect and support Albanians in Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro’, states one of the interviewees (girl, 19). In this context, Albanian youth

Youth (de)politicization in Albania  103 seem to share three distinct identities – the identity of their own state, in which they live; the identity of the external ethno-national kin to which they belong by ethno-national affinity; and an identity they feel as young citizens of Albania. These three different frames of youths’ ethnic identity are harmoniously aligned to form contemporary Albanian youth identity. Despite being the first choice of the majority of respondents, only 14.7 per cent of participants in the survey selected ethnic identity as the only choice. Global, European, and cultural identities follow ethnic identity. Global identity was chosen by 23.5 per cent of participants in the survey, European identity by 14.7 per cent, and 11.8 per cent chose cultural identity as most important. Indeed, the survey results, as shown in Table 5.1 above, reveal that even though ethnic identity is the first choice of the majority, the sum of other identities like global, European, and cultural identities (50 per cent) surpasses the importance given by participants solely to ethnic identity (41.2 per cent). Respondents identifying primarily with a global identity highlighted the importance of global humanitarian values and responsibilities. As mentioned by one of the respondents, ‘cosmopolitanism or humanity as a whole, not ethnicity, should define the primary horizon of our moral imagination and political engagement’ (boy, 21). This group of youths think that people need to extend their responsibilities beyond borders; as explained by a respondent: ‘boundaries of the nation-state should not set limits to our responsibilities and political commitments’ (girl, 18). The attachment to European identity is connected to a range of opportunities offered to youth in Albania by the EU integration process: youth mentioned ‘the visa free regime with the EU countries’ and ‘increasing chances for Albanian youth to travel, study or work abroad’ as some of the highlights. Language knowledge featured prominently in our surveys, intricately connected to feelings of attachment to Europe. Indeed, in Tirana, it is not rare to find advertisements in the Italian language, calling for young adults to apply for jobs in Tirana-based call centres serving the Italian market, and many Albanian youth excel in Italian. In addition, this new generation has had years of intensive English language instruction and acquaintance with Italian before coming to university. Youth learn foreign language in their secondary and high school education, and many attend private courses to better master foreign languages. According to Cela, Kamberi and Pici (2015), foreign language courses comprise the highest percentage (31 per cent) of frequented private courses by youth in Albania (Cela, Kamberi and Pici 2015). In addition, English is an obligatory exam for high school graduation, encouraging students to learn it early on, and many universities also provide high quality instruction in English. In our interviews, we found that knowledge of foreign languages was considered as an important asset for Albanian youth, since knowing one or two foreign languages poses an advantage while competing in the Albanian job market. Considering the effects of a globalizing world and Albania’s aspiration for joining EU, Albanian youth feel the need to have foreign language skills in order to be able to compete in the European market and to be able to integrate in European society. Knowledge of foreign languages was perceived by many youths also as a reflection of their European identity.

104  Islam Jusufi and Jubjana Vila Zeka Interviews also pointed to the growing desire of youth to identify in civic and not national terms: their choice of identifying themselves as ‘Albanian’ did not imply an ethnic choice, but a civic one: ‘to be identified as Albanian citizen’ (boy, 21). Classroom discussion participants pointed to their desire to distance themselves from self-identification just as ‘Albanian’ in ethnic terms, arguing that ‘Albanian identity does not include only ethnic identity, but also civic, cultural, religious and many other identities’ (girl, 19). In one respondent’s words: ‘Albanian identity as an inclusionary, not exclusionary identity’ (girl, 24). As shown by the survey results mentioned above, youth identify with other, non-ethnic, identifications, when relevant in particular contexts. The emergence of new identities does not mean that youth search to exclude a category from membership of the nation. Instead, classroom discussion participants highlighted their understanding that the ‘nation works in an inclusionary way to mobilize mutual solidarity among members of the nation that are all citizens of the state’ (boy, 20). Such an understanding aims to transcend or at least minimize internal differences and distinctions, shifting from exclusionary to inclusionary ethnic identity. The prevalence of a civic model where ethnicity and nationality are not supposed to have exclusionary significance appeared as an important characteristic of contemporary Albanian youth: a clear attempt to build civic identity beside the already established ethnic identity. Co-ethnics in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro The dissolution of Yugoslavia led to the emergence of ethnic conflicts in Albania’s neighbouring countries. The involvement of ethnic Albanians in the conflicts in Kosovo and in Macedonia, failing conflict resolution initiatives, and rising nationalist agendas in the region contributed to a revival and rebirth of ethnonationalism in Albania in the early 1990s. Recently, tensions in some of these conflicts have decreased, especially after the 2008 independence of Kosovo and the involvement of European Union in mediation initiatives in these conflicts. The gradual resolution of these conflicts has relieved the public sphere from excessive nationalistic discussions, which has been conducive to the emergence of Albanian civic identity; and, with the further rapprochement to Europe, offering the prospect of a European non-ethnic Albanian identity. Nonetheless, when asked about the situation of Albanians in the region, most of the surveyed youth cared about the fate of their co-ethnics in Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro, and consider the improvements to their situation insufficient. As shown in Table 5.1 above, 91 per cent of interviewed youth do not consider the Kosovo issue solved. As highlighted by an interviewee, ‘resolution of the Kosovo issue rests on the recognition of its independence by all states including Serbia’ (girl, 20). Sixty per cent of surveyed youth did not think that the position of Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro has improved enough. ‘There is a need for full implementation of Ohrid Agreement’, argued one of the interviewees (boy, 19). The percentage of those that think the situation of Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro has improved (38 per cent) is higher than in the case of Kosovo

Youth (de)politicization in Albania  105 (9 per cent). Looking closer at these results, most of the youth who consider the Kosovo issue still unresolved are precisely those youths who chose global, European, or cultural identity as their first choice. Where the situation of Albanians in Montenegro and Macedonia is concerned, 75 per cent of those that chose cultural identity and 64 per cent of those that chose ethnic identity as first choice think the situation of Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro is not improved, whereas the majority of participants who feel primarily European consider the situation of Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro as having improved (60 per cent). This suggests that youth who feel more attached to their ethnic identity still worry about the situation of Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro, and are more satisfied with the status of Kosovo Albanians, likely due to the fact that Kosovo achieved independence in 2008. In order to better understand youth perceptions on this issue, in the interview participants were asked to express their opinions concerning Albania’s role in the situation of co-ethnics in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Youth clearly advocated ‘support for and closer relations with Kosovo’ (boy, 21), a ‘need for economic cooperation among Albania and Albanians in the region’ (boy, 18), and ‘help for Kosovo’s independence recognition internationally’ (girl, 21). The word ‘support’ appeared in half of the responses: Albania ‘should support Kosovo in every decision’ (girl, 20), ‘should support Kosovo in every sphere’ (girl, 18), and ‘support Kosovo in its way toward EU integration’ (boy, 24). Many of the interviewees emphasized that ‘Albania should help in full recognition of Kosovo’s independence’ (boy, 25). One interviewee highlighted ‘the need for economic collaboration with Kosovo (girl, 25), and another went further, advocating for the unification of the market and economy with Kosovo (boy, 20). Youth were similarly concerned about the situation of Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro. Most interviewees emphasized that Albania should pay more attention to co-ethnics in Montenegro and Macedonia. As mentioned by one of them, Albania should work on the ‘protection and improvement of rights of Albanians in these countries’ (boy, 18). The participants also called for implementation of settlement agreements in these conflicts. In the words of one interviewee, ‘Albania should ask for an essential implementation of the Ohrid Agreement’ (girl, 19). Almost all interviewees pointed out the need for protection of Albanians in these two countries through peaceful means, while only one of the interviewees called for coercive measures: ‘Albania should exert pressure on Macedonia and Montenegro for the improvement of the rights of Albanians there’ (girl, 19). Interestingly, only one interviewee claimed that Albania should not care at all: ‘Albania should not play any role at all because Albanians in these two countries are not Albanian citizens’ (boy, 23). The answers reveal that the majority of participants recognize the need for support to co-ethnics; however, at the same time, they emphasized human rights protection, or in the case of Kosovo, emphasized EU integration as a means to solve Kosovo’s problems. Only a small number of the interviewees called for direct intervention, and the majority emphasized the need for using peaceful means and enhancing cooperation.

106  Islam Jusufi and Jubjana Vila Zeka Politicization, voting behaviour, and political party affiliation In order to understand youth voting behaviour patterns, the survey and interview asked questions about voting behaviour and party membership. Concerning voting behaviour, youth were asked whether they voted in last elections, and whether they plan to vote in the upcoming elections in June 2017, in order to see whether the tendency for political engagement though voting is increasing or decreasing. According to the results, as shown in Table 5.1 above, the percentage of participants who intend to vote in the 2017 elections, compared to those that voted in the last elections, is 12 per cent higher: this reflects an intended voting behaviour of 91 per cent in 2017. The level of intended participation in 2017 elections is thus extremely high, both among youth who identify primarily with a global, European, or civic identity, and among youth who identify primarily with an ethnic identity. This demonstrates a feeling of responsibility of youth regarding their civic duty and their commitment to the political process. Youth also talked about their engagement in politics through voting. One of the interviewees stated her feeling of duty: ‘To a certain extent I could say that I feel politically engaged. As a citizen of my country, I feel the duty to engage in politics through voting’ (girl, 25). However, when asked whether they are members of any political party in Albania, only 14.7 per cent responded positively. One interviewee stressed that she was not a member of any political party, but regularly exercised her voting rights (girl, 24). We find that youth tend to engage in politics through voting more than through political affiliation. As expressed by one interviewee: ‘I would like to express my political engagement through voting, as party membership obliges you to obey and do many things you might not like to do’ (girl, 24). Interviewed youth mentioned reasons they were not affiliated with any political party: ‘youth organizations of political parties use youth for their political purposes’ (boy, 25), ‘I do not like political parties in Albania’ (boy, 19), ‘the political cast in Albania is very far from what I feel’. The common theme in these statements is a lack of trust in Albanian political parties. In some cases, youth mentioned giving up on voting because of their dislike of the Albanian political elite. One interviewee stated: ‘I have never voted, because I do not find hope in any of the political parties’ (boy, 24). Another respondent argued, ‘even if we do not like political parties we need to express it through votes’ (girl, 21). Similarly, the classroom discussion identified a discrepancy between youth desire to engage in politics and their engagement in party politics. While the majority of the participants in the focus group showed their interest in politics, only a small percentage was affiliated with political parties, mainly in their youth wings. The main reasons for such a hesitance to engage in party politics, as mentioned by one of the participants in the classroom discussion, comes from ‘difficulties to climb the stairs in a political arena dominated by the old political elite’ (girl, 19), as well as ‘disappointment with the way that politics is practiced’ (boy, 19), as mentioned by another participant. While most participants consider politics as a resource for advancing one’s personal ambitions and fulfilment of ideological goals, they also admit self-interested motivations, including privileged access to

Youth (de)politicization in Albania 107 job opportunities through joining political parties. As highlighted by one participant in the classroom discussion, ‘Through political affiliation you can get a job more easily’ (girl, 19), or, similarly, ‘People who are affiliated with one party and participate as active members in the electoral campaign benefit if the party comes to win in the elections’ (girl, 19). Aside from traditional political activities such as voting behaviour and membership in political parties, we find an interesting development concerning general political engagement of youth. Albanian youth’s political engagement grew out of both the legacy of post-dictatorial political engagement and their reorientation to a new and changing set of political ideas and concerns. While youth in interwar Albania formed the vanguard of various political and nationalist causes, successive generations of youth withdrew from politics in accordance with the imperatives of the communist dictatorial system. The current youth cohort, on the other hand, feels that politics do affect them; as mentioned by one participant in classroom discussion, ‘politics do have a big bearing on our everyday lives’ (boy, 19). Politics remain a driving force for both political and social engagement. Youth in the classroom discussion expressed their affiliation with politics in various ways, like participation in political discussions, following political shows, attending demonstrations, and regularly watching political news. One participant in the classroom discussion said she regularly followed political shows and programs in order to understand what is going on with politics, while another participant showed her ‘activism in political discussions among friends and social environment’ (girl, 19). Most of the participants said they followed political news through either TV or the internet. Being politically active was considered as important by most of the participants, but they called for new ways of engagement. Politicization, in the words of one respondent, helps ‘generate feelings of solidarity and mutual responsibility across the regional boundaries of sub-national identities’ (boy, 25). Albania’s future priorities There is convergence among interviewed Albanian youth views on the priorities of Albanian politics. Through two open-ended questions, they were asked to identify the main domestic and foreign policy priorities of Albania. Most of the interviewed youth identified economic development as the first priority of Albanians domestic politics. Some of the elements they pointed out in this regard are the need for ‘reducing poverty in economic and social terms’ (boy, 24), ‘decreasing the unemployment rate’ (girl, 24), and ‘increasing wages and welfare’ (boy, 25). Security and political stability were the areas highlighted by the remaining respondents. Issues mentioned include ‘building a state of justice and security’ (girl, 24), ‘achieving stability in politics, political parties and actors’ (girl, 25), ‘fighting corruption’ (girl, 21), ‘adopting reforms in judiciary and public administration area’ (girl, 24), and ‘fulfilment of EU membership criteria’ (boy, 25). EU membership was mentioned by one respondent as ‘the best gate for the improvement of domestic politics and more opportunities for a better life’ (girl, 25). Indeed, cooperation and openness,

108  Islam Jusufi and Jubjana Vila Zeka with the EU, the West, and with neighbouring countries, was a noticeable trend among interviewed youth. For many interviewees, EU integration was seen as the main foreign policy priority of Albania, followed by the importance of relations with the West, ‘strengthening relations with USA’ (boy, 24) and ‘integration in the western world’ (boy, 25). Another group of interviewees highlighted the ‘development of stable relations with neighbouring countries’ (boy, 24) and ‘normalizing relations with Balkan countries’ (girl, 25). Only a few of the interviewed youth mentioned ‘the importance of preserving Albanian identity while undergoing EU integration processes’ (boy, 24). Thus, a discernible trend can be observed: most of the interviewed youth pointed out policy priorities which centre on cooperation and openness with the Western world and the improvement of relations with neighbouring countries moving beyond old ethnic grievances.

Conclusion Contemporary Albanian youth have lived through different experiences throughout the period of transition to democracy and globalization, and different ethnic conflicts where Albanians have been involved in neighbouring states. They are now witnessing developments in the path of consolidation of democracy, the EU integration process throughout the entire region, and efforts for improvement of the positions of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro. All these experiences have provided new dynamics to the identity of contemporary Albanian youth. Ethnicity remains important but no longer holds monopoly in the definition of Albanian youth identity, and youth define ethnic identity in inclusionary rather than exclusionary terms. The results of this chapter reveal the prevalence of non-ethnic identities like global, civic, and European identities, and demonstrate that ethnic identity is combined and reproduced by these types of identities. Youth also showed a heightened willingness for political engagement, but also a dislike for the current political elite in Albania; a trend which is manifested in the high intention to vote, yet low affiliation with political parties. Additionally, we find that youth are increasingly engaging in new forms of political engagement, such as involvement in political discussions online and following political news and shows. We also find that most youth relate voting behaviour to their civic identity and as a duty to their nation. While youth highlight that Albania should play a bigger role in supporting Albanian co-ethnics in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro, they stress the need for peaceful relations and a cooperation-based role of Albania in this process. Finally, youth point to EU integration and improvement of relations with neighbours as the main foreign policy priorities of Albania, again pointing to a shift towards being more inclusive and away from the old exclusionary ethnic identity.

Notes 1 The Albanian blood feud is described as ‘a centuries-old custom that draws on tribal tradition and customary law’ (Mortimer and Toader 2005) and a self-governing practice

Youth (de)politicization in Albania  109 that calls for ‘blood for blood’ (gjak pergjak) to regain a lost individual/family honour (Vickers 2001). 2 By Albanian youth, we mean youth that are citizens of Albania, and not Albanian youth living in the former Yugoslav republics of Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

References Berdufi, D. 2013. Increasing the vote number of the Albanian political parties based on the Albanian electorate voting behaviour. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), 579–86. Berisha, F., Hazizaj, A. and Strata, I. 2015. Pjesëmarrja e të Rinjvenë Politikëdhenë Vendim-marrjenë Shqipëri [Youth Participation in Politics, and Decision-Making in Albania], CRCA Report, Albania. Biberaj, E. 1998. Albania in Transition: The Rocky Road to Democracy. Colorado: Westview Press. Cela, A., Kamberi, G. and Pici, E. 2015. Albanian Youth 2015. Tirana: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and IDRA Research and Consulting. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 2017. Albania. World Fact Book. [Online]. Available at: www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/al.html. Chandler, D. and Munday, R. 2011. A Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deliso, C. 2007. The Coming Balkan Caliphate. London: Praeger Security International. De Waal, C. 2005. Albania Today: A Portrait of Post-Communist Turbulence. London: I. B. Tauris. Elbasani, A. 2016. State-organised religion and Muslims’ commitment to democracy in Albania. Europe-Asia Studies, 68(2), 253–69. European Commission. 2012. European youth: Participation in democratic life. Flash Eurobarometer, 375. Fjerza, O., Gega, E. and Memaj, F. 2014. Youth political participation in Albania. International Journal of Management Cases, 16(1), 4–16. Inglehart, R. and Baker, W.E. 2000. Modernization, cultural change and the persistence of traditional values. American Sociological Review, 65, 19–51. Instat. 2013. Censusi i Popullsisëdhe Banesave 2011 [Census of Population and Housing 2011]. Tirana: Instat. Mortimer, M. and Toader, A. 2005. Blood feuds blight Albanian lives. BBC. [Online]. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4273020.stm. UN DESA (Department of Economic and Social Affairs) (n.d.). Fact Sheet, Definition of Youth. Available at un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/youth-definition.pdf Vickers, M. 2001. The Albanians: A Modern History. London and New York: IB Tauris.

6 From foreign mercenaries to civic activists A comparison of youth identity in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia Ana Alibegova Introduction Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia have not only shared a common history as part of the Yugoslav Federation, but in many aspects share a similar fate after the demise of the common state. The life of young people in these countries is largely connected to the dysfunctional system and failed statehood, which, on the other hand, unites youth in their struggle for better living standards, justice, and equal treatment which surpasses ethnic divisions. In this chapter, non-ethnic identities among youth emerging as a result of the post-conflict situation in the two countries are analysed, as well as the ways in which social frictions are created and nurtured in the two societies. In addition, the role of youngsters as bearers of positive change and contributors to a shared sense of belonging in B&H and Macedonia is explored. The two countries were selected because of several similarities. Misha Glenny (1996) points out the following parallels. First, the majority population of the two countries, Bosniaks and ethnic Macedonians, have assumed the modern characteristics of a nation only after Yugoslavia’s formation to act as a buffer zone to Serb and Croat influence within the Federation. Second, both countries share great significance for the region: B&H is crucial for the control of the Adriatic coast and can act as a fortification against Croatian and Serbian expansionism, whereas Macedonia is perceived as a crossroad connecting roads ‘from Orthodox Belgrade to Orthodox Thessaloniki .  .  . and from Muslim Durres in Albania to Muslim Istanbul’ (249). Last but not least, B&H and Macedonia in modern times have been highly dependent on the protection of external powers, such as the AustroHungarian Empire, the Ottoman Kingdom, or Yugoslavia, and at the same time their security has always been conditional on the benevolence of their minority populations (Glenny 1996: 249–50). Orlović (2015) presents one more similarity of these two countries as ‘consociational experiments in the Western Balkans’. As I will highlight below, another crucial parallel between the two countries can be found in the peculiar outcomes of the experimental peace agreements, which were widely perceived as treaties ‘designed to end a war, not to build a state’ (Ashdown 2004: 15). The document that traced out the post-war settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), initiated on

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists 111 21 November 1995 in the state of Ohio. Bringing peace in the heart-shaped exYugoslav country was not an easy task, especially bearing in mind the context and character of the war. The violence was described as ‘neighbours at war’, aiming to stress the pre-war multicultural life in the country (Halpern and Kideckel 2000). The Bosnian war could also be explained through Kaldor’s (1999) concept distinguishing so-called new wars and old wars, where old wars are understood as wars between states, whereas new wars are meant to be conflicts where both state and non-state actors are involved, and where the main cause of violence is the struggle over identity. Yet, Dayton was negotiated by the very nationalists who participated in the war, therefore securing their power based on fostering ethnic fractions, instead of establishing grounds for interaction and mutual cooperation. On paper, it was peace, but, as Holbrooke (1998: 312) argues, to make it functional was the ‘next and greatest challenge’. Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing a serious crisis, and the country is said to be in ‘permanent decay, having no legal and legitimate Constitution, with undefined state and social structure and uncertain future’ (Sačić 2008: 91). In comparison to the Bosnian war, the civic conflict in Macedonia, though of a much lower intensity and limited geographical scope than the one in B&H, is more recent. Thus, young people in Macedonia not only feel the consequences of the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) from 2001, but also have fresh memories of the events that brought to that agreement. In the summer of 2016, Macedonia marked the 15th anniversary of the OFA, an agreement that ended the conflict in 2001 and set the path for intercultural dialogue, living together, and European integration of the country. Yet, the reality was far from the expectations. The conflict in 2001 instigated a lack of trust between the two ethnic communities, Macedonian and Albanian, and led to even more emphasized divisions and segregation among citizens. Changes to the Constitution, though substantial, in numerous aspects ‘did not constitute a major transformation of the political system’ (Bieber 2011: 14). In addition, Bieber notes that, although the spirit of the agreement goes along with the promotion and preservation of ethnic diversity, it still can be perceived as bi-national or ‘as having “one and half” constituent nations’ (Bieber 2011: 22). Bajrami and Iseni (2014) go even further, defining this model of power-sharing as a case of weak institutionalization of consensual democracy. Aside from the long-lasting effects of these peace agreements, an additional dimension the two countries share, which equally affects youth in both countries, is the level of political participation and active protest. In particular, I consider two contentious actions that may be understood as part of an ongoing youth movement still in the stage of emergence (De la Porta and Diani 2006): the JMBG protests in Sarajevo, and the Colourful Revolution in Skopje, which brought new identifications to the surface and catalysed the social frictions in the two capitals. The JMBG protests of June–July 2013 were led by young activists and came as an outcome of a Facebook event requiring responsibility from the politicians and immediate new Law on Personal Identification Number. Three months before the scheduled start of the first post-war census, Bosnia and Herzegovina faced massive protests where citizens expressed their dissatisfaction with the work of

112  Ana Alibegova their politicians. What was supposed to be the biggest civic protest in the postwar period was actually a gathering of citizens requiring new Law on Personal Identification Number (Jedinstveni matični broj građana, JMBG) as a result of another dispute between the entities in B&H: Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since February 2013, no identification numbers were issued to new-borns, causing problems with their access to health insurance as well as to personal documents. The issue of JMBG came to the peak as the three-month old Belmina Ibrišević could not undergo an operation abroad, lacking a passport to leave the country. The JMBG protests were also called Baby Revolution (Bebolucija), as the new-borns were the ones endangered due to the political tensions between the two entities. It also happened in the context of the big demonstrations for Gezi Park in Turkey, interpreted in the setting of the global Occupy movement. The young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina were enthusiastic to be the leaders of the changes that should make a better country, a country of all its citizens. The demonstrators continued to meet every day at noon in front of the state institution buildings. They defined their demands: to adopt immediately a new Law on Personal Identification Number, to make a solidarity fund for medical treatment abroad of those in need (where ministers and representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly would donate 30 per cent of their monthly salaries), as well as to protect the demonstrators from any further allegations and prosecutions.1 The political situation that Macedonian youth face is similarly complicated. Macedonia is facing an immense brain-drain, with around 150,000 educated young people having left the country in the last 20  years (Jukić 2013) and an alarming unemployment rate: according to the World Bank data of 2014, 50.8 per cent of youngsters aged 18 to 24 are unemployed. In recent years, Macedonia has also been drowned by a serious political and legal crisis. Many youngsters, as part of the opposition parties, civil sector, or as individuals, were behind social movements that have shaken the country in recent years, demanding separation of the then ruling party Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) from the state and an end to de facto one-party regime. The June 2011 protests against police brutality were a turning point for young people discontented with the dysfunctional system and were a catalyst for an all-encompassing social youth movement. The protests started as a reaction to the murder of the 21-year-old Martin Neškovski, who was allegedly beaten to death by a member of a special police force on the celebration day of the electoral victory of the then ruling party. Similar to the JMBG events, the protests were widely supported by the civic sector and well-known public personalities such as actors, musicians, and human rights activists, promoting peace and dialogue and condemning any kind of violence. In the period that followed, the civic movement took different forms. It united many young people who later went to the streets demanding justice and responsibility for other causes. For example, in 2015 then-opposition leader Zoran Zaev accused the government of then prime-minister and leader of the ruling party, Nikola Gruevski, of illegal surveillance via phone of up to 20,000 people. Thousands of young people who

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists  113 had been involved in the protests against police brutality went on to demonstrate in front of the government building as the wiretapping scandal unfolded. The discontent of young people with the scandals in the country grew, and more and more young people joined the so-called Colourful Revolution. The movement developed from the initiative ‘I protest’ (Protestiram) and among the 82 civic organizations that supported it, youth played an active role. Young people were also among the leaders in several other movements that started in the last few years in Macedonia, such as student plenums. Around 10,000 students marched on the streets of the capital demanding the suspension of a new Law of Higher Education. Following the example of the countries from the region such as the plenums formed after the February 2014 protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina, protesters occupied some of the faculties claiming them as ‘autonomous zones’.2 As was the case in the previous initiatives, the young activists insisted on horizontal organization, and this time its product was called a student’s plenum. This so-called plenumization3 also influenced the movement of the high school students who were protesting against ‘bad educational policy’. In this chapter, I examine the role played by youth in these movements. I focus on the non-ethnic identities of youth present in the two countries, analysing the dichotomy between the ethnic and the social categories and focusing on existing social frictions in both societies. In particular, I  ask how post-conflict realities affect youth identity formation, as well as what role political involvement plays in this process.

Methodology This article is based primarily on in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in the cities of Sarajevo (B&H) and Skopje (Macedonia). The Sarajevo research was completed during the spring of 2013 when I established contact with various non-governmental activists and young people (approximately aged 18–35). In the last four years, I made more than five visits to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, being a youth worker, I cooperated with partners in the youth sector and benefited from various networking opportunities. The research in Skopje was carried out over the past several years, as I live and work in Skopje and am actively involved in youth policy making in Macedonia. I was also able to reach contacts due to my experiences as a journalist, civil society activist, and youth worker in Macedonia. In addition, during the protests outlined above, I had the chance to conduct participant observation. I talked with the young demonstrators, contacted some of their leaders, and observed not only the events, but also, when possible, their preparations in order to get better insight into the overall situation. While I  draw upon direct observations and informal conversations, the central data used for this chapter are in-depth semi-structured interviews. Part of the interviews, in particular those from Bosnia and Herzegovina, I conducted three years ago, as part of a research project considering the reasons why some youth choose to ethnically declare as ‘Others’. In the spring of 2013, I interviewed 25 young people (in the age range 18–30) who declare as ‘Others’. Later, in 2015,

114  Ana Alibegova I interviewed again three of my former interviewees to see if and how their attitudes had altered, as well as to hear their perspectives on the topic in a wider context. My research in Macedonia included both formal and informal interviews on the topic of the protests and the escalating political crisis in the country, and youth’s attitudes towards these events. Six in-depth interviews which took place in 2016 included young people who belonged to different ethnic and social groups, including a human right activist, a youth leader, and a journalist. The remaining interviewees were active citizens, able to think critically and with the capacity of opinion-makers in their communities. All the conducted interviews were in-depth, done in person or via Skype video calls, and in average lasted around one hour. Questions included the youth’s assessment of the overall situation in the countries and current affairs. Interviewees were asked to identify the main problems in their countries, talk about their views and experiences on the issues of ethnicity, reflect on what unites and disunites young citizens, and comment on social movements as important events shaping social reality at the time of discussion.

Results Both B&H and Macedonia nowadays are best understood through the conception of a multi-ethnic state and a complex society. The multi-ethnic state is opposed to the notion of nation-state, in which territory fits the territorial distribution of a certain national group (Connor 1978). The complex society incorporates various correlations and conjunctions between the ethnic and social categories. In the post-war institutional set-up, one cannot talk about diversity as a new quality that promotes mutual understanding, but rather about plurality where the groups exist together in parallel societies, lacking communication and a common action. Adnan,4 for example, is a young journalist who explains the complexity of the Macedonian society as a ‘continual abnormal condition’: It is very important to explain to the young people that they are first of all citizens, and all the rest comes afterwards. Always when you try to elaborate on that, you are perceived as a foreign mercenary (stranski platenik) and someone who doesn’t wish all the best to your country, because this country is supposed to belong only to one nation (narod)5. Young people in Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were raised in an environment designed by unsuccessful peace treaties nurturing dysfunctional states with parallel societies, with strongly emphasized ethnic divisions and questionable nation-building coming as an outcome of the social frictions. In such settings, young people have embraced different post-conflict identities. Funk (2013) discusses identity in relation to the core self. Whereas identity theory focuses on roles, behaviours, and intra-group relations, social identity theory depicts perception, feelings, and inter-group comparison. Funk relates the two theories and points out that one can become a member of a particular group through otheridentification with the other group when a person realizes that ‘her fate is the same

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists  115 as the others in the group simply because she is related to these people by identity’ (Funk 2013: 4). Jensen (2011) discusses the use of the concept of ‘othering’ in identity formation and concludes that the centre is identified with power, while the other is subordinated and is perceived as inferior. Such othering does not make much sense for some of the Bosnian youth, in particular those who object to the ethnicized reality by promoting cosmopolitism and anti-nationalism. Kemal from Sarajevo, for instance, is of the following opinion: None of these three ethnic identities is developed. They just have a name, but it is unclear what they represent. For instance, what [it] means to be Bosniak, what set of characteristics do they have, what makes them different? Nobody can convince me in the differences between a Bosniak and a Serb, some would say perhaps the alphabet is different, but in the same time, majority of the Serbs use Latin alphabet and have identical language. In order to accept something, I have to know what I am accepting. If I say, ‘I want a coffee’, I know I will get a coffee, and I will not order a coffee if I am unsure if I will get a cup of coffee, a glass of juice, a beer or even a Jaegermeister.6 Young people from the three ethnicities (and those who declare as Others) in B&H are increasingly aware of the worth and jingoism of the ethnic community. However, those youths who are active, think critically, and feel themselves as citizens first and only then (if at all) as members of their ethnic community, share similar views, attitudes, values, and beliefs, no matter their ethnic origin. The interviewees stated that alongside the above-mentioned crisis, the economic situation plays a crucial role in embracing one’s own ethnic identity, again juxtaposing the ethnic and social categories. As young journalist and activist Haris explains: The whole discussion about identity is trivial, because at the top are the economic problems, and then there are 10 spaces left, and afterwards come education, healthcare, social policies, ecology.  .  .  . There are at least 20 more important issues before the question of national or any kind of an identity.7 Three years later, in another interview I conducted with Haris, he was still thinking similarly, just more disappointed that civic youth activism had not brought much change to society. In his view, the socio-economic and political situation have brought lethargy to the youngsters: Young people think that here, in Bosnia, nothing is good, and that things can only get worse through time. With time, we have become depressive people. Everything starts with the words ‘I can’t’ (Ne mogu), ‘I don’t want to’ (Ne želim), ‘I won’t’ (Neću), ‘I’m not allowed’ (Ne smijem), all sentences start with ‘No’ (Ne). That is a state of mind, that is a state of spirit, and it is quite problematic. Many times I tried to change those views and opinions, and to show to youngsters that we can try to make it work.8

116  Ana Alibegova The ethnic belonging in these terms is not solely based on what Ott (1989) defines as a frame, in which a common bond is felt between individuals due to shared traditions, behaviours, values, and beliefs. Instead, it is inspired by complex socioeconomic situations, where the country is battling a youth unemployment rate of more than 60 per cent, and a state system is organized along a quota system where ethnicity plays a vital role in employment strategies. Conversely, a functional state would provide the necessary conditions for young people to develop and realize themselves, instead of misusing their ethnic identity for patronage and clientelism. The effects of peace agreements/state-building on youth identity As outlined above, legacies of the Dayton peace agreement are perceived by many young people as one of the main obstacles to the prosperity of B&H. A debate on the extent to which Dayton imposed the creation of new identities or reshaped existing ones was particularly activated in the weeks before the first post-war census scheduled for autumn 2013. Many young people, as a revolt against ethnic fractions, were ready to declare themselves as so-called Others, an unhappy term that came out as a result of the peace agreement, encompassing all who do not declare as Bosniaks, Croats, or Serbs.9 Choosing to be ‘Other’ for the youngsters was a sign of dissatisfaction with the current system, while being automatically put in the box of ‘Other’ was a misfortune and negating of an existing identity. Eva, a youth activist from Sarajevo advocating for the rights of ‘Others’, explains: The Dayton Peace Agreement was written in the airport, as some people in an everyday conversation would say, as perhaps the lawmakers did a mistake when naming ‘Others’ all people whose origin was from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and all those who were and felt even more Bosnian and Herzegovinians than the Bosniaks, Serbs and the Croats. When you tag a person as ‘Other’, you are automatically stigmatizing that person. For instance, black people were perceived as ‘Others’, meaning they were not like us, they were enemies, they were under our control. It leads to creation of enmity. People say: we are going to be Bosniaks because we don’t want to be ‘Others’, we are going to be Serbs, because we want to belong to some category, and ‘Others’ do not belong to any. Secondly, it is a racist term. For example, a prostitute is an ‘Other’ – she sales her body and remains on the margins of society the ‘Other’ symbolizes. Therefore, labelling you as ‘Other’ in a political sense is very unfavourable.10 Another young woman from Sarajevo, Dragana, argues that young people, challenged by the turbulent situation and political climate in the country, are in constant search of their identity. Being strongly against divisions on ethnic, political, social, or economic lines, those youths who are active and have a critical approach towards societal problems embrace the civic identification and would rather define themselves as Bosnians and Herzegovinians: There is no acknowledged Bosnian and Herzegovinian identity, and if they don’t feel like they belong to three constituent people groups, this is the only

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists 117 option that is left. These people value human rights, equality, justice and similar concepts more than group affiliations that put them in boxes and tell them how to think and behave.11 In Macedonia, a reality similarly fully arranged according to ethnic principles divides Macedonian and Albanian youth from early ages. The possibility of obtaining primary, secondary, and tertiary education in the Albanian language decreased opportunities for interaction between youth of the two ethnicities, and provided a platform for youth to grow and learn in almost entirely mono-ethnic environments. Aneta, a leader of an international NGO based in Macedonia, describes the ethnic divisions in the country, affecting youngsters in the first place: Macedonians and Albanians are two isolated groups. They have nowhere to meet, the educational system is completely divided, from primary school to universities, and one does not have the opportunity to communicate with the other ethnic group. Therefore, one cannot know if they have the same things in common or not, even if that is some kind of a problem that they can solve together.12 On the other hand, a young ethnic Albanian, Lumnije, sees the Ohrid Framework Agreement as a platform that can connect young Macedonians and Albanians. In her opinion, post-conflict realities come out as a result of different interpretations of the Agreement: I am not seeing any good from the Albanian political parties, as they do not give efforts to implement the Ohrid Framework Agreement in the right way, so that we can have the rights we are entitled to and not feel discriminated. I think once we reach a level in our country where it will be no longer important if you are an Albanian or a Macedonian, but we are one nation that live in Macedonia, then there will be some changes in the country. Otherwise, at this moment, everyone is led by his or her interest.13 Yet, she finds the clientelism that has come as a result of the Ohrid Framework Agreement particularly troublesome. In this case, in order to fulfil state quotas, a certain number of ethnic Albanians got employed as civil servants, but because of the lack of space and working conditions, they sat at home, receiving salaries and having no possibility of building their careers. That comes as a logical consequence of what Ragaru (2008: 55) describes as intra-Albanian party competition, when the Albanian political parties can only ‘deliver (jobs, contracts, public funds) when they are in power’. Such a system of clientelism creates fear among ethnic Albanian youth and restrains them from openly expressing their discontent: The Albanians are also going to the protests, but those ethnic Albanians that do not support a precise political party. In addition, there are no big non-profit organizations or groups among the ethnic Albanians, because for you to go out to protest and demand changes you need some support. There are very

118  Ana Alibegova few Albanians that are not afraid and are not dependent on someone. A lot of young Albanians who are conditionally employed but sit at home and get salary fear to lose that. In my opinion, they are making a big mistake. There are a lot of unemployed youth and if you are not a member of a political party, you cannot find a job easily, which makes them dependent on the political parties. If we were a stronger country, like other European countries, if I could leave my job and find another one in a week or two, I think that things in Macedonia would be different; youth wouldn’t be so obsessed with politics.14 All in all, the two ex-Yugoslav countries continue to share the consequences of the conflicts reflected in the ethnicization of the society and the unfinished statebuilding process. The deep ethnicization continues to dominate society, enhanced by deep social frictions, in particular among the youth. Tensions arise as an outcome of the perpetual political, economic, and social challenges that countries are facing since their independence, even more noted with the treaties’ failure to build a functional state. The lack of statehood continues to reflect in every aspect of the life of Bosnian and Macedonian young citizens, turning their countries into ethno-democracies, or ethnocracies, lacking one all-encompassing national identity freed from religion, nationalism, and/or politics (see also Anđelić 2003; Velikonja 2003; Jansen 2007). Political participation through protests In deeply ethicized societies, there is still space for the emergence of various social categories challenging ethnic frictions. Namely, political participation can be taken as an identity marker for youth in the two countries. Conventional modes of political participation are those in which a dominant political culture is recognized as acceptable and participation is related to institutionalized actions, whereas unconventional modes are related to non-institutionalized actions, often directed against the system, and aim to make transformations of socio-political structure (Conway 1991, Kaase and March 1979). Although research on political participation focuses more on the unconventional modes of political participation as an identity marker, it is vital to refer to the voting and political engagement of youth as conventional modes that are closely linked and often conditional to the non-institutionalized actions. In ethnicized societies, new identities emerge beside ethnic ones as a result of the discontent from the failed state-building and troublesome nation-building processes. As such, young people were the leaders of non-institutionalized actions demanding liberation of the state from the party and advocating the usage of citizenship as a common platform for all. JMBG protests During the JMBG protests in Sarajevo, I spent time with a group of young intellectuals living in the urban area of Sarajevo and being quite socially active. They expressed their revolt, pointing to the absurdity of state policy, which was

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists  119 victimizing babies. Indeed, in these protests, emotions played a key role, not only because the most vulnerable suffered, but also because it was one of the biggest gatherings across ethnic lines in post-war B&H.15 ‘We don’t want entities, we want identities’ was only one of the main slogans chanted by the predominately young protestors. Although youth were loud in their demands, they were also under pressure from the looming upcoming Census: ‘as if the war is starting tomorrow’, as Eva explains.16 The informal organizers of the protests, mostly recognizable as nongovernmental activists and socially active young people, encouraged presenting JMBG as an all-encompassing Bosnian project where the citizens would be united in their needs. An image of togetherness and solidarity was created in the public sphere on the internet, though the politicians and the media in Republika Srpska aimed to present JMBG as a problem of Sarajevo and not of Banja Luka. Nonetheless, the young people did not divide according to ethnic lines: civic activists from Banja Luka stood shoulder to shoulder with their colleagues in the capital. Dajana, an activist from Banja Luka, explains: It appears that the older people from Republika Srpska do not care about that problem, do not care about those kids, because in Republika Srpska that issue (the Law on Personal Identification Number) is solved and in Sarajevo it is not. I am not pleased if any child dies, I am ashamed that somebody might find something else more important than this issue. People overall are terrified, and the media did their job exceptionally.17 The JMBG protests brought up social frictions among youth even more clearly. On one side are active youth (aktivni mladi) who are ready to be the defenders of democracy and human rights in the country, and on the other side are youth who are apolitical (apolitični) and who ‘just care to sit in a café all day long and gossip around’, as some of my interviewees described. Civic activism does connect those from different ethnicities by fortifying the variants within one ethnic group and juxtaposing them with emerging social categories. There are youth who perceive themselves as citizens (građani, gradska raja) and for whom civic identity is more important than ethnic belonging. Opposite of them are the rightful ones (podobni) who perfectly fit in their ethnic or religious box and are not perceived as traitors (izdajnici) of their peoples. The idea that youth who prefer civic over ethnic identity and who are socially active are seen as traitors comes as a result of deeply rooted ethnic politics and general discourse. These people, mostly youth, are often stigmatized in nationalistic media as foreign mercenaries who work against the entity interest. In the same time, those who publicly express and emphasize their ethnic identities are the rightful ones. They don’t speak against ethnic divisions; on the contrary, they feed and support ethnic discourse. This differentiation according to youth involvement in civic activism acts on a social level, where in order to be perceived as a Serb, Bosniak, or Croat, it is not enough to be Orthodox Christian, Muslim, or Catholic, but rather be a good, exemplary (dobar, podoban) Serb, Bosniak, or Croat. These ‘good and

120  Ana Alibegova exemplary’ categories stand on the opposite side of what is understood as urban people (gradska raja) who are socially active and stand behind the JMBG movement in particular. Being a good Bosniak, for instance, entails much more than just being Muslim, but rather fully respecting the religious values promoted by Islam, going regularly to the mosque, praying, being an active member of the Islamic community, having war veterans in the family, and even proclaiming equivocal understandings such as worshipping the role of the Ottoman Empire in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This so-called rightfulness of the ethnicities is particularly emphasized among youth because they are torn between the remembrance of the war and ethnic hatred and the post-war situation where new social identities are emerging crossing ethnic borders. In a sense, youngsters in B&H are at the crossroads between a European perspective and Bosnian traditionalism. Being European, for the youth I spoke with, was connected to the possibility of visa-free travelling, mobility and education abroad, as well as respect of human rights in the largest sense. On the other hand, traditionalism was perceived as a blind following of the rules of the ethnic games, hardly acceptable by those youngsters who prefer beyond-ethnic identification. For instance, Aida and Kemal, both from families of an Islamic background, are critical towards traditionalism, seeing it as some kind of fake patriotism that allows one to get a good job and career progress. For Aida, loyalty to the ethnic community is mirrored in elitism, in particular among young people who prefer to stick to their ethnic group for better prospects in life. Kemal is an active blogger who often runs into conflict with some of his followers who perceive his attitudes as too liberal or not appropriate. The ones trying to make ‘capital of their ethnic belonging’, as Aida described,18 Kemal labels as ‘Bosniaks by profession’ (‘Bošnjaci von Beruf’): It is a notorious fact that these people use their identity as a profession. There are people in politics who do not have any other profession except being politician, no matter if that would be construction work, engineering, medicine whatever. They just claim to be Bosniaks, and that is their profession, they make money out of it. Therefore, they intentionally keep those positions as long as possible, because if such system collapses, they would collapse materially too. There were cases when people became members of the parliament just because of their ethnic belonging, having no competences at all.19 Kemal argues that this is applicable to all three ethnicities, and it also targets the young people in the country. In this sense, a good Croat (dobar Hrvat) is a religious Croat, going regularly to Mass and having a reputation in the main Croatian party. A good Serb (dobar Srbin) is a Serb that does not betray its nation, explains Dajana from Banja Luka. Due to her activism in civil society, and not because she prefers to declare as Other, she has encountered many problems: ‘One way or another we are seen as traitors of our peoples, so it will not help me even if I say that I am a Serb, because I am wrong Serb (pogrešna Srpkinja)’.20

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists 121 Colourful Revolution The Colourful Revolution in Macedonia was not only a reaction to the political crisis in the country, but also an expression of identity crisis, this time manifested with the use of paint to cover government buildings and government-funded statues across the country. The social movements of the last three years have provided an opportunity to transform the young citizens of Macedonia from passive observers into active actors, where ethnicity could become secondary to the desire for a better tomorrow for all. Still, as was the case with the JMBG protests in Bosnia, the initial enthusiasm of youth was extinguished with apparently no immediate results from their activities, and they continued to live in parallel societies and in a dysfunctional state. Politics has become a part of everyday life for each citizen, making it impossible to remain neutral to the recent developments in the country. Ema, a 22-year-old graduate in Law, discusses how politics is preoccupying her life: The political crisis follows me from early morning when I get up, until late at night when I go to sleep. It is with me when I enter the bus and I see it overcrowded with elderly people who are using the public transport for free just because someone said so,21 instead of providing more benefits for the young people, when someone who is driving an expensive Jeep and wearing a big gold chain won’t let me cross at the zebra-crossing. The crisis follows me when I know that someone enters the office and their boss starts shouting at them, because they’re afraid of losing their job, and they have no health or social insurance. The crisis is with me even until I go in my bed at night, trying to sleep and run away from everything.22 The protests in Macedonia were often followed by contra-protests, mostly organized by the so-called Civic Movement for Defence of Macedonia (GDOM), who then supported the current judiciary system in the country and were closely linked to the then-ruling VMRO-DPMNE. Furthermore, they advocated for national unity and openly criticized the then-main opposition party Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM). The parallelism in the country escalated with the two protests taking place at the same time at a distance of no more than one kilometre from each other: GDOM protesting in front of the Parliament against the abolition of the leader of the opposition, and ‘I protest’ in front of the building of the Special Prosecution Office supporting their work. Zdravko, a young researcher from Skopje, claims that the deep divisions in society can be easily illustrated through these protests. Like Adnan, he also talks about a ‘continuously abnormal situation’ in society, where part of the youth considers themselves ‘victims of this kind of politics’, but another part perceives themselves as victims of the crisis or, rather, ‘victims of the traitors’ (zhrtvi na predavnicite). Such perceptions divided the youth into those who wanted reforms in society, and those who believed that the government should lead the country further. Zdravko illustrates

122  Ana Alibegova political participation as an identity marker in the form of a spectrum. At one end of it are the so-called traitors or, as he calls them, ‘rational common sense (zdravorazumni) people’ who have a rebellious spirit and are united in their organizational experience, demanding changes not only in the government, but also in the leadership of the political parties, whereas at the other end are the so-called home-defenders (domobrani).23 Similarly, Oliver is a youth activist who has been leading some of the protests in the Macedonian capital during the last two years. He is also stunned by the deep divisions in society and thinks that inter-ethnic integration will soon be replaced by inter-civic integration, as citizens remain divided along civic lines. Atheists vs patriots, Sorospii24 vs. patriots, blasphemers (bogohuli) vs. believers (vernici) are some of the dichotomies he mentions. At the same time, he identifies himself and his fellow activists as free-minders (slobodari) and antifascists.25 However, the civic identity emerging from the protests is far from unified, and tensions were noticeable within the ‘I protest’ movement itself. Oliver feared elitism in the movement, coming from the belief of ‘I protest’ members that only their activists are the rightful ones (ispravni). ‘Those who fight for democracy do not hear the opinion of the others and do not even try through debate, communication or even confrontation to explain why someone has a right and someone doesn’t,’ says Oliver, adding that ‘while the others are fighting for existential things such as employment and money, the Colourful Revolution is advocating for intangible things that require high civic consciousness such as democracy and justice’. This illustrates that political participation, in particular through protest and voting or favouring a certain political party, has been a clear indicator of the new identities emerging in a post-war context among youth. Not only have different dichotomies existed in the deeply segregated Macedonian society, but those partitions have created civic frictions in society, presumably putting the clash of ethnicities on the back burner and highlighting civic tensions instead. These new social movements brought hope that young people could raise their voices against the dysfunctional system. Although the protests did not immediately achieve their initial goals, they contributed to the change of government in 2017, ending the ten-year reign of the VMRO-DPMNE party. Even more, they empowered many young people to raise their voices and become aware of their importance in society.

Conclusion: a need for inter-civic integration and a shared sense of belonging Youth have found themselves in the middle of a perpetual crisis in the complex societies of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. While ethnic divisions remain vital and alive in both countries, the post-conflict atmosphere additionally produces different social frictions, coming also as an outcome of failed statebuilding mechanisms and troublesome nation-building. Indeed, while discussing ethnic identity, young people in both countries continue to perceive ethnicization as a vital problem in their societies. However, declaring an ethnic belonging is no

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists  123 longer strongly connected to a shared culture, tradition, and/or religion. Seen in a broader context of clientelism, showing loyalty to the ethnic group (and often to the ethnic political party) is expected to bring benefits to the individual, mostly in a form of employment. Political parties serve as an identity marker in both societies. However, while in B&H the political parties are entirely ethnic, in Macedonia most of the new identities are emerging within the Macedonian ethnic block as a result of the partization of the society. Thus, the post-conflict identity of young people is also depicted through the prism of political participation and its non-institutionalized actions in particular, which come as a response to the perpetual crises. Analysing the cases of the JMBG protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Colourful Revolution movement in Macedonia, several parallels were drawn. Both initiatives encompassed youth in their first rows and behind the actions; they presented a kind of civic awakening in the countries; they were mostly non-violent and supposed an active role for the civic, dominantly youth, organizations. Social movements came as a turning point of youth identity and behaviour in the two countries. However, the initial spark that motivated youngsters to become active and raise their voice against the dysfunctional state was also used to fortify new segregations, this time not along ethnic, but social lines. The young citizens of both countries are divided into ‘traitors’ vs. ‘rightful citizens’ (in Bosnia and Herzegovina) or ‘traitors’ vs. ‘home-defenders’ (in Macedonia). Still, inter-civic segregation is much more emphasized among Macedonian youth, due to the peak of the political and legal crisis the country is experiencing at the moment, whereas youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina remain stuck in the status quo of the country, still much organized along ethnic lines and leaving little space for a strong civic component. Ethnic and social frictions in the deeply segregated societies of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia leave little hope for the creation of a shared sense of belonging that would contribute to long-term reconciliation and sustainable development. An outcome that my interviews have shown is largely connected to the legacy of the state-building processes in both countries. Youth explain that failed statehood has captured the nation-building process, leaving the new generations trapped in a system that does not serve them; instead, they are its servants: Bosnia is like an unwanted child. Objectively speaking, almost half of people do not consider Bosnia as their fatherland, the country is deeply divided, there is no unification. And, on the other hand, administratively it is inseparable . . . Therefore, B&H is not the country that youngsters feel as [their] own, even those who feel it often consider it that B&H is not their mother, but a stepmother. They say Bosnia hasn’t given them many things, that they don’t have space, opportunities, perspectives, jobs, which I can understand.26 All in all, the identities of young people in the two countries are being re-shaped in accordance with the political and socio-economical ongoings in the countries. In these deeply ethnicized societies, under the shadow of ethnic identities, different

124  Ana Alibegova social frictions nonetheless do occur, frictions that become apparent in youth’s civic activism. Still, in B&H the civic youth activism is perceived as an opponent to rooted ethnic fractions, whereas in Macedonia, it comes as an outcome of the partization of the society, creating even deeper segmentations within the ethnic blocks. Therefore, fortifying a strong civic society free from ethnic and party control and led by open-minded and proactive youth would be a first step to bridge the youngsters in their fight for functional and prosperous countries.

Notes 1 Profound analyses on the JMBG protests are provided by Basta (2013) and Štiks (2013). 2 More information on the High School Students’ Protest can be found at Independent. mk. 2015. 3 More about the civic activism in Macedonia and the media framing of the protests can be found in Georgievski et al. 2016. 4 In this chapter, the interviewees will be presented with their nicknames. Their demographic characteristics and professions remain unchanged. 5 Interview with Adnan, 10 May 2016. 6 Interview with Kemal, 12 May 2013. 7 Interview with Haris, 10 June 2013. 8 Interview with Haris, 30 May 2016. 9 For more information on ethnic identity among youth in B&H, consult Hronešova 2012. 10 Interview with Eva, 26 May 2013. 11 Interview with Dragana, 8 June 2013. 12 Interview with Aneta, 12 May 2016. 13 Interview with Lumnije, 29 May 2016. 14 Interview with Lumnije, 29 May 2016. 15 Further reading on the relation between the social movements and emotions is provided in Goodwin 2004. 16 Interview with Eva, 26 May 2013. 17 Interview with Dajana, 17 June 2013. 18 Interview with Aida, 12 May 2013. 19 Interview with Kemal, 12 May 2013. 20 Interview with Dajana, 17 June 2013. 21 A reform advocated by the government through which retired and elderly people were provided with free use of public transport on particular days of the week (Republika 2014). 22 Interview with Ema, 11 May 2016. 23 Interview with Zdravko, 7 May 2016. 24 Combination of the words ‘Soros’ – referring to the business magnate George Soros and the Open Society Institute and ‘orospija’ – vulgar term for а prostitute in Macedonian language. 25 Interview with Oliver, 12 May 2016. 26 Interview with Haris, 30 May 2016.

References Anđelić, N. 2003. Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy. London: Frank Cass Publishers.

Foreign mercenaries to civic activists  125 Ashdown, P. 2004. International Humanitarian Law, Justice and Reconciliation in a Changing World. The Eighth Hauser Lecture on International Humanitarian Law, New York, 3 March. [Online]. Available at: www.nyuhr.org/docs/lordpaddyashdown.pdf. Bajrami, D. and Iseni, A. 2014. The challenge of the (non)implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement in the Republic of Macedonia. European Scientific Journal, 10(10), 203–18. Basta, K. 2013. Bosnian protests: Between post-ethnic revival and a stillborn civil society. The Citizenship in Southeast Europe Blog. [Online]. Available at: www.citsee.eu/blog/ urban-struggles-activist-citizenship-south-east-europe-ii. Bieber, F. 2011. Introduction: Assessing the Ohrid framework agreement, in One Decade After the Ohrid Framework Agreement: Lessons (to be) Learned from the Macedonian Experience, edited by M. Risteska and Z. Daskalovski. Skopje: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Center for Research and Policy Making, 12–24. Connor, W. 1978. A Nation is a nation, is a state, is an ethnic group, is a . . . Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1(4), 379–88. Conway, M. 1991. Political Participation in the United States. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press. De la Porta, D. and Diani, M. 2006. Social Movements: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Funk, J. 2013. Towards an identity theory of peacebuilding. Center for Research on Peace and Development, Working Paper 15, 2–15. Georgievski, B., Andonov, D. and Trajkovska, Z. 2016. Rallying for change: Restoring government accountability through citizen protests communication practices during the protests in Macedonia, in Communicating Citizens Protests, Requiring Public Accountability: Case Studies from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, edited by S. Hodžić and M. Pajnik. Sarajevo: Mediacentar, 283–382. Glenny, M. 1996. The Fall of Yugoslavia. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Goodwin, J. et  al. 2004. Emotional dimensions of social movements, in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by D. Snow, S.A. Soule and H. Kriesi. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 413–32. Halpern, J.M. and Kideckel, D.A. eds. 2000. Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History. State College: Pennsylvania State University Press. Holbrooke, R. 1998. To End a War. New York: Random House Inc. Hronešova, J. 2012. Everyday Ethno-National Identities of Young People in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH. Independent.mk. 2015. Macedonia: High School Students to Hold Protests in Several Cities. [Online]. Available at: www.independent.mk/articles/15520/Macedonia+High+Sch ool+Students+to+Hold+ Protests+in+Several+Cities. Jansen, S. 2007. Remembering with a difference: Clashing memories of Bosnian conflict in everyday life, in The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a PostWar Society, edited by X. Bougarel, E. Helms and G. Duijzings. Aldershot: Ashgate, 193–208. Jensen, S.Q. 2011. Othering, identity formation and agency. Qualitative Studies, 2(2), 63–78. Jukić, E. 2013. Youth Emigration Causing Balkan ‘Brain Drain’. [Online]. Available at: www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/young-people-leave-serbia-bosnia-the-most#sthash. y3b1tpyh.dpuf. Kaase, M. and Marsh, A. 1979. Political action: A  theoretical perspective, in Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies, edited by S.H. Barnes. K.

126  Ana Alibegova Allerbeck, B. Farah, F. Heunks, R. Inglehart, K. Jennings, H. Klingemann, A. Marsh, L. Rosenmayr.. London: Sage Publications, 27–56. Kaldor, M. 1999. New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Orlović, S. 2015. Consociational experiments in the Western Balkans: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. New Balkan Politics, 17, 29–50. Ragaru, N. 2008. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Between Ohrid and Brussels, in Is There an Albanian Question? edited by J. Batt. European Union: Institute for Security Studies, 41–61. Republika (English). 2014. Free City Bus Rides for Pensioners on Sunday. [Online]. Available at: http://english.republika.mk/free-city-bus-rides-for-pensioners-on-sunday/. Šačić, N. 2008. Konstitucionalne nedorečenosti kao izvori konfliktnosti u B&H, in Politička i konstitucionalna integracija duboko podeljenih društvava, edited by M. Podunavac. Beograd: Fondacija Heinrich Boell, 91–6. Štiks, I. 2013. ‘We are all in this together’: A  civic awakening in BosniaHerzegovina’. Open Democracy. [Online]. Available at: www.opendemocracy.net/ igor-%C5%A0tiks/%E2%80%98we-are-all-in-this. Velikonja, M. 2003. Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Texas: Texas A & M University Press.

7 Forging civic bonds ‘from below’ Montenegrin activist youth between ethnonational disidentification and political subjectivation Bojan Baća Introduction In October 2015, a group of citizens addressed two open letters to the Government of Montenegro and Montenegrin public, protesting against violent suppression of the right to public gathering and voicing solidarity with those who were wronged in the process. In the first proclamation, the Open Letter to the Government of Montenegro, they condemned police intervention that violently ended a roughly month-long peaceful sit-in protest held in front of the Parliament of Montenegro (Građanski 2015a).1 A  few days later, they issued a manifesto-like Protest Memorandum of Montenegro’s Citizens, in which they offered a discursive frame for collective action intending ‘to prevent the further degradation of the constitutional order’ (Građanski 2015b). Somewhat surprisingly for Montenegro – a society characterized by politically apathetic and civically disengaged youth – the letters were outlined by a group of young activists who gathered on Facebook after police intervention on 17 October and, within days, were organized as an informal activist collective that named itself #Građanski.2 The significance of #Građanski, as I  will show, lies in the fact that it was a new generation of Montenegrin activists that briefly opened up a space for civic autonomy to emerge. I use this term to denote citizens not only endowed with political introspection and social imaginary to recognize themselves as the source of society’s foundations, but also having capacity ‘to make, to do and to institute (therefore also, to say)’ (Castoriadis 1991: 164). Accordingly, autonomous citizens do not fetishize external forces – such as, for instance, the nationstate – as the conditions of their existence, but critically interrogate legitimacy of the instituted dimension of society and ultimately re-calibrate the very conditions that provided them with political/social identity. Drawing on interviews with 15 members of #Građanski, as well as their protest letters, I explore the nature of and the reasons for the Montenegrin youth’s decision to confront dominant ethnopolitical frames and use civicness as the basis of their involvement in popular politics.

128  Bojan Baća

Montenegrin body politic: from ethnification of politics to politicization of ethnicity Developing and exercising civic autonomy in a deeply divided society such as Montenegrin is not an easy task, mainly due to the fact that the ruling regime successfully managed to delegitimize any political activity that opposes its policies and/or method of governing as ‘enemies of the state’ and ‘a threat to the public order’. For that reason, civic activists have often framed their grievances as ‘social’ in a purposive attempt to distance themselves from party politics and thus increase their chances in accomplishing their goals. Unfortunately, this apoliticality – which has been shown to permeate civic engagement in Montenegro (see Kilibarda 2013) – has rendered changes in the system incremental and, in numerous occasions, effectively prevented alliance-building with openly political actors that could have grown into a mass movement to challenge existing power relations. Causes of the problems that people face in Montenegro are inseparable from the policies of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), a party that is a direct successor of the League of Communists. As such, it has been continuously in power since 1945, albeit undergoing internal re-alignments among party elites in both 1989 and 1997. Therefore, to understand the significance – or, more precisely, political consequentiality – of civic-minded, cross-ethnic grassroots mobilization against the regime, a short overview of Montenegro’s overarching ethnopolitics is required. Similarly to other post-socialist countries of the Central and Eastern Europe, a period from 1989 to 1996 in Montenegro was characterized by ethnification of politics, a process by which ethnicity replaced other interpretative frames and became the driving force of political mobilization (Offe 1997: 51).3 In Montenegro, however, ethnicity did not play decisive role in (re)aligning socio-political cleavages during the nineties. In spite of ethnocultural tensions that informed political debates of the time, and DPS’s marginalization and oppression of ethnic minorities, Montenegro was nonetheless different from the neighbouring countries (Darmanović 2003: 150, Gallagher 2003: 55). Political life here was not completely subsumed by the gravitational pull of competing ethnonationalisms. The main split was between ethnically defined parties favouring ethnic homogenization, and civic-minded political subjects opposing it (Bieber 2003: 16–29, Fink-Hafner 2008: 174–6, Morrison 2009: 89–141). The illiberal values, antidemocratic principles and (ethno)nationalist ideals – often manifesting as bigotry and xenophobia – came to be associated with the so-called uncivil society (Kopecký and Mudde 2003: 2–5) as opposed to ‘civil society’, a concept that during transition came to be used as a synonym ‘with all things virtuous, progressive, democratic, and just’ (Stubbs 2007: 215). The phase of ethnification of politics ended with the first cross-ethnic, civic-based mobilization that occurred in 1996, when the two strongest opposition parties, united in the name of ‘national reconciliation’ as the People’s Unity, placed ethnopolitical differences aside to create a mass movement to challenge the common adversary – the DPS. This shift of political focus from polarizing ethnonational issues to unifying socio-economic

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  129 problems proved to be the first real threat for the ruling establishment. The following year, an internal party split in the DPS pushed its reformist wing, which was losing support in the traditionally conservative base, to create an alliance with progressive opposition, civic associations, independent intellectuals and, most importantly, ethnic minorities – a move that would result in the broad antiMilošević movement that lasted from 1997 to 2000 (Darmanović 2003: 148–50, Kovačević 2007: 76–7). This multiethnic coalition began to (re)articulate Montenegrin national identity as inclusive and, hence, not based on particular ethnic composition or religious belonging (see Džankić 2014, Jenne and Bieber 2014, Malešević and Uzelac 2007). As such, it was ideologically framed in liberal, ‘civic’ terms such as multiethnic, multicultural, ‘urban’ and pro-Western in a sense that it became closely tied to what is often referred in public as ‘European values’. The Milošević-sponsored opposition, on the other hand, was gradually sliding into exclusive Serbian nationalism and, by 2001, rendered its supporters the ‘political Serbs’, throwing an entire ethnic group into what I  call, double ghettoization. On one level, it was ghettoized ‘from above’, by the state apparatus: during struggle with Milošević, his supporters in Montenegro were often accused by the ruling elites as being an ‘ “anti-Montenegro” force’ (Strmiska 2000).4 In a reaction to the politicization of Montenegrin identity as inclusive, the Serbian elites unintentionally ghettoized their constituency – and thus the ethnic group in entirety – ‘from below’, by tying it to conservative values, anti-Western sentiments, Serbian nationalism, and ties to the highly politicized Serbian Orthodox Church. This framing effectively demonstrated its ethnonationalist rather than civic outlook, which made it easy for the state propaganda to (re)present the political role assumed by the Serb ethnic group as ‘the ugly face of the 1990s’, a time when the non-Slavic-Orthodox ethnic minorities were repressed by the very same DPS regime that had now claimed to protect them (see Šístek and Dimitrovová 2003). However, while scholars characterize the 1997–2000 polarization and antagonization of Montenegrin society as essentially political in nature, the Montenegrin/Serb ethnonational identity divisions were significantly informed by these political – or, more precisely, ideological – differences.5 Therefore, it was only after 2000, when statehood status emerged as the central political question, that the ethnonational polarization of the Slavic-Orthodox population began taking place: as (ethno)political entrepreneurs mobilized popular support along the independence/union cleavage, the citizenry itself became deeply divided and invested on this issue. Consequently, national identification within this demographic group took two divergent trajectories: ‘Montenegrin identity’ came to be associated with support for state independence, whereas ‘Serb identity’ signalled support for continued union with Serbia (Caspersen 2003: 115–18, Jenne and Bieber 2014: 447–52, Troch 2014: 25–9).6 Even though the pro-Serb parties began to reform in the early 2000s by adopting European integrations as their strategic goal (Vujović and Komar 2008: 230–4), the DPS used populist rhetoric to deepen and widen the Montenegrin/Serb fault line. Instead of dissipation of ethnopolitics after independence, the fusion of politics and ethnicity

130  Bojan Baća was consolidated, establishing ethnonational identity politics as the master frame through which the DPS governs (see Džankić 2014, Morrison 2011). Accordingly, ‘the “fear” of Serbs who will “take away the not easily achieved Montenegrin statehood” [became] the underlying theme of every political campaign in the country’ (Komar and Živković 2016: 790), with ethnonational identification remaining as the key determinant of voter behaviour (Komar 2013). Put more simply, even though the split between Montenegrins and Serbs had begun as political/ideological (rather than ethnic), by 2006 the main ethnopolitical cleavage in Montenegro was (re)articulated in an unusual formula: Montenegrins plus ethnic minorities minus ‘political Serbs’ (Baća 2013).7 Ultimately, ethnic-cum-political Serbs effectively became ‘the Other’: an adversary not only to the DPS, but to all those groups whose identity is inscribed in ‘Montenegrin independentism’ and, to a certain extent, defined by the DPS-induced fear from the ‘political Serbs’. As of 2006, challenging the ruling establishment from a civic standpoint became difficult, since DPS capitalized on the results of referendum and framed its reign as the only protection of Montenegrin sovereignty and independence, the only guarantee of the nominal civic composition of polity, and the only possibility for Montenegro to join the European Union. Whereas ethnification of politics implies framing political antagonisms through supposedly ‘primordial’ – and thus allegedly ‘irresolvable’ – ethnocultural differences between ethnic-cum-political adversaries, I use politicization of ethnicity to denote top-down instrumentalization of minor socio-cultural differences in the political arena for political objectives of political entrepreneurs (see Weber, Hiers and Flesken 2016, Wimmer 2002). That is to say, this process does not entail (mis)usage of already existing ethnic boundaries by translating cultural differences into political oppositions. Instead, it implies transformation of hitherto insignificant ethnic variances into insurmountable political antagonisms.8 I take this politicization of the so-called narcissism of small differences in the context of Montenegro to be achieved through the process that Stuart Hall (1980) designates as articulation, by which concepts not necessarily linked are connected into a unified ‘chain of equivalences’ that effectively polarizes the social space into politically antagonistic binaries (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 143–5). By identifying a common adversary – the ‘disloyal’, ‘retrograde’, ‘nationalist’, ‘anti-Western’ and ‘unionist’ Serbs – the DPS regime created a frontier between ‘us’ and ‘them’: the ‘patriot’, ‘progressive’, ‘civic’, ‘pro-Western’ and ‘independentist’ Montenegrins and the othered ‘political Serbs’, thus intensifying the merger of politics and ethnicity. The outcome of the process of politicization of ethnicity in Montenegro was that even civic-minded grassroots political organizing of – and, more importantly, cross-ethnic alliance-building with – Serbs was framed through the state ideological apparatuses as a betrayal of national interests, a threat to Montenegro itself and, therefore, delegitimized as ‘opposition to the state and its independence’ (see Caspersen 2003, Despotović 2015, Komar and Živković 2016, Morrison 2011). Ultimately, any opposition – even that comprised of the so-called original independentists that were disenchanted by DPS’s post-2006 policies – came to be dismissed as a threat to the country’s stability and a hindrance to

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  131 its progress, and often delegitimized as a manifestation of the ‘Greater Serbian hegemony’. Therefore, the success of #Građanski in momentarily creating a dynamic of cross-ethnic, civic-minded solidarity and mobilization at the height of a political crisis – and the most visible ethnopolitical antagonization since 2006 – poses an interesting puzzle for scholarly analysis.9 Since political socialization of Montenegrin youth was characterized primarily by ethnonational identity politics, my focus of inquiry is their purposive detachment from ethnopolitics and the forging of civic bonds between the detached. In this chapter, therefore, I  explore reasons behind Montenegrin youth’s proactive attempts to bridge this socio-political cleavage ‘from below’ and, in the process, offer civicness as a new symbolic unifier for political action against the regime that was capitalizing on ethnopolitical identity conflicts.

Who speaks in the name of #Građanski? When it comes to challenging power structures ‘from below’, instances of unconventional, contentious political participation have been shown to be extremely rare in Montenegro (Građanska Alijansa 2015: 18–19, Jovanović and Marjanović 2002: 161–72, Komar 2015: 146), if not the lowest in the post-Yugoslav region (Bešić 2014: 240–1). Studies demonstrate that young people in Montenegro are civically disengaged, politically apathetic and generally disinterested in being involved in public life (Ipsos Strategic Marketing 2013: 28–31, Petković and Rodić 2015: 37–40).10 While reasons for the lack of non-institutional political participation have been ascribed mostly to the country’s historical heritage of authoritarianism and the current patronage system, which have rendered its political culture non-participatory (see Čagorović 1993, Jovanović and Marjanović 2002, Komar 2013, 2015, Komar and Živković 2016), the depoliticizing effects of ethnopolitics on the lack of grassroots activism – among the youth, in particular – have rarely been discussed. Research shows that politicization of ethnicity had profound effects on the societal level, because most politically relevant activities are perceived through an ethnonational lens (see Brković 2013, Forbess 2013, Komar 2013). Since ethnopolitics have deeply influenced the political socialization of my respondents, they represent an ideal subject for studying ethnonational disidentification and political subjectivation in a deeply divided society. The protest letters written by #Građanski were publicly supported by hundreds of concerned citizens (many of whom were prominent ‘independentists’), coming from all ethnic/national backgrounds, ideological positions and political affiliations. Signatories of two protest letters ranged from high school students to senior citizens, but the core of #Građanski was comprised predominantly of activists in their twenties and early thirties. Twenty-one structured, open-ended questionnaires were distributed to members of #Građanski in June 2016, out of which 15 were returned (see Table  7.1).11 The questionnaire was based on #Građanski’s two protest letters, with an aim of understanding emic perceptions and attitudes of Montenegrin activist youth related to ethnopolitics and civicness. Accordingly,

132  Bojan Baća Table 7.1  Demographic features of respondents (N = 15) Age

Gender

21–24 26–30 4 8

31–35 3

Male 11

Education Female 4

Secondary Post-sec. Advanced 4 6 5

Family background

Region

Working class

North Central South

3

Middle class 12

3

8

4

the questions probed reasons behind the young activists’ abandoning of ethnicity/nationality as the source of their political identity, meanings they attached to ‘civicness’ as important markers of their political subjectivity, the role of social/ political activism in their lives, their relationship with dominant nationalisms in Montenegro, their positions toward manifestations of both civil and uncivil society, their understanding of state- and nation-building processes and their opinions on growing up in a post-socialist and divided society. The sample represents ‘the lost generation’ of almost three decades of DPS’s reign, the divided Slavic-Orthodox population in particular. It also captures political/ideological positions of Montenegrin anti-regime activist youth (ranging from paleoconservatives and libertarians, across left-liberals and centrist conservatives, to socialists and anarcho-feminists). Partial limitation of the sample, however, is that 80 per cent of my respondents come from a nominally middle-class background, but they often point out how their families’ standard and quality of living was degraded over time. Thus, regardless of their background, about 70 per cent of my respondents view themselves in terms of precarious labour.

‘We the citizens of Montenegro’ In the protest letters, activist youth called upon all members of the Montenegrin political community, first, to ‘[protect] institutions from misuse’ through civil disobedience and solidarity with the wronged citizens (Građanski 2015a), and second, to respond to the oppression through street demonstrations that had to be ‘democratic’, ‘civic in nature’, ‘peaceful and non-violent’, ‘in defence of the Constitution and Montenegro’s republican system’ and ‘human rights and civil liberties’ (Građanski 2015b). Instead of standing behind some of the available political positions, they spoke from the standpoint of their constitutionally defined political subjectivity – as ‘we the citizens of Montenegro’. This new political ‘we’ was invoked by those ‘disobedient’ citizens who over and above any party affiliations, particular interests or identities of whichever kind, and motivated only by [their] civic concern and responsibility for the common good of Montenegro and [their] desire to preserve its constitutional order and freedoms, including the rights of its citizens. (Građanski 2015b)

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  133 The signatories hence publicly announced their detachment from interests, affiliations and loyalties that composed their (ethno)political identity up to that point and, in turn, rendered visible and audible a political subjectivity that could no longer be reduced to any available ethnic-cum-political identity. As Derrida pointed out in his reading of The Declaration of Independence, the ‘we’ in the phrase ‘we the people’ was created performatively, through invocation of universal human rights and, on this basis, constitution of a community of strangers as a sovereign. In that respect, ‘this people [did] not exist . . . as an entity . . . before this declaration’; it was rather ‘the signature [that invented] the signer’ (Derrida 1986: 10). Subjectivity of this ‘we’ was thus constituted retroactively: the nascent collective came to denote constituents of ‘the imagined community’, that is – citizens in a modern nation-state (Anderson 1991). The principle that binds together members of this political community is equality as legal and political rights-bearing individuals. When Montenegrin youth signed the letters as ‘we the citizens of Montenegro’, they reinvented the meaning (and thus the role) of ‘the citizen’ in the context of violent suspension of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties and political rights. From their perspective, citizens had no other options but to engage in direct action in order to protect civil and political rights from the frivolousness of the state apparatus and all ‘bloody-minded demagogues’ who were ‘spreading lies, hatred, discord, and unrest among Montenegro’s citizens’ with their ‘nationalist and cultural-fascistic rhetoric’ (Građanski 2015b). Political subject-formation under the banner of #Građanski was a reaction to injustice that did not discriminate along identity lines and, as such, was articulated as a democratic intervention in the name of violated civil liberties and civic dignity. Signatories explicitly stated that ‘at the moment when a repressive state apparatus openly carries out aggression against its own citizens, all existing divisions – of ethnicity/nationality, political party, ideology, religion, gender, sexuality, generational – disappear’ (Građanski 2015a). To paraphrase Foucault (1997: 114–15), the ‘we’ that #Građanski claimed to represent did not precede the problem it attempted to solve, but was constituted in relation to, or as a consequence of, the problem itself – that is, against negation of civil and political rights. The political voice of Montenegrin activist youth was a manifestation of a hitherto unidentifiable political subjectivity in Montenegro – namely, an ad hoc, grassroots, autonomous assemblage of self-organized citizens interacting directly, on an equal footing, with the oppressive state. Montenegrin youth thus reacted contentiously not because a particular ethnopolitical identity was wronged, but because universal, shared human dignity was negated. Their outrage found its political articulation in calls for mobilization in order to defend ‘the very character of Montenegro as a republican and free political community’ (Građanski 2015a), which effectively posited the ‘we’ of #Građanski as an opposition to the DPS government. By raising a voice against ‘the police’s boot’, Montenegrin youth was explicit as to who they were standing against, as they were unambiguous in whose name they were acting – ‘the citizen as the embodiment of sovereignty’ (Građanski 2015a). They justified their actions in explicitly political terms – as a self-organized and inclusive collective of citizens that ‘[stood] together in defence of Montenegro, its peace, statehood, and

134  Bojan Baća republican constitution, as well as the human and civil rights of all of us regardless of [their] political, ideological, identity or other differences’ (Građanski 2015b). In other words, my respondents saw it as their duty to act and defend constitutionally guaranteed rights of all citizens regardless of their ethnic/national belonging and political affiliation. Therefore, instead of being yet another political embodiment of available ethnonational identities – into which previous generations were often locked – #Građanski produced a space for exercise of autonomous civic agency that would reinstate resistance as ‘a fundamental civic responsibility’ in the face of the government’s aggression against ‘the foundations of the state of Montenegro, its institutions, and its citizens’ (Građanski 2015a). It is this invocation of universal human rights and shared civic dignity – and, on this basis, the forging of new political bonds between multitudes of individuals – that I wish to explore through interviews with members of #Građanski. More precisely, I am interested in the reasons behind their proactive approach in articulating a new discursive frame that would transcend ethnopolitical divisions and create a trajectory for joint collective action in the name of civic unity among hitherto antagonized individuals and collectives. I therefore explore the ‘bridging of social capital’ across ethnopolitical lines of conflict during which ‘broader identities and reciprocity’ were generated (Putnam 2000: 22–3). Drawing on Jacques Rancière (1992, 1999, 2010), I refer to activist demonstration of newly found sources of political identity as political subjectivation.12 Namely, subjectivation is distinguished from identification as a process through which social actors refuse to identify with the existing (politicized) identity categories, but create themselves anew, in spite of their differences. This process operates on three levels. First, it is initiated by disagreement between the state and its people. Second, it entails a creation of new scripts for political enunciation and new sites of participation for wronged citizens – as those who are unrepresented in the polity – to interact with the authorities on an equal footing. And finally, it enacts impossible identification, a process by which the particularity of an injustice is eliminated by ascribing to it universal attributes, so that a particular struggle is acknowledged by others as their own fight. Put more simply, I use Rancière’s theory to frame my empirical data and show how political subjectivation of the Montenegrin activist youth entailed disidentification from existing (politicized) identities, articulation of equality and solidarity and creation of political bonds between individuals and collectives under a new symbolic unifier. Montenegrin activist youth from ethnonational disidentification As she speaks of ethnonational identity as ‘something that should be transcended’, Aleksandra points out that even she ‘isn’t quite sure [she] was successful in accomplishing that goal’. Indeed, almost half of my interviewees take an affirmative position toward ethnic/national belonging and speak of their nation’s history, tradition and culture as elements that play an important role in their lives. The other half, however, openly declares themselves as anational, often referring to ethnonational identification as something ‘trivial’, ‘grotesque’ or even ‘potentially dangerous’ in the context of politics oversaturated with ethnocultural content. Yet,

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  135 just like Aleksandra, many of my interviewees lament the impossibility of fully transcending ethnonational attachment within such conditions. They emphasize the difficulty of navigating one’s ‘political self’ in a society colonized by ethnopolitics. Stevo clarifies the situation by explaining that ‘every major political issue [in Montenegro] is, in one way or another, embedded in tensions . . . between two dominant ethnic groups’. Whether they feel that ethnonational identity plays an important part in their daily lives – or, on the contrary, see it as an obstacle for embodying and practicing other identities (for example, based on gender, subculture, lifestyle, sexuality or ideology) – the lowest common denominator for all interviewed members of #Građanski is that they do not attach any political claims to their ethnonational belonging. Slobodan, for instance, succinctly explains their political position as built on the premise that ‘ethnonational identification cannot and should not be a platform for political action’ in today’s Montenegro. It would, nevertheless, be wrong to assume that #Građanski’s proactive renouncement of ethnopolitics is simply a matter of progressive ideological positioning. This is a generation that does not remember socialist Yugoslavia and has yet to experience life in Montenegro under a different regime. It witnessed DPS repeatedly sacrificing ‘genuine democratization’ for ‘abstract strategic goals’, thus entrenching the ethnopolitical cleavage that guarantees its stay in power. For these reasons, ethnonational disidentification was a pragmatic reaction to what my interlocutors often referred to as ‘DPS’s divide and conquer’ discourse and policies: a polarization and antagonization of the Montenegrin body politic along ethnonational lines. Namely, they view politicization of ethnonational differences within Slavic-Orthodox population as a key reason DPS is still in power. The ruling establishment misuses differences between ethnonational groups by ‘rendering them political according to the formula “those who aren’t with us are X” ’ (Slobodan). The ‘X’ stands for the ethnic-cum-political ‘otherness’ which is allegedly always trying to undermine stability that can, in turn, only be secured by the DPS. According to Novak, #Građanski was a reaction to this way of reasoning and, as such, was built on the awareness that the ruling establishment is purposively deepening these ethnopolitical cleavages for ‘covering up particularistic interests behind their actions . . . that most often go against the common good’. In ruling elite discourse, he continues, ‘ethnicity is falsely represented as the basis of and the reason for political action’. In contrast, #Građanski views ethnopolitical antagonism between Montenegrins and Serbs as ‘an artificial product of the party machinery .  .  . that instrumentalizes [ethnonational differences] to shape public discourse within nationalistic parameters’, thus maintaining cleavages that render impossible cross-ethnic, civic-based political mobilization that could stop their ‘devastating socio-economic policies which [negatively] affect all citizens of Montenegro’. This ‘merger of party affiliation and ethnonational belonging’, as Darko describes it, has colonized every aspect of life in Montenegro, to the point that if one does not support DPS – he is labelled as a Serb, or [in recent years] if one does not agree with some strategic goal of the elites in power, such as

136  Bojan Baća Montenegrin membership in NATO – he is immediately dismissed as a Putinist, and vice versa. Radmila also complains that politicization of ethnicity affects her everyday life through ‘imposition of ethnonational identity without the right to object’. Anyone who expresses his or her criticism towards government policies and practices ends up being viewed as a ‘Serbian nationalist’. Borislav succinctly summarizes the intensity of politicization of ethnicity in Montenegro: ‘The biggest irony of life in Montenegro is that people are being labelled “citizens” or “nationalists” based exclusively on their ethnonational belonging.’ It is precisely this process – in which individuals are interpellated as ‘political Montenegrins’ (‘citizens’) or ‘political Serbs’ (‘nationalists’), with no space for non-ethnic oppositional political subjectivity to disrupt the binary – that was recognized by #Građanski as something to be challenged by a cross-ethnic, civic-minded unity. Unburdened by the nationalist myths and disappointed in political elites, my respondents took upon themselves – ‘as a new generation’ – to change it by offering a new discursive frame of action. ‘I don’t think anyone expected to see so many non-partisan figures together . . . raising our voice against the government as one . . . in spite of all our differences’, Ranko expresses his surprise with the number of people who answered their call to appear in the streets on October 24. Yet, while they emphasize political harm produced by ethnonational divisions, my interlocutors simultaneously point out the cultural value of ethnic/national diversity in Montenegro. Borislav, for instance, acknowledges that politicized ethnonational differences are ‘at the core of all [artificial] divisions and disputes in today’s Montenegro’, but at the same time he does not call for the elimination of this diversity and its transformation into a monolithic ‘official’ culture. He and other members of #Građanski treasure the multiethnic and multicultural (some even refer to it as ‘intercultural’) composition of Montenegrin society. They criticize instrumentalization of these differences for distracting the public’s eye from the ‘divisions that matter’. For all interviewed members of #Građanski, these divisions are based, in Sreten’s words, on ‘the real problems that are essentially class-based’. Many of their older fellow citizens – members of family, in particular – are caught in the gravitational pull of ethnopolitics. As such, they are emotionally invested in maintaining ‘national divisions that have nothing to do with our real needs’ (Aleksandra). In reaction, all of my interviewees advocate uniting against those who are feeding these divisions while impoverishing working and middle classes across all ethnic/national groups in the country. For that reason, Miroslav views ethnopolitics as ‘the easiest way of emotional manipulation and control over impoverished people’. According to Nela, #Građanski’s goal was to counteract this manipulation by ‘reminding people that Montenegro is a republic . . . an affair of people with civic consciousness and civic responsibilities’. Similarly, Draško defends their activism as a citizen-led action to ‘protect constitutional order and political freedoms it guarantees’. Milorad, on the other hand, emphasizes the moral obligation of the ‘organized civil resistance to state violence [that was] both mental and physical’. In other words, Montenegrin youth

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  137 had engaged in political activism through the framework of #Građanski with three ideas in mind. First, transcending decades-long politicized ethnonational divisions as the conditio sine qua non of (direct) democratic action. Second, abandoning the existing political affiliations that thrive on ethnonational antagonisms in order to make space for new politics. Third, as a new generation, to steer the public debate toward socio-economic dimensions of identity (class and, to some extent, status). Ranko reflects on their position in the Montenegrin political space: ‘our platform . . . showed that alternative, different approaches to politics exist . . . ones that were there, at our disposal, but we somehow forgot [since we had become] used to a monotonous way of [political] participation’. Or, in Stevo’s words, #Građanski showed others ‘they are not alone in their dissatisfaction with the political elites, electoral politics and existing [political] options’. In that regard, the creation of #Građanski was not only an attempt by Montenegrin youth to disidentify with ethnonational categories, but simultaneously to detach themselves, in the Gramscian sense, from political elites thriving on such categories. In the Protest Memorandum, for instance, they marked ‘political irresponsibility and lack of maturity of our political leaders’ as one of the reasons they raised their voice (Građanski 2015b). By positioning themselves against the official discourse that called upon people to defend the state from its alleged ethnopolitical enemies, #Građanski called out citizens to reinstitute constitutional identity of Montenegro as a republic. Namely, what they saw to be a political community in which citizens are not passive spectators of the state oppression, but instead proactive political subjects.  . . . to political subjectivation The idea of the wronged citizens versus the oppressive state became central to defining the #Građanski approach to Montenegrin statehood. For my interviewees, that issue was resolved once and for all in 2006. They all accepted Montenegrin independence as a ‘done deal’. But at the same time, they suggest that the state – indeed, society as whole – need not be defended from the ethnonational ‘other’. Instead, the true assault comes from the ‘neoliberal devastation’ introduced and facilitated by the very elites projecting ‘phantom threats’ such as ‘scary Serbs who will abolish the Montenegrin statehood’. My interviewees do not speak of external threats to Montenegro, nor do they project problems onto ethnic/national groups. Young activists are explicit in their diagnosis: they blame the DPS and its authoritarian regime, neoliberal policies, populist rhetoric, divisive politics and corruptive practices for their material predicaments. For that reason, rather than viewing ‘an actually existing Montenegrin state’ as a facilitator for more opportunities for citizens to ‘fulfil their life goals’, Milorad describes the state under the partitocratic grip of DPS as an ‘instrument for ruling elites to satisfy their personal interests at the expense of common good’. When my interviewees speak in terms of positioning ‘conscious citizens’ as extra-parliamentary opposition that may eventually liberate the state, their accounts radiate with patriotic vibe. The dominant narrative is on defending the country from the machinations of the DPS. Their patriotism, therefore, is not ethnonational in its core, nor does it manifest

138  Bojan Baća itself as nationalism, but is decidedly civic and constitutional in nature, inspired by egalitarian ideals.13 My respondents remark that citizens do not exist because of the state, but conversely. Novak summarized their political relation to the state as ‘anational republicanism’ that is built around the ‘consensus that Montenegro is a country of its citizens, regardless of [citizen’s] ethnonational belonging or political affiliations’ and an awareness that ‘institutions arrested by political parties’ do not treat all citizens equally due to their ethnic/national belonging and political affiliations. To counteract the DPS’s ‘divide and conquer’ strategies, #Građanski called upon citizens to exercise their political agency. This meant not simply forgetting and abandoning their symbolic and material conditions. Rather, this implied momentarily disconnecting from inherited (politicized) identities to affirm solidarity with those wronged by the system. And, as my interviewees explain, the lowest common denominator for a society so extremely divided along ethnopolitical lines is inclusive ‘civic values’ (građanske vrijednosti) or, in one word, civicness. On the one hand, they subscribe to these values – understood as support for ethnic/national co-existence, tolerance of sexual minorities, overall respect for human dignity and equality protected by the rule of law – as the proper basis for the political community of Montenegro. On the other hand, contrary to a general trend in the post-Yugoslav space to equate ‘civicness’ with middle-class ‘civility’ and/or ‘urban’ habitus (see Bilić and Stubbs 2015, Jansen 2005, cf. Ramet 1996), they refuse to accept – and fiercely criticize – elitist civility of middleclass urbanites as the embodiment of civic values. They often pejoratively refer to the latter as ‘citizenist values’ (građanističke vrijednosti). Moreover, they dismiss it precisely on the grounds that it represents the decaying ideology of depoliticized activism of the previous generations. My interviewees’ ‘civic responsibility’ (sometimes even ‘civic duty’) to defend the rights of others to disagree with the authorities are said to be ‘real civic values’. Therefore, not only has #Građanski stopped fetishizing the state, but civil society as well. Miroslav explains that, once stripped of its elitist and exclusionary underpinnings, the ‘civic(ness)’ label ‘designates actions [or actors] that are not motivated by religious, ethnic or national concerns’. The term floats in the public sphere as a vague, catch-all signifier that denotes anything from ‘cosmopolitan’ liberal ideology to ‘urban’ popular culture; from ‘third way’ politics to ‘third sector’ affairs; from middle-class habitus to non-radical (‘civil(ized)’) participation. #Građanski, on the other hand, aim to give new – what they considered to be ‘proper’ – meaning to the term. Namely, one that ‘embraces civil disobedience and resistance to oppression’ (Radmila). Miroslav explains how they purposively used the term as ‘something conciliatory, something unifying, something that transcends religious, national, social, sexual and other divisions and adds a new value and a new strength to society’. Aleksandra, on the other hand, describes how she and her peers saw it as their duty – ‘as a new generation’ – to build ‘a political platform that transcends [existing ethnonational and political] divisions upon which the entire existing system was built’. She yearns for public debate to be steered towards the ‘real needs’ that would eventually result in a wide coalition for ‘liberation from

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  139 the dictatorial regime’. The discursive frame of ‘civic(ness)’ was thus reappropriated to emphasize duties and responsibilities Montenegrins had as members of political – not ethnic/national – community in the face of state oppression. The purposive use of the label to frame their activities was not simply employed to offer citizens an umbrella term under which to gather. It was employed strategically vis-à-vis antagonized (ethno)political entrepreneurs to, in Slobodan’s words, ‘divert the attempt of nationalist extremization of society’. #Građanski, therefore, acted under the banner of ‘civicness’ to give legitimacy to their discontent, but also to create a radical space of inclusion for all anti-establishment sentiments. Once conceptualized as such, ‘civicness’ could not be reduced to any ethnic/ national belonging, political affiliation, ideological standpoint, lifestyle choice, social status or aesthetic preference. The political significance of #Građanski lies precisely in its counterhegemonic acts of reappropriation of ‘civicness’, which they articulate against the prevailing understanding of the term. The normative conceptualization of civicness they offered – proactive, contentious, inherently political – was the first marker of their civic subjectivity. Rather than simply promoting an antipode to ‘uncivic values’ associated with (ethno)nationalisms, my interviewees evoke ‘activist citizenship’, a concept that denotes ‘citizenship’ not in a legal manner as a status, but in political terms as an act, during which ‘subjects constitute themselves as citizens’ – that is, ‘claimants of rights’ – by disobediently demanding justice through contentious activities (Isin 2008: 18, 2009: 383). Activist citizens, therefore, do not follow institutionalized venues of civic/political participation, but creatively break rules and routines by ‘creating new sites and scales of struggle’. In the process, they ‘emerge not as beings already defined’ but as new political subjects (Isin 2008: 39). This activist understanding of ‘civicness’ was further strengthened through #Građanski’s frustration with elites’ neglect of class-based tensions between what Sreten refers to as ‘winners and losers of transition’. In that respect, Montenegrin activist youth thought it was their ‘civic duty to actively participate’ in the country’s political life and ‘do something’. A closer look at their protest letters shows that ‘civicness’ implied two things. First, it denoted political agency of citizens in saying ‘no’ to dominant ethnic-cum-political classifications. Second, it instituted citizens as autonomous political beings. As Darko points out, #Građanski was not supporting DF’s rhetoric, politics or iconography, and was actually very critical of it. ‘As citizens we showed that in a situation like this, it is not necessarily important to support [someone’s] politics . . . or actions, but to fight for their rights’. Nela likewise expresses this logic in saying that ‘an act of civicness was to stand with the peacefully protesting group “Srbadija Barska” against the attacks of an armed squadron of “professional Montenegrins” that is the police force’.14 Milorad touches on this theme in saying that ‘at that point’ he ‘could not imagine action more “civic” than the organized action of people against state violence’. Empathy and, more importantly, solidarity with peacefully protesting fellow citizens were the second marker of their civic subjectivity. This act of solidarity with a manifestation of ‘uncivil society’ implied the abandonment of a liberal (‘citizenist’) consensus concerning what ‘civil society’ actors should do

140  Bojan Baća (and whom they should cooperate with). The consensus is dated to the reduction of civil society to ‘third sector’ populated by donor-funded, professionalized nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the late 1990s. My interviewees disdained liberal middle-class ‘NGO yuppies’ – many of whom were prominent civic activists of the previous generations, though they do not discriminate against those who are of different ideological/political position as long as they have ‘legitimate claims’. What is more, they often accuse these ‘citizenists’ of ‘[latent] cultural racism’, ‘[elitist] cultural fascism’ and/or ‘arrogant middle-class civility’. Stevo reminiscences on how ‘civicness’ became a ‘signifier of progressive, antinationalist politics during the nineties’, but eventually ended up being ‘nothing more than a populist rhetoric void off nationalist tropes’. It was, he continued, discriminatory towards everything it viewed as ‘non-civic politics’ – that is, anything that was outside the parochial ‘liberal consensus’ and ‘third way politics’. He and Novak express disappointment with ‘citizenist self-righteousness’ and its ‘sense of superiority’ which is ‘introducing “civilized” . . . or “civilizing” norms in our “backward” society . . . our “primitive” culture’. They attribute to ‘citizenist’ politicians, NGO activists and intellectuals the idea that ‘civic values’ are essentially ‘European values’ – or, more recently, also ‘Euro-Atlantic values’. Middle-class urban-dwellers then internalized this as a marker of their identity. This gained extreme proportions during DF’s tent protests when ‘citizenists’ were finding every excuse not to solidarize with the wronged people: anything that did not fit into citizenist aesthetic and ideological parameters of ‘civicness’ was, according to my interviewees, dismissed as ‘backward’, ‘primitive’, ‘uneducated’, ‘traditionalist’, ‘nationalist’, ‘radical’, ‘barbaric’ or simply ‘rural’/’peasant’. For Vojislav, such ‘trivial divisions . . . we could not afford in a society of 700,000 people [facing] state oppression’ and ‘devastation of national resources’. My interviewees even equated this discourse with the nationalist one in its exclusionary zeal: it demonized underclasses, the ‘true losers of transition’, such as laid-off workers, peasants, seniors, the poor, refugees from war-torn countries (likewise defined by their ethnicity) and others. #Građanski thus purported to speak for all victims of transition under the DPS’s undemocratic reign. They declined, however, to vilify the ‘uncivil society’ ravaged by socio-economic restructuring; they treat it, instead, as a symptom of broader social injustices they did not create. By emphasizing structural (class-based) forces responsible for the plight of many, #Građanski elicited empathy for the ‘losers of the transition’ across the (ethno) political divide. They hoped the ‘underclass material interests’ should place them on the progressive left instead of the regressive right. A third marker of #Građanski’s civic subjectivity was, therefore, related to the alleged ‘uncivil other’ and the creation of inclusive conditions for emancipation through joint action. My respondents do not hide their disappointment with prevailing Montenegrin ‘civic politics’. Slobodan got used to the term ‘civic(ness)’ being employed as ‘a phony disguise and excuse for flirting with the regime in defence of [alleged civicness] from the “uncivic elements” ’. Namely, all new political forces that insisted on ‘civic values’ eventually ended up supporting harmful nationalist policies of DPS or, in this case, undemocratic and unconstitutional

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  141 raids on peaceful protesters. For that reason, Nela explains that ‘it is understandable that the word “civic(ness)” does not inspire confidence [in ordinary people] anymore’. As echoed by another respondent: ‘the disenchantment of the nominally uncivil groups’ with the dominant understanding of ‘civicness’. Under DPS’s reign, these groups witnessed this term being used to disguise the ruling establishment’s nationalist (‘anti-Serb’, some suggest) policies and practices. Against the overarching cynicism and distrust around the term, #Građanski idealistically based their identity in civic values: they reappropriated ‘civicness’ as an umbrella term for joint action. ‘[V]oid of its proper meaning’, Tanja suggests, the vagueness of the term was strategically convenient to redefine universal civil liberties and shared civic dignity. Precisely because of its ‘wear and misuse’ in this ‘culturally fascist’, ‘raging nationalistic rhetoric’, Novak explains, ‘the idea was to use that to underscore civil liberties, civic action and republican order’. Given the equation of ‘urban, Montenegrin, and pro-NATO’ with ‘civic’, and given its alleged binary (‘rural, Serb and anti-NATO’), this was an innovative departure from prevailing dogma. Through activist citizenship, these Montenegrin youths took it upon themselves to reappropriate the ‘original, political connotation . . . free from manipulative usage’ (Tanja) and rearticulate it on inclusive, egalitarian grounds, by autonomous citizens for autonomous citizens.

Conclusion Montenegrin political culture has suffered from top-down delegitimization of any activity aimed at contesting the DPS government, its practices and policies. Criticism is treated as harmful to state sovereignty. Any dissent – whether by political, societal or cultural actors – is labelled as ‘an opposition not to the party in power, but to the state itself’, and citizens frequently warned that ‘every vote for the opposition is as a vote against independent Montenegro and its stability’. By continuously interjecting Montenegro’s current statehood (and peaceful cohabitation of ethnic/national groups within it) as precarious and something that can be reversed if the opposition comes into power, the DPS has sought to discredit and incapacitate any popular challenge to its rule. In October  2015, DF-organized protests sometimes displayed Serb nationalist iconography, thus adding fuel to the fire of state propaganda suggesting that these protests were ‘nationalist’, ‘antiMontenegrin’, ‘anti-state’, ‘anti-European’ and essentially uncivic. Yet, when the police intervened violently, a window of opportunity arose, which #Građanski used successfully by giving the follow-up rally a new discursive frame. Departing from previous attempts to challenge DPS from a civic standpoint, #Građanski did not mobilize in the name of some abstract ‘national reconciliation’. Rather, their claim-making revolved around the autonomy of the citizen who is constitutionally defined as the ‘bearer of sovereignty’. It would, of course, be a mistake to think their political subjectivation was permanent, given the vulgar display of power by the state apparatus.15 #Građanski was simply a temporary ‘deviation from [the] normal order of things’ (Rancière 2010: 35). Their attempt to interact with the authorities on an equal footing was a symbolic declaration of what Gramsci

142  Bojan Baća (1971: 210) calls ‘detachment’. At the very least, it signalled the possibility of alternative contentious frames for future movements. Radulović (2016: 287–90) noticed that generational change in post-socialist Montenegro has been biological rather than political, implying that new generations do not bring new, different ideas, values and energy into the public sphere. The case of #Građanski, however, suggests otherwise. Its members were tired of waiting for ‘political elites to do something’. They displayed civil courage and civic responsibility to ‘unite [differences] around the one and most important goal – defence of constitutional order of the country and all political and human freedoms that it guarantees’ (Draško). Unlike previous generations, this group was guided not only by tolerance, but by solidarity based on shared civic dignity. As Stevo put it succinctly: in today’s Montenegro ‘every individual and every group wants to be tolerated, but no one wants to show solidarity’. Acting as members of a political community, this youth enacted civic autonomy unburdened with the state fetishism that had arisen from the uninterrupted reign of the DPS, and transcended the apolitical habitus of the middle-class and non-subversive ‘civility’ of the civil sector. According to Slobodan, ‘the ideal of the vast majority [of #Građanski] was . . . grounded in the philosophy of res publica’ instead of the present condition of Montenegro as ‘cosa nostra’, a criminalized clique masquerading as statesmen. At least momentarily, Montenegrin youth created a space in which activists were empowered to speak politically, to act and demand recognition as a new, autonomous civic initiative and democratic intervention in their country’s political space. Despite their initial differences, members of #Građanski acted on the premise that as citizens they have responsibility to protect liberties and rights from the oppressive state, as well as the state and society from the abuse of power. However, the key importance of #Građanski was its identification and avoidance of the politicization of ethnicity. They rejected the division into ‘progressive Montenegrins’ as an embodiment of ‘civil society’, with their nominally liberal, multicultural and cosmopolitan values, and ‘retrograde Serbs’ as a personification of ‘uncivil society’, ostensibly embedded in reactionary, unicultural and (ethno) nationalist beliefs. As Norval (2000: 220) explains, ‘[it] is through the consolidation or dissolution of political frontiers that discursive formations in general, and social and political identities more specifically, are constructed or fragmented’. For that reason, #Građanski had reappropriated ‘civicness’ as a symbolic unifier for joint civic action, in which no ethnicity or nation could be reduced to one political option or ideological stance. Contrary to the general tendency of youth activists in the post-socialist region to emulate Western models of activism, without taking into account the local context (Gagyi 2015: 19–20), #Građanski positioned itself as an autonomous civic struggle against injustice precisely because of their emphasis on the local reality of a negated universal human dignity. This case of #Građanski shows how ethnic/national values and identities have been replaced as dominant preoccupations in the lives of the Montenegrin politicized youth. Sources of identity – or, more precisely, the constituents of political subjectivity – are inclusive civic values imbued with egalitarian ideals. However,

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  143 rather than taking these for granted, #Građanski proactively worked in public to give a new, activist frame to what they viewed as ‘civicness’. In their discourse, ‘civic values’ did not only denote ‘civil’ (liberal) alternatives to ‘uncivil’ (ethnonationalist) politics, as was the case in the 1990s; rather, they were openly politicized to denote ‘a course of action based on compromises between abundant diversities in the Montenegrin society’ (Sreten). These were founded, first, in ‘the citizen’s awareness of the [need to protect] public, common goods’ in the face of abuse of state power (Sreten); and, second, in the need to ‘create extrainstitutional pressure on public policies’ (Novak). In ethnopolitically divided Montenegro, these young people successfully overcame prevailing cleavages to reinvent their ‘political self’ in ‘defending civil liberties, republican order, and dignity of other citizens’ (Novak). In their discourse, civicness was no longer understood within ethical and aesthetical parameters of the liberal middle-class’s ‘urbanity’ and ‘civility’, but was framed as a manifestation of the progressive – and unabashedly contentious – political activity of all concerned citizens. All things considered, these young people were clear: they strove to be the demos that critically interrogates the state and resists injustices of nation-building, not the ethnos that they are all too often relegated to.

Notes 1 The ‘tent protests’ were organized by the Democratic Front (DF), a coalition comprised predominantly of conservative political parties. Even though this political alliance included both ‘pro-Serb’ and ‘pro-Montenegrin’ political subjects, it was nevertheless perceived as ‘pro-Serb’ due to being dominated by a party of ethnic Serbs. Protests were organized with an aim of pressuring the government to resign and thus pave way for ‘technical government’ that would create conditions for ‘the first free and fair elections in country’s history’. 2 ‘Građanski’ can be translated as ‘the civic’, ‘civic’, and ‘civicness’. I find ‘civicness’ to be the best translation that captures the idea behind the association, which is close to scholarly understanding of the term as ‘people’s identities and roles as citizens’ and their relation with ‘public institutions which foster such behavior’ and determine ‘where it can be put into practice’ (Evers 2009: 242). The hash sign (#) was, according to my respondents, used in front of Građanski to signify interconnectedness and synergy between citizens, as well as the horizontal nature of their association/network, and to emphasize that #Građanski exists only as an ‘online entity’. Overall, the idea was for anyone who agreed with their principles to freely use hashtag #Građanski and thus speak as a part of the group. 3 As Bieber (2003: 12) points out, state-sponsored nationalist revival in Montenegro, during period of ethnification of politics, ‘expressed itself rather as Serbian nationalism than as a distinct Montenegrin nationalism’. Montenegrin nationalism, on the other hand, was gradually articulated as state-sponsored project from 1997. 4 This kind of labelling gained notorious proportions during the referendum campaign and, in particular, after state independence in 2006, when Serbs’ legitimate ‘no’ to independence was manipulatively used by DPS as ‘proof’ of their disloyalty to the new Montenegrin state. 5 It is important to point out that the antagonism between ‘pro-Milošević’ and ‘antiMilošević’ movements was in no way ethnopolitical, since the latter ‘included people who could be regarded as pro-Yugoslav or even pro-Serb’ (Caspersen 2003: 107). It is

144  Bojan Baća only after the fall of Milošević in 2000 that ethnopolitics came to colonize the political field (see Džankić 2014, Jenne and Bieber 2014, Malešević and Uzelac 2007, Troch 2014). 6 The extent to which the ethnopolitical divide was deep within the Slavic-Orthodox population is best seen on the level of family. Numerous families were divided (and their members often antagonized) along ethnic/national lines, as it was not uncommon for one member of the family to feel Montenegrin, other Serb (see Forbess 2013, Jenne and Bieber 2014). 7 Politicization of ethnicity meant that ethnic cleavage was deepened and widened institutionally, so that ethnic boundaries of Montenegrin national identity are set exclusively in opposition to Serb national identity. Official recognition of institutions promoting exclusive Montenegrin ethnic identity – such as the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, the Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts, Matica Crnogorska and Institute for Montenegrin Language and Literature, among others – was a turn in official policies. From that point on, a new set of ethnic identity markers – such as a new historical narrative, separate language and orthography and new state symbols – established an exclusive Montenegrin identity freed of similarities with Serb identity and culture. 8 Ethnocultural differences within the Slavic-Orthodox population in Montenegro were indeed minor, particularly how they manifested on the level of everyday life (see Forbess 2013, Jovanović and Marjanović 2002, Malešević and Uzelac 2007). National/ ethnic identity of this social group has always been fluid, with duality of national/ ethnic belonging being its differentia specifica: identity categories of ‘Montenegrin’ and ‘Serb’ have always been mutually inclusive and often interchangeable, as they included substantial overlap (see Caspersen 2003, Džankić 2014, Gallagher 2003, Jenne and Bieber 2014, Troch 2014). 9 According to media reports, from 10,000 to 15,000 thousand people appeared on the follow-up protest, held on 24 October, the majority of which were not DF supporters. 10 Party statistics from 2011 show that that approximately 28,000 of the Montenegrin youth population are members of the DPS, or in other words: almost every third young person is a member of the ruling party (Perović-Korać 2011). 11 All respondents’ identities have been protected through the use of pseudonyms. 12 I have opted for ‘subjectivation’ as the most straightforward translation of Rancière’s ‘subjectivation’, though it has also been translated as ‘subjectification’ and ‘subjectivization’. 13 For instance, on their Facebook page, #Građanski is defined as a ‘group of citizens that advocates democracy, rule of law, equality, workers’ rights, and sustainable development of Montenegro’. 14 ‘Srbadija Barska’ is an informal group of young adults that flirted with Serb nationalist iconography and ‘rural’ customs during tent protests. These actions were often used as an excuse among ‘citizenists’, especially after police raid, not to express solidary with ‘such retrograde elements’. 15 The demonstration held on 24 October was dispersed with police brutality up to that point unseen in Montenegro’s recent history.

References Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Baća, B. 2013. Najbolje su, najbolje, crnogorske drakule. Art Vijesti, 21 September, 4–5. Bešić, M. 2014. Tranzicione traume i promene vrednosnih orijentacija – generacijski pristup: Komparativna empirijska studija vrednosti u zemljama bivše Jugoslavije. Beograd: Čigoja štampa.

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  145 Bieber, F. 2003. Montenegrin politics since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, in Montenegro in Transition: Problems of Identity and Statehood, edited by F. Bieber. BadenBaden: Nomos, 11–42. Bilić, B. and Stubbs, P. 2015. Unsettling ‘the urban’ in post-Yugoslav activisms: ‘Right to the city’ and pride parades in Serbia and Croatia, in Urban Grassroots Movements in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by K. Jacobsson. Farnham: Ashgate, 119–38. Brković, Č. 2013. Ambiguous notions of ‘national self’ in Montenegro, in The Ambiguous Nation: Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century, edited by U. Brunnbauer and Grandits, H. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 131–49. Čagorović, N. 1993. Montenegrin identity: past, present and future. Journal of Area Studies, 1(3), 129–36. Caspersen, N. 2003. Elite interests and the Serbian-Montenegrin conflict. Southeast European Politics, 4(2–3), 104–21. Castoriadis, C. 1991. Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press. Darmanović, S. 2003. Montenegro: the dilemmas of a small republic. Journal of Democracy, 14(1), 145–53. Derrida, J. 1986. Declarations of independence. New Political Science, 7(1), 7–15. Despotović, I. 2015. Partije u Crnoj Gori: država i smjenjivost vlasti. Matica, 60–1, 7–20. Džankić, J. 2014. Reconstructing the meaning of being ‘Montenegrin’. Slavic Review, 73(2), 347–71. Evers, A. 2009. Civicness and civility: Their meanings for social services. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 20(3), 239–59. Fink-Hafner, D. 2008. Europeanization and party system mechanics: Comparing Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 10(2), 167–81. Forbess, A. 2013. Montenegro versus Crna Gora: the rival hagiographic genealogies of the new Montenegrin polity. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 67, 47–60. Foucault, M. 1997. Polemics, politics and problematizations, in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, edited by P. Rabinow. New York: The New Press, 111–19. Gagyi, Á. 2015. Why don’t East European movements address inequalities the way Western European movements do? A review essay on the availability of movement-relevant research. Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements, 7(2), 15–26. Gallagher, T. 2003. Identity in flux, destination uncertain: Montenegro during and after the Yugoslav wars. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 17(1), 53–71. Građanska Alijansa. 2015. Građanska participacija u Crnoj Gori. Podgorica: Građanska alijansa. Građanski. 2015a. Open Letter to the Government of Montenegro, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Police Directorate. [Online]. Available at: http://balkanist.net/ open-letter-to-the-government-of-montenegro/. Građanski. 2015b. Protest Memorandum of Montenegro’s Citizens. [Online]. Available at: http://balkanist.net/protest-memorandum-montenegros-citizens/. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Hall, S. 1980. Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance, in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, edited by M. O’Callaghan. Paris: UNESCO, 305–45. Ipsos Strategic Marketing. 2013. Istraživanje o znanju, stavovima i ponašanju građana Crne Gore u vezi sa zapošljavanjem i participacijom mladih. Podgorica: Ipsos Strategic Marketing. Isin, E.F. 2008. Theorizing acts of citizenship, in Acts of Citizenship, edited by E.F. Isin and G. Nielsen. London: Zed Books, 15–43.

146  Bojan Baća Isin, E.F. 2009. Citizenship in flux: the figure of the activist citizen. Subjectivity, 29, 367–88. Jansen, S. 2005. Who’s afraid of white socks? Towards a critical understanding of postYugoslav urban self-perceptions. Ethnologia Balkanica, 9, 151–67. Jenne, E.K. and Bieber, F. 2014. Situational nationalism: nation-building in the Balkans, subversive institutions and the Montenegrin paradox. Ethnopolitics, 13(5), 431–60. Jovanović, P. and Marjanović, M. 2002. Politička kultura u Crnoj Gori. Podgorica: SoCEN. Kilibarda, K. 2013. An Anatomy of the Montenegrin Spring: Mobilizing Workers and Civic Networks Against Austerity, 45th Annual Convention of Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, Boston, 21–4 November. Komar, O. 2013. Birači u Crnoj Gori: Faktori izborne i partijske preferencije. Beograd: Čigoja štampa. Komar, O. 2015. The development of civil society in Montenegro, in The Development of Civil Society in the Countries on the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since the 1980s, edited by D. Fink-Hafner. Ljubljana: Faculty of Social Sciences, 14–64. Komar, O. and Živković, S. 2016. Montenegro: A democracy without alternations. East European Politics and Societies, 30(4), 785–804. Kopecký, P. and Mudde, C. 2003. Rethinking civil society. Democratization, 10(3), 1–14. Kovačević, F. 2007. Montenegro and the politics of postcommunist transition: 1990 to 2006. Mediterranean Quarterly, 18(3), 72–93. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Malešević, S. and Uzelac, G. 2007. A nation-state without the nation? The trajectories of nation-formation in Montenegro. Nations and Nationalism, 13(4), 695–716. Morrison, K. 2009. Montenegro: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris. Morrison, K. 2011. Change, continuity and consolidation: Assessing five years of Montenegro’s Independence. LSEE Papers on South Eastern Europe, 2. Norval, A.J. 2000. Trajectories of future research in discourse theory, in Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change, edited by D. Howarth, A.J. Norval and Y. Stavrakakis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 219–36. Offe, C. 1997. Varieties of Transition: The East European and East German Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Perović-Korać, M. 2011. Armija sijede djece. Monitor, 23 December, 18–20. Petković, S. and Rodić, M. 2015. Policy and Legislative Framework for Youth Participation in the Balkans: Comparative Overview and Analysis. Strasbourg: European Association for Local Democracy. Putnam, R.D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Radulović, B. 2016. Nojeva barka: 70 priča – jedna poruka. Podgorica: Daily Press. Ramet, S.P. 1996. Nationalism and the ‘idiocy’ of the countryside: the case of Serbia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 19(1), 70–87. Rancière, J. 1992. Politics, identification, and subjectivization, October, 61, 58–64. Rancière, J. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rancière, J. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. New York: Continuum. Šístek, F. and Dimitrovová, B. 2003. National minorities in Montenegro after the break-up of Yugoslavia, in Montenegro in Transition: Problems of Identity and Statehood, edited by F. Bieber. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 159–79.

Forging civic bonds ‘from below’  147 Strmiska, M. 2000. The making of party pluralism in Montenegro. Central European Political Studies Review. [Online], 2(3). Available at: https://journals.muni.cz/cepsr/article/ view/3829/5451. Stubbs, P. 2007. Civil society or ubleha? Reflections on flexible concepts, meta-NGOs and new social energy in the post-Yugoslav space, in Twenty Pieces of Encouragement for Awakening and Change: Peacebuilding in the Region of the Former Yugoslavia, edited by H. Rill, T. Šmidling and A. Bitoljanu. Belgrade: Centre for Nonviolent Action, 215–28. Troch, P. 2014. From ‘and’ to ‘either/or’: Nationhood in Montenegro during the Yugoslav twentieth century. East European Politics and Societies, 28(1), 25–48. Vujović, Z. and Komar, O. 2008. Impact of the Europeanization process on the transformation of the party system of Montenegro. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 10(2), 223–41. Weber, A., Hiers, W. and Flasken, A. 2016. Politicized Ethnicity: A Comparative Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wimmer, A. 2002. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflicts: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part III

Transcending ethnic identities Comparative perspectives

8 Taming conflicted identities Searching for new youth values in the Western Balkans Vladimir Turjačanin, Iris Žeželj, Edona Maloku, and Marija Branković Introduction Group membership is built into the identity of the individual (Tajfel 1981, Tajfel and Turner 1986), and social identifications can be more or less relevant for a person’s self-concept, depending on differences in personalities and wider contextual factors. The recent history of Western Balkan societies illustrates the influence of social and political identifications on intergroup relations, as well as the life of every individual, regardless of whether they identify with them or not. However, in today’s increasingly complex societies, which are sectioned by roles and groups, the social dimensions of youth social identities include gender, sexual orientation, age, profession, religion, ethnicity, political views, sports team they support, subculture they belong to, and many other social identities. In each of these groups, a person probably has a member with whom he/she shares at least one common characteristic, but not necessarily the others. However, a young person in the region is often exposed to predominant religious and ethnic identities that are emphasized in these contexts. Because youth are in the process of developing personal and social identity (Marcia 1966), developing identities that have a pronounced emphasis on one singular identity (e.g. focusing only on ethnic identity as a form of group identification and differentiation with other groups) can become a cause of conflict (Brewer 2010). Focusing on just one identity reduces this complexity of identification processes to the simplest ‘us and them’ difference based on a single attribute. Instead of acknowledging the coexistence of multiple identities, a young person perceives one ‘true identity’ that overpowers the rest. This homogenization around one type of social identity most often occurs in situations when members of a group start to feel threatened by other groups; in other words, when they experience an identity threat (Stephan and Stephan 2000, Riek, Mania and Gaertner 2006). Such social identities can maintain or even deepen the divisions between different groups. On the other hand, when youth are aware that their identities do not overlap completely, it allows for a more flexible and broader way of defining their own groups. Such a position is reflective of a complex social identity (Roccas and Brewer 2002). Whether a person has a simple or complex identity has been shown to have different consequences for his/her perception of the world and particularly for intergroup relations. Most importantly, many

152  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. studies on youth and other age cohorts show a positive effect of the complexity of social identity on improving intergroup relations, including the reduction of intergroup prejudice and conflict (Branković et al. 2016, Brewer 2000, Crisp and Hewstone 2007, Crisp, Walsh and Hewstone 2006, Maloku et al. 2016). Youth living in Western Balkan societies today hold the potential for developing such complex identities. For the most part, they were either very young or born after the end of the conflicts between ethnic groups, so they did not witness its genesis nor did they take part in the violent clashes. Moreover, in some countries (e.g. Kosovo), youth also constitute the majority of the population, so they inevitably represent the driving force of future societies. It is therefore especially important to examine whether and how the youth can step out of the singular identification framework offered to them in current social and political contexts. With limited opportunities for meaningful social identifications, many of the young feel alienated from the political and social mainstream. Research in the former Yugoslav countries shows that youth populations are largely marginalized socially and politically and that they continue to distance themselves from social and political institutions (Blagojević 2013, Pasha et al. 2012, Tomanović et al. 2012, Topuzovska-Latkovic et al. 2013, Žiga et al. 2015). Distrust in political institutions is often the result of a belief that things cannot change (i.e. political cynicism, Žeželj 2007), therefore prompting the young to emigrate in search of a better life (Pasha et al. 2012, Taleski and Hoppe 2015, Žiga et al. 2015). On the other hand, if the young embrace the dominant discourse of salient ethnic, national, or religious identifications, it results in intergroup distancing and a narrowing of their social space in multiethnic societies. One of the most efficient strategies to overcome group divisions and build new, alternative identities is intergroup contact (Allport 1954). A  large-scale metaanalytical study (Pettigrew and Tropp 2008) that examined the 40-year accumulated evidence from 515 independent research studies showed that intergroup contact indeed helps improve intergroup relations. By comparing different types of contacts, it was established that the largest effect is produced by intergroup friendships (Hamberger and Hewstone 1997). To generalize the positive effects of contact to an entire group, group membership needs to be clearly visible, and both parties should assume that the outgroup member is a typical representative of their group (Van Oudenhoven, Groenewoud and Hewstone 1997). In addition, the positive effects of intergroup contact can be generalized to include other groups through a ‘secondary transfer effect’ (Pettigrew 2009). For example, Irish Protestants who came in contact with Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland later showed more positive attitudes towards other ethnic groups, namely Asian and African immigrants (Tausch et al. 2010). In the Western Balkans, the hardships of the post-conflict era have especially affected youth, who have grown up in much less diverse communities with less opportunities for interethnic contact now than before the conflicts started (see Maloku et al. 2016 for Kosovo, see Majstorović and Turjačanin 2013 for Bosnia and Herzegovina, see Milošević Đorđević 2016 specifically for the youth in the region). The barriers for contact are not only physical but also psychological – faced with strict societal norms, young people are reluctant to reach out to their peers of other ethnicities and religions.

Taming conflicted identities  153 In the present research, we therefore examined the potential that the youth hold to overcome these barriers by investigating factors and contexts that foster better intergroup relations as well as alternative forms of social identifications that assist in improving them. Building on insights from the social psychological literature presented here, our research aimed to explore (a) the interplay between ethnic, religious, national, and other types of group identifications such as gender, family, friends, region, and Europe, (b) the relations between different identifications and a set of societal attitudes such as those towards religious/ethnic outgroups, trust in institutions, and embracing of anti-discriminatory policies as indicators of social capital, and (c) the role of contact and social identity complexity and inclusiveness in predicting societal attitudes. The goal was to examine whether young people in the Western Balkans are able to move beyond the prescribed, politicized, and institutionalized identities they have been so far socialized to embrace. Particularly, we wanted to investigate the opportunities for youth to develop more inclusive and more complex types of identification that might eventually result in better overall intergroup relations. Additionally, we aimed to address both majority and minority perspectives on the construction of identities.

Data and methods Researching social identity poses various theoretical and methodological difficulties because identities are fluid and changing, and thus defining and measuring them presents a challenge (Abdelal et  al. 2006). Therefore, to gain a comprehensive understanding of social identities of youth in the Western Balkans, we designed an empirical study that combined qualitative and quantitative research methods. The quantitative survey was meant to provide the basic framework through mapping the importance of various social identities and their relations among the youth, as well as the basic characteristics of the wider context of youth interethnic relations. The focus groups were aimed at a thorough investigation of the personal perceptions of the focal identities, e.g. how they relate to one another, whether they are perceived as changeable or not, and what the contexts in which they become salient are, as well as how they affect the perceptions of and relations with other groups. The quantitative survey was conducted among 767 people aged 20 to 30, from Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), and Kosovo. The sample was specifically designed to include members of both minority and majority groups. We selected two towns in each country: one in which the town’s ethnic majority is a majority on the national level, and one in which it is a minority: Belgrade and Novi Pazar in Serbia (Bosniaks are an ethnic minority on the national level, but a majority in Novi Pazar), Priština1 and North Mitrovica in Kosovo (Serbs are the majority population in Mitrovica, but a minority in Kosovo on the national level), Skopje and Tetovo in Macedonia (Albanians are a minority on the national level, but a majority in Tetovo), Sarajevo and Banja Luka in B&H (in Sarajevo Bosniaks are the majority, same as on the level of B&H, while in Banja Luka the majority are Serbs). We sampled participants via a passive snowball method (subjects

154  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. recruit future respondents from among their acquaintances). We aimed to have 100 participants per location, 70 from the local majority and 30 from the local minority. In addition, we used quotas based on the criteria of gender and level of education. For each ethnicity, an outgroup was the group they were in violent conflict with during the 1990s. This means that for Serbs in Serbia, the outgroup was Bosniaks; for Bosniaks in B&H, the outgroup was Serbs; for Macedonians, the outgroup was Albanians; for Albanians in Kosovo, the outgroup was Serbs, and vice versa. The questionnaire was developed in English and translated into local languages, using the back-translation procedure (Brislin 1970). The questionnaire encompassed several measures: a) The strength of identification: participants were asked to indicate how important belonging to each of the listed groups is for them personally, on 5-point scales anchored at 1 (of no importance) and 5 (highly important). The strength of identification was measured for the main identities that we focused on in this study: ethnicity, religion, and nationality, but also for the personal groups (family, group of friends) and other regional identities (city/town of origin, the Balkans, and Europe), as well as gender. b) Social identity complexity (SIC) was measured as the perceived overlap between national/ethnic/religious ingroups (Maloku et al. 2016, Roccas and Brewer 2002, Schmid et al. 2009). Participants rated on 11-point scales how much overlap they perceived between six pairs of identities, for instance: ‘When you think of people who are Serbs, how many of them are Orthodox?’ or ‘When you think of people who are citizens of Serbia, how many of them are Serbs?’ We calculated SIC as an average rating of overlap between six different combinations of ingroups. c) Social identity inclusiveness was measured using a triple categorization task (Van Dommelen et al. 2015), whereby participants were presented with stimuli of person profiles defined by ethnicity, nationality, and religious affiliation, along with a shaded profile of head and shoulders, and a name reflective of the identity combinations. The stimuli had a varying degree of overlap with participant’s identities: triple in-groupers, double in-groupers, single in-groupers and triple out-groupers. The gender of fictitious persons was matched with participant’s gender. Participants categorized each of the profiles as ‘us’ or ‘them’, and an inclusiveness index was calculated as the total number of stimuli categorized as ‘us’. d) The quantity of contact was assessed as the frequency of exposure to ethnic and religious outgroup members across three contexts (at the university/ work, in the neighbourhood, during leisure time). The scale ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (very often). e) The quality of contact was assessed through a scale measuring four emotional reactions potentially elicited in the contact situation: two positive (pleasant, respected) and two negative (nervous, looked down upon). The scale ranged from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Those who had no direct contact with the ethnic outgroup could choose the N/A option.

Taming conflicted identities  155 f) Online intergroup friendship was measured by the reported number of friends from the ethnic outgroup within the social network used most often by the participant. g) Social distance was measured by an adapted Bogardus social distance scale (Bogardus 1926). Participants indicated on five-point scales acceptability of each of the four relations (living in the same neighbourhood, going to university/working, having a close friend, dating or marrying) towards religious and ethnic in- and outgroups. h) Attitudes towards social groups were assessed by the feeling thermometer (Wilcox, Sigelman and Cook 1989). Participants were asked to express their feelings towards ethnic and religious in- and outgroups, as well as towards the citizens of their own and outgroup country, by sliding a bar on the scale from 0 to 100 degrees (higher number indicating warmer feelings). i) Attitudes towards anti-discrimination policies were assessed by items related to aspects of the position of the marginalized groups (as people with disabilities, Roma, LGBT population, etc.) in the respective societies, e.g. ‘Discrimination of the marginalized groups is no longer issue in Serbia’. Items were rated on 5-point scales. The qualitative examination tapped into the content and relations between different aspects of social identity in more depth. The central goal of the focus group discussions (Willing 2008) was to explore the relations between the three focal identities (ethnic, religious, and national), and also to find out how they function within the social context (e.g. in which situations they become salient, and how they are expressed in relations with others). In each town, we recruited eight to eleven participants from the ethnic groups that were the majority at the local level. We recruited participants between the ages of 20 and 30, balanced by gender (male/female), and of diverse educational and employment status (both students and high school graduates, employed and unemployed). Each discussion was led by a moderator and an assistant who were thoroughly prepared for the topic and trained with the guide. Discussions were conducted in the native languages of the participants, and moderators were also native speakers. To facilitate the expression of attitudes and feelings that could be difficult to articulate verbally, we employed techniques such as free associations, unfinished sentences, and collage techniques. As prompts for discussion, we also used recent media materials, e.g. a newspaper article about a person who converted from one religion to another to be able to be the best man at a friend’s wedding, or about a theatrical interpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet depicting the love between a Serbian girl and an Albanian boy. The discussion guide was structured around several topics: the structure of social identity and the importance of different personal and social identities; perceptions of the malleability of identities; contexts that make social identities salient; perceived relations between different identities (their overlap or exclusion); factors that foster complex understandings of identity; the role of intergroup contact; and the permeability of intergroup borders.

156  Vladimir Turjačanin et al.

Findings Strength of identification with different groups To understand the structure of social identity, we first analysed the strength of identification with a number of social groups. As expected, the groups young people identify with most are personal, relational groups like family (M = 4.39) and a group of friends (M = 3.88, see Table 8.1 on the importance of social identifications). However, other broad social categories are also important to youth in our sample, like country (M = 3.24), town (M = 3.14), religion (M = 3.13), and ethnicity (M = 3.02). Below the midpoint are identifications with the gender group (M = 2.80), Europe (2.77), and Balkans (M = 2.66). We further analysed the intercorrelations between social identifications in order to examine underlying structures behind these identifications. Although ethnic and religious identities are most strongly tied together, all group identifications are dependent on one another (see Table 8.1). For example, identifications with the group of friends and family as primary groups are correlated with identifications with larger social entities, starting from town to country, region, and Europe. It seems that youth’s belonging to very different groups can be traced back to a similar need, and that it cannot be sufficiently explained by political attitudes only. The strong correlation between ethnic and religious identification stands out from the rest, confirming this relation is still very relevant for the youth in the region. This finding is important because it shows how the social constructions of ethnic and religious identifications are similar throughout Western Balkan societies. Similar findings are found in other contexts where ethnic and religious divisions are pronounced: most notably, in Northern Ireland (Mitchell 2005, Ysseldyk, Matheson and Anisman 2010). The overlap of these two identities or their intersection, as we discuss later, makes this identitarian structure more salient and less Table 8.1 Correlations between different group identifications of youth in Western Balkans (N = 767) Identification 1 2 (means) 1  Gender 2 Ethnicity 3  My town/ city 4  Religion 5  Family 6  Group of friends 7  Country I live in 8  Balkans 9  Europe

2.80 3.02 3.14 3.13 4.39 3.88 3.24 2.66 2.77

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

- .400** .411** .424** .310** .363** .308** .357** .299** .420** .703** .301** .276** .338** .272** .287** .385** .398** .413** .437** .414** .335** -

.368** .301** .357** .285** .244** .574** .377** .330** .284** .348** .330** .257** -

.488** .333** -

.452** -

Taming conflicted identities  157 inclusive, resulting in less permeable intergroup borders (Brewer and Pierce 2005, Brewer 2010). Our qualitative data clearly illustrate that society exerts strong pressure on its young members to identify with their ethnic/religious groups and follow their implicit norms, especially in ethnically mixed communities. Here are examples from the Serbian city Novi Pazar and Priština, Kosovo: It burdens me. Simply, you have to decide if you are ‘this’ or ‘that’. If you are ‘this’ then you hate ‘that’, if you are ‘that’ you hate ‘this’. I do not agree with that, but that is the way things function around here. (male, 20, Novi Pazar, Serbia) But the way you have been taught means that you are raised to behave and act in terms of being Albanian. (female, 20, Priština, Kosovo) This perception of a social pressure to identify in exclusive terms is a recurring theme. Unlike some forms of identity, such as personal or professional, the general understanding of ethnic, religious, and, to some extent, national identities is such that we cannot arbitrarily choose them, but that they are ascribed to us (Majstorović and Turjačanin 2013, Phinney and Ong 2007, Worchel 1999). Youth perceive strong pressure to conform to these dominant types of identifications. Social identification and social attitudes In this section, we explore how different types of identifications relate to a set of important attitudes: from social distance towards the outgroups to acceptance of anti-discriminatory policies within the country. Social identification is inseparably tied with other social and political attitudes. The ways in which individuals build group membership into their identity and determine which groups are dominant in their sense of identity is necessarily connected to their relationship with the outgroups, as well as their attitudes towards society as a whole. Table 8.2 reveals relationship patterns between social identification and social attitudes. Firstly, almost all forms of social identification significantly correlate with ethnic distance, meaning that the more youth identify with any of the given groups, the more they are likely to be socially distant from ethnic outgroups. As would be expected, ethnic distance is most strongly correlated with the identification with ethnicity, as well as identification with religion and identification with the country. On the other hand, those who identify with an overarching social category at the level of Europe (perceive themselves as Europeans) feel the least distance toward outgroups. If we compare determinants to ethnic and religious outgroup distances, it is visible (Table 8.2) that religious distance is less embedded with other group identifications. There is a slight tendency for those more identified with family, friends, and own religious groups to be more accepting of religious outgroups, but the

158  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. Table 8.2  Correlations between the significance of social identities and outgroup attitudes

ID Gender ID Ethnicity ID My town/city ID Religion ID Family ID Group of friends ID Country I live in ID Balkans ID Europe

Social distance towards ethnic outgroup

Social distance towards religious outgroup

Embracing antidiscrimination policies

.144** .429** .181** .369** .119** .039 .236** .165** .072*

-.064 .043 -.043 .093** -.101** -.100** .013 -.041 -.085*

-.084* -.152** -.090** -.135** -.057 .038 -.129** -.155** -.014

results are a lot less straightforward than in the case of ethnic distance. When it comes to how different social identifications relate to positive attitudes towards anti-discrimination policies, findings reveal that the strongest negative attitude is observed among those who identify with the Balkans, ethnic identity, religion, and the country. This suggests that the youth embracing these identities oppose anti-discrimination measures aimed at improving the situation of marginal groups in their societies. Taken together, these results make it clear that a stronger ethnic and religious identity is associated with a stronger rejection of other groups. A stronger sense of ingroup belonging is associated with a decreased willingness to communicate with others who differ on group membership and a further mutual distancing of groups. As shown, it is most common that ethnic – and sometimes religious and national – identities are coupled with distancing oneself from members of other ethnic and religious groups and the rejection of anti-discriminatory attitudes. In addition, the qualitative examination reveals how strong group identifications limit one’s life choices, e.g. in choosing one’s partners. It is clear that the rigid forms of social identity are not set forth by young people, but it is also the case that the social pressures to accept them are quite strong. Based on respondents’ testimonies, their families and the immediate social surroundings seem to penalize almost any attempt to cross over intergroup boundaries: I was thinking about this, and I believe that I couldn’t be in a relationship with a Muslim, not because of me, but because of the wider social context in which I live in. I believe that my parents couldn’t agree with that, it would cause a major problem in the family, my social environment would react to it, and it wouldn’t be easy for me to deal with it. (female, 22, Belgrade, Serbia) To me, personally, for an Albanian to marry a Macedonian, be it a man or a woman, is like mixing fire with oil. It is still dangerous. (male, 27, Tetovo, Macedonia)

Taming conflicted identities  159 I think my parents would say: Ok, this is your choice, but you have created a very big problem for us. So, for them, they wouldn’t mind, but living in this society, they would mind explaining it to the rest of the people. (male, 20, Priština, Kosovo) On the other hand, those who identify more with their group of friends or Europe show more inclusive attitudes and generally less social distance. This suggests that identifying with Europe provides youth with a broader frame, but also with a set of other political attitudes (usually liberal) that makes them more inclusive towards other groups. On the other hand, an unexpected finding is that family identification correlates mildly with ethnic distancing. This could be a result of the fact that traditional norms and values are still transmitted within a family, and that it is typically the family that penalizes deviations from them. Thus, there is an overall influence of the social context, which affects the entire spectrum of social categories and beliefs among youth. One way to question these widespread assumptions is through contact between the members of different ethnic and religious groups. Contact between the groups In the following section, we explore the level of contact between groups and illustrate its consequences. It has been long known that physical distance and lack of mutual knowledge is the key for intolerance between groups (Williams 1947). Our results go to show that in the Western Balkan region intergroup contact is relatively low on average. In countries where minorities are significantly outnumbered (Serbia, Kosovo) it is higher for the minority group, whilst in the countries with numerous minorities (Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) there is no asymmetry – majorities are exposed to minorities as much as vice versa (Figure 8.1). The social reality of the majorities allows them to get by with less or

Figure 8.1  Frequency and quality of contact with ethnic outgroups by country and ethnicity

160  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. no contact with other ethnic groups in a minority position. In contrast, minorities cannot afford that kind of distancing because they are outnumbered and are therefore more exposed to opportunities for contact with majority groups. Emotions experienced during the contact (i.e. quality of contact) when it occurs, are relatively positive (the average ranges from three to four on a five-point scale). The experience of contact is less positive for the groups in regions with more unresolved political issues like Kosovo and Macedonia, and with groups with language barriers, e.g. Albanians and Serbs, Albanians and Macedonians. There is a high number of people (especially in Kosovo) who did not report having any contact in any context with members of ethnic outgroups (Figure 8.2). Lack of contact is evidently larger in ethnically tense contexts like North Mitrovica, which is an ethnically divided city, and Priština, which is ethnically homogeneous. The barriers for contact are perceived as impeding youth’s development or that of the respective societies in which they live in. I think that divisions make us miss  a lot. You miss  new friendships, communication, and everyday interaction – everything that makes us who we are and that enriches us. (female, 20, Sarajevo, B&H) It is a huge disappointment to see that the river and the bridge, two important means that were historically used to connect people, in this city they divide people. (male, 24, North Mitrovica, Kosovo) Both prior examples show that respondents are aware of the physical barriers and the limitations they pose for engaging in contact with their peers from other ethnic groups. However, at the same time, the need to draw and maintain ‘psychological’ borders appears to serve an essentially defensive function. The very idea of loosening these borders between the groups seems to provoke anxiety: [Moderator: What is the function of these borders?] Belonging. If there are no borders, everything will be erased, we will all blend with each other. (female, 21, Belgrade, Serbia) In spite of the barriers that evidently limit intergroup relations, there are examples of crossing interethnic borders among youth: My best friend is a Bosniak. Yes, we were just talking about me marrying someday, and I told her: ‘You will go with me to the civil ceremony [meaning: to act as a witness] and the other best friend will go with me to the church’. (female, 22, Banja Luka, B&H)

Figure 8.2 Share of people that had rare or no contact with the ethnic outgroup by country, town, and ethnicity

162  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. I have no problem to have Bosniak and Albanian friends since I met many of them through my work. (male, 29, North Mitrovica, Kosovo) I have two best friends, one of them is Muslim, the other one is Serb or Orthodox . . . I congratulate him on the day of his Slava, he congratulates me on Bayram, he comes to me for a cake or something. So, I think there is no difference. (male, 20, Novi Pazar, Serbia) Even more so, youth also speak about wanting to relate to other peers and do so in ordinary ways that are not burdened with the socio-political pressures: I could sit in a cafe, and have a warm chat, with everyone, just enjoying the conversation, the good spirit and for having some fun. (female, Tetovo, Macedonia) I personally am very against the Serbian politics that was played against us. I think that caused wrong ideas about us at the mass level. However, at the core, I don’t believe that this pertains to each Serb individually. I have met Serbs who are very dear, who honestly empathize with us and feel sorry for what was done to us, feel a bit guilty too. But in general, they are very good, and so my experience is very positive! (female, 21, Priština, Kosovo) When lack of contact is combined with the more polarized intergroup attitudes characteristic of post-conflict countries (e.g. B&H and Kosovo), it reads as a recipe for continued hardships between the groups. Young people in our research specifically stated that intergroup communication is one of the preconditions to overcome the divisions: I believe that contact between people has a strong effect. For example, in Belgium, in Brussels, there are a lot of different ethnic and religious groups, and the long-term (serb. dugotrajni) contact between these groups has been slowly erasing these borders. So, there you can see inter-ethnic or interreligious couples, and that is not perceived as a problem, because of the longterm contact. (female, 22, Belgrade, Serbia) There is a need for frequent, I think, communication, because if we have a common goal, somehow more contacts among people and not separation, from the beginning to tell us – you will be friends with them, to impose upon us such stories and gossip. (female, 22, Skopje, Macedonia)

Taming conflicted identities  163 However, one has to acknowledge the limits of effectiveness of contact interventions and to take into account the potential for contact to backfire in terms of an effect on outgroup attitudes. For example, history needs to be carefully addressed in organized contact interventions, as our data show that diverging narratives about the conflict can become visible during contact and even lead to more divisions: I came back from Berlin last night. There was a delegation of 5 persons [of B&H]. I was the only Bosniak. I have to admit that we did not spend a lot of time together. . . . Because they had, during the first days already, contradictory statements and nationalistic statements that resulted in the lack of contact amongst us. As if we weren’t a delegation, but two separate states representing Bosnia and Herzegovina. (female, 19, Sarajevo, B&H) Whenever I have met some Serbs or Croats, we have always talked normally, and the differences weren’t visible between us. But when we started talking about history and some divisions, immediately the differences came up. History sets us back the most on this road. (female, 22, Sarajevo, B&H) Respondents also mentioned different regional programs for fostering communication between the groups, but often stated that they were paradoxically aimed at ethnic groups between countries and not within them: I have had contacts with Serbs, but only from Serbia, not Serbs from Kosovo. (male, 24, Priština, Kosovo) Youth is still heavily affected by what they are told and [these] exchange programs would offer the opportunity for youth to see for themselves how things stand . . . and I’m not talking about exchange outside, in Amsterdam or whatever . . . I mean exchange with our neighbours here in Kosovo. (female, 28, Priština, Kosovo) Having this in mind, we argue that alternative forms of informal contact can help overcome the physical or social barriers typical of direct contact. We focused the most on online contact via social networking sites (SNS). We did this for two main reasons: first, there are data showing that SNS penetration is higher in the Western Balkan region than in other regions of Europe and that SNSs are disproportionally more used by people younger than 35 (Milošević Đorđević and Žeželj 2014a), and second, the positive effects of online contact over and above direct contact have also been documented in the region (Milošević Đorđević and Žeželj 2014b). Our results show that the average number of online outgroup friends is higher than the average number of direct outgroup friends (Figure 8.3); this trend was replicated both in the majority and minority groups. It seems that young people reach out via SNSs to their outgroup peers. We will discuss the implications of these findings for social identities later in the chapter.

164  Vladimir Turjačanin et al.

Figure 8.3 Average number of direct and online outgroup friends within ethnic majorities and minorities group in the Western Balkans

Taken together, our results indicate that although youth do not communicate all that much at the moment, they are willing to do so. Even in segregated contexts or contexts with language barriers between groups, there is at least some form of intergroup contact. What is more important, among those who experienced contact, the quality of contact is assessed fairly positively, especially in Serbia and B&H. All of the aforementioned excerpts show that the young are willing to communicate intergenerationally, in forms of contact that are not politically charged. Furthermore, there are good examples, especially from B&H and Serbia, that this type of contact is beneficial. The youth have many advantages in exercising intergroup contact within their generation: their norms and identities are not fully fixed, they have the same social status, and they actively search for friends and romantic partners. It seems the youth can potentially draw on the necessary factors to promote reconciliation. However, this can only be achieved if the regional contexts in which youth live also promote common social goals, intergroup cooperation, and supportive local norms. Otherwise, contact alone will not reap the fruitful benefits that it should. In this next section, we will examine other ways to overcome the rigid limits of singular identities. Going beyond singular identities The following narratives demonstrate the extent to which exclusive identities – such as ethnicity and religion – can feel restrictive for the youth. The respondents

Taming conflicted identities  165 note the relational characteristics of group identities – ‘our’ identity exists only in relation to other groups, and most often, these relations imply competition or even conflict: So, the society I  think has a tendency to always try to put you in a box, because it is easier for them to deal with others that are different and fall outside of certain societal frames. (female, 28, Priština, Kosovo) I always had some kind of, I don’t know, hm . . . of resistance towards it [religion] . . . and when it comes to ethnicity I consider myself a Serb although I don’t place too much importance on it, as well . . . and my family is not the typical, you know, Serb family, which would overemphasize the importance of ethnicity . . . and I am glad it is the case, because I consider myself a Serb, but I wouldn’t like to . . . nowadays, considering the conditions, don’t know, to classify myself only based on my ethnicity even if I don’t want to be a part of the group. (male, 23, Banja Luka, B&H) Here, an ambivalent inner dialogue with the dominant ethnic and religious identities is portrayed. There are two competing needs that the youth face: the need to identify, on the one hand, and the reluctance to accept what is perceived as the implications of these identifications, i.e. taking part in conflicts, on the other. This is also reflective of the political construction of ethnic and religious identities. Since the dominant social discourse is one of irreconcilable differences and conflict between the ethnic and religious groups, this precludes the young from perceiving possible links and commonalities between different identities. Today it is hard to be a Serb. You know, when you are genocidal when you are guilty of this or that. . . . I think we need to get together as people and work on that issue in every community, be it schools, family. (female, 24, Banja Luka, B&H) Our findings also provide insight into a more explicitly articulated critical consideration of dominant social identities. Youth in the Western Balkans perceive that their identities are politicized – exclusive identities and interethnic divisions are being reinforced and perpetuated by means of political instrumentalization, as well as the media and the educational system. Our participants demonstrated both an awareness of these processes and an opposition towards it: I think religion is more politics than belief. I see it as a tool that people use to manipulate other people . . . because the most important thing that you can get from a person is trust. And once you gain that trust, then you can easily manipulate it. (male, 24, Priština, Kosovo)

166  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. The youth clearly recognize the social institutions that offer the divisive interpretations of intergroup relations. In this case, those are educational systems teaching history or politicized religion. Other participants also expressed a need for alternative bases of identity, either in the form of moral virtues rather than preimposed social categories or in more global or overarching identifications. It is interesting to note the extent to which the respondents – consciously or automatically – contrast dominant social identities with humane traits. When they say it is more important ‘to be good’ or ‘to be human’ than to identify with ethnic and religious groups, the values they prioritize are clear. Through this, the youth challenge the dominant narratives that exclusively link the positive attributes with their own group. The most important thing to me is to be human because I think that is the basic category by which you identify yourself. It becomes the umbrella of your identification. I have been in the past a Muslim, a Kosovar, an Albanian, and many other things, maybe even a patriot, but they have often led me to make flawed decisions. We now know that these categorizations are also means of separating people. For example, when I identified myself as an Albanian, then I unconsciously regarded myself as more important than other people of other nationalities, I thought we were the ones that were righteous and others were wrong. So, I  figured that if I  see myself as only a human being then all this comparison would disappear. It is more normal and more human. . . . I feel that when I relate to being human I distance myself from all the dogmas and ideologies that I am taught. (male, 21, Priština, Kosovo) In the last few years, I have started to persistently underline that I am neither one nor the other (Serb/Orthodox), since I am really bothered with taking the positions which imply that we are something else in relation to some other people and that therefore we are something special, often meaning better. That is the way distinctions between people are made. (female, 22, Belgrade, Serbia) In the context of encouraging openness and reflection on the meaning of identity, the youth challenge the idea of irreconcilable differences between groups and superiority of one’s ingroup. They are trying to recategorize their social context, by introducing an overarching identitarian category, such as being ‘human’. That way they offer a common group identity for all, which provides grounds for overcoming the present divisions. This process transfers ingroup bias in a very specific way: perceiving we all belong to the same group, in the end, makes intergroup boundaries less visible (Brewer 1991, 2000). Positive ingroup attitudes now refer to the new, larger group of humans and its members. So, I figured that if I see myself as only a human being, then all these comparisons would disappear. (female, 26, Banja Luka, B&H)

Taming conflicted identities  167 I think we are human, so at that level, yes. A Serb is part of this group. (female, 21, Priština, Kosovo) I have created a very big circle which I identify myself with and that is being human. (male, 20, Priština, Kosovo) I will say something stupid, and I am not sure if that will happen or not. But, let’s say that aliens invade the planet and that the existence of the human species is under threat. In that case, I believe that all borders would be erased and all humans would unite in order to survive and continue living. (female, 21, Belgrade, Serbia) The other mechanism youth use is to try to make categories (or social identities) less salient by referring to a personal characteristic, such as ‘normal’ or ‘good’ (Gaertner et al. 2000, Pettigrew 1998): I am a Serb and it is important for me, but between a bad Serb and a good member of another ethnic group, I would give priority to the goodness. I have already defined myself as a human being and that is the most important feature defining me and the feature I put above everything else. (male, 25, Belgrade, Serbia) I would define my in-groupers as good persons, no matter of their religion, ethnicity or nationality. (female, 22, Belgrade, Serbia) It was often the case that young people put forward their subcultural identifications as overarching, and discussed how that differs from the dominant identifications that they are ‘pushed into’: Rock subculture, well subculture in general, pushes you to fight the system, to find some faults of the system. . . . That is something typical for all . . . especially at the beginnings when they [the rockers] started to dress extravagantly and so on. (male, 22, Belgrade, Serbia) The fact that youth reflect these overarching or alternative categories is substantial in its own right because it reveals the potential that this generation holds for improving intergroup relations. This is especially compelling for countries with a large young population like Kosovo, where over 60 per cent are under the age of 30. Our participants often portrayed their age as an advantage, as a potential societal driving force, but more as giving them opportunities to choose and actively create personal future: [commenting on the choice of phrases that define her] And then ‘It’s important to always set new goals’, I think that is very important because we are

168  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. students now and we have to be open to new opportunities and new experiences. ‘Always open doors’, that’s in line with this, it’s about me being openminded. Then I wrote ‘equipped to shape the future’, meaning that everything I do at this moment I do for my better future. (female, 22, Sarajevo, B&H) A specific mechanism was also mentioned by one of the participants – personal growth: Education, books and being open helped me become who I am today. . . . It is important for human beings to evolve. . . . To try to find answers to their questions . . . To not be rigid and strict. (male, 24, North Mitrovica, Kosovo) The previous example, in which the respondent says it’s important ‘to not be rigid and strict’ to become more open to others, points to the fact that a person needs to overcome some rigid views of the social world to accept others. Social identity complexity and inclusiveness Further, we examined a similar mechanism: allowing different social identities to coexist, not perceiving them as mutually exclusive and, subsequently, creating more flexible ‘ingroup’ boundaries for the young people in this region (Roccas and Brewer 2002, Brewer and Pierce 2005). To see if the worldview of young people is rigid or more nuanced in this sense, we explored how they perceive the interplay between dominant identities. As coined by Roccas and Brewer (2002), social identity complexity (SIC) is the perceived overlap between the multiple groups a person belongs to. In addition, social identity inclusiveness (SII, Van Dommelen et al. 2015) refers to how inclusively or exclusively one defines the ingroup from a combination of multiple cross-cutting categories. A person who has low inclusiveness of their identity might consider only people of the same religion, nationality, and ethnicity as their ingroup. While SIC is the perceived overlap between the groups and therefore more cognitive in nature, SII is more suggestive of the willingness to include members of other groups who share some (but not all) identities with one’s own group. Our findings show that in most of the countries surveyed, youth who are in a minority position demonstrate more complex social identities (Figure 8.4). This might at least partially stem from their minority position, which implies lower objective overlap of the identities – more precisely, the low overlap of their national with other identities (e.g. ethnic, religious). Being cognitive in nature, this measure of complexity demonstrates how young people perceive the diversities around them. It makes sense that minority members, as those who are very often treated as outgroups from the majority perspective, are more likely to be aware of these diversities. Similarly, the youth of majority groups, surrounded mostly by people similar to themselves, are less likely to become aware of these

Figure 8.4 Social identity complexity and inclusiveness by country and majority/minority status

170  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. diversities. It is important to note that although minorities demonstrated more complex identities, the level of complexity is only moderate and there is room for increasing the complexity of social identities for both minority and majority members. Youth from ethnic minorities in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina show less inclusive identities than respective majority members. In other words, although they are more aware of social diversities, they are less willing to include members of other groups with some shared identities in their own group. This might come as a result of the recent history of conflicts between Bosniaks and Serbs and the minorities perceiving assimilation threat (Majstorović and Turjačanin 2013). The minorities might, therefore, be more likely to embrace a narrower definition of their identity by excluding others who do not share their ethnicity and religion. However, in Kosovo, the majority demonstrates a less inclusive identity than the minority. This might be due to the efforts of the Albanian majority in Kosovo to build a new national identity (see Maloku et al. 2016 for a similar argument). Considering that Kosovo’s population is on average very young, this poses a problem for its particularities of intergroup relations on the one hand, but could also represent a vast potential for improvement, on the other. Serbs from Kosovo seem to perceive both Serbia and Kosovo as their in-countries, which results in measuring more inclusiveness among them. In Macedonia, where the proportion of majority and minority members is more balanced, we did not register differences with regards to inclusiveness. Further, we examined how complexity and inclusiveness among youth relate to intergroup relations, i.e. to the extent to which people are psychologically distant from others, how they feel about them, and how much contact they have with them. As we have previously seen, less strong singular identifications – especially with ethnic and religious groups – relate to less social distance and more acceptance of anti-discriminatory policies. However, here we argue that not only the strength, but also the structure of social identity is important: it is important how a young person defines an ingroup, and whether he or she is prepared to broaden the definition of their own social identity so that it includes members of groups that are not typically considered members of the ingroup. The obtained results show that social inclusiveness consistently correlates with the willingness to establish social relationships and a more positive affective relationship with outgroup members: negatively with social distance and positively with the ‘feeling thermometer’, both for the religious and the ethnic outgroup. Social identity complexity, on the other hand, as a more cognitive construct, was less strongly connected with attitudes towards outgroups. One possible source of building more complexity and inclusiveness of multiple identities could be interethnic contact and, in particular, interethnic friendships. When we compare the effects of online and direct friendships on outgroup attitudes in our sample (see Table  8.3), we indeed find that this measure is a better predictor of acceptance of outgroups than the number of face-to-face friends. Thinking about the nature and process of online contact – less status differences,

Taming conflicted identities 171 Table 8.3 Correlations between number of friends, social identity complexity/inclusiveness, and outgroup attitudes (distance and feeling thermometer)

Number of online friends Number of faceto-face friends Social identity complexity Social identity inclusiveness

Social distance – Ethnic outgroup

Social distance – Religious outgroup

Thermometer – Ethnic outgroup

Thermometer – Religious outgroup

-.104**

-.068

.168**

.172**

-.001

 .007

.069

.103**

-.054

-.018

.061

.035

-.305**

-.139**

.285**

.266**

less salient ethnic and religious identities, less anxiety in comparison to face-toface communication (Amichai-Hamburger and McKenna 2006, Bargh, McKenna and Fitzsimons 2002), we argue that it could facilitate social identity inclusiveness, i.e. widening the borders of the perceived ingroup more easily than direct contact.

Discussion In this chapter, we have presented several findings that elucidate the role of traditional social identities for the youth of the Western Balkans. We have shown that youth are subject to intense social pressures to sustain traditional identities and that traditional identities still serve important psychological functions among them. However, youth are at the same time aware of the extent to which these identities are politicized and recognize their political implications. So, what are the prospects of overcoming these traditional identities in the direction of building more complex social identities and more openness towards others? First, our findings suggest that various social identifications we investigated (e.g. ethnic, national, regional, identification with family, etc.) are closely intertwined among the youth and demonstrate similar patterns of relations with more general social and political attitudes. From this perspective, it appears that we cannot trace some clearly articulated alternative sources of identification that would cut across the more traditional divides. Even the superordinate regional and European identities are not clearly profiled and distinct from more traditional identities among youth in our sample. This finding is consistent with some more general findings, demonstrating substantial discrepancies within the value and norm systems in the societies undergoing transition (Golubović 2003, Golubović, Spasić and Pavićević 2003, Lazić and Cvejić 2007). Our results clearly show that fostering more complex and inclusive forms of multiple identities among youth could be a promising venue to overcome traditional bonds. In line with previous research (Branković et al. 2016, Brewer 2000,

172  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. Crisp and Hewstone 2007, Crisp, Walsh and Hewstone 2006, Maloku et al. 2016), our study supports the link between more inclusive identities, on the one hand, and more tolerant outgroup attitudes, on the other. Since traditional identities, in particular ethnic and religious identity, do seem to serve important psychological motives, attempts aimed at decreasing the attachment to these groups could in fact backfire in the current setting (i.e. if threatened, it might increase, rather than decrease, identification with these identities). On the other hand, heightening awareness of alternative identifications and the existing overlap between various identities could prove a more viable alternative for youth in the region. Exposing them to the exemplars of people with complex identities, representative of both ingroup and outgroup, can be a way to illustrate the flexibility of intergroup borders. Another way would be to promote ideas of solidarity as well as shared overarching values, as they seem to have an appeal among the youth. These ideas spontaneously emerged as alternatives to traditional dominant identities in the focus-group discussions. Second, an additional insight from the present study is that the social lives and experiences of young people who come from minority and majority ethnic and religious groups differ (Brewer, Gonsalkorale and van Dommelen 2013). This affects the construction of multiple social identities in both groups, suggesting that e.g. identities for minority groups more accurately reflect the complexities of social surroundings, whereas they also show more sensitivity to identity threats. Identities of youth from majority groups, conversely, appear to be more open to including others, but often lack the motivation to actually do so. Both majority and minority youth groups thus face particular identity issues and care should be taken to address these in attempts to overcome traditional identity bonds. These issues can, for instance, affect perceptions of overarching national identities, which make an important consideration particularly for emerging national identities, as that of Kosovo (Maloku et al. 2016). Insights from the qualitative study highlight possible venues of overcoming traditional identities, although these are more likely to be seen as potential than actual opportunities at the present time. For instance, youth in our sample appear to be sensitive to the predominantly exclusive and binding nature of ethnic and religious identities, as well as their political construction and instrumentalization. On the other hand, our study validates previous findings (Blagojević 2013, Pasha et al. 2012, Tomanović et al. 2012, TopuzovskaLatkovic et  al. 2013, Žiga et  al. 2015), reflecting a very sombre perception of social and democratic institutions among the youth, evidenced, for instance, by a high level of political cynicism and reluctance to take an active part in the political process. Although the young are clearly not satisfied with the current sociopolitical climate and the bonds of exclusive identities, their political attitudes do not seem to be sufficiently articulated. Clearly, further democratic consolidation of the societies in the region should therefore include fostering critical thinking among the youth and providing support for more active political participation. Third, consistent with previous research, our findings imply that public discourse and the manner in which interethnic relations are typically portrayed can affect the youth who are in the process of developing their social identity (BarTal 2000, Paez and Liu 2011). For instance, previous research has demonstrated

Taming conflicted identities  173 increased willingness for reconciliation in cases of protracted conflict when the conflict is cast in terms of common humanity (Hirschberger and Ein-Dor 2006). In contrast, when interethnic relations are presented as immediately threatening for the ingroup, people tended to embrace more prejudiced courses of action (Stephan and Stephan 2000). The currently predominant political discourses in most of the region do not support the overcoming of ethnoreligious divides. An important first step would therefore be to reconsider some of the constitutional preambles that constrain the definition of national identity as primarily based on the ethnic majority in the respective countries (Vasiljević 2011). In countries where this is already reflected in legal terms (e.g. Kosovo’s constitution), work needs to be done to increase the representation of national identity as inclusive of all ethnic groups. Finally, to provide opportunities for the recognition of overlapping shared identities, as well as challenging negative perceptions of and feelings towards others, youth should be encouraged to have more contacts across ethnic and religious divides. Our study supports the contention that contact has several beneficial impacts on intergroup relations (Pettigrew and Tropp 2008). Future intervention programs bringing together the youth should maximize the possibilities of generalization of the positive experiences. Providing a more long-term basis of interaction by, for example, planning the public space to encourage interethnic contact or engagement in common activities appears as a promising venue. Youth organizations across country borders are a much-needed framework for organizing and supporting contact. Our research also mapped the potential drawbacks and difficulties of such initiatives that should be taken into account. Furthermore, as we demonstrate strong effects of online contact on intergroup acceptance, we suggest that researchers should also register and longitudinally trace online friendships and their outcomes. These are spontaneous, informal ways for young people to communicate, and they seem to make more and more use of it. Youth in the region know very little about the members of other communities because of the physical and political barriers between them, but even more so because they are taught that ethnic, religious, and national identities primarily draw content from imagined ‘irreconcilable differences’. To address this issue, the educational system should serve as a buffer against the prejudiced and discriminative treatment of others, and not as its perpetuator. More importantly, some of our respondents made clear they would embrace this change and would, in fact, push for it. Similarly, the youth show evident resistance to political pressure to be instrumentalized in the construction of divisive forms of social identities. By distancing from political and social institutions, the young show their reluctance to conform to dominant norms and accept dominant identities. Obviously, they do not feel comfortable in the society created by the previous generations. The Internet could be a valuable tool to initiate and promote much-needed changes, and especially so because it is overwhelmingly populated by young. Bridging social divides in the Western Balkans seems like a goal dependent upon politically empowering the youth, offering them more opportunities to communicate and encouraging them to define themselves more broadly instead of limiting themselves to singular identities. Ultimately, that could lead to a liberating way of perceiving oneself and the world.

174  Vladimir Turjačanin et al.

Note 1 The term varies in spelling depending on the language. Pristina, Prishtina/ë, and Priština are all used in literature. In this chapter, the Slavic spelling of the term (Priština) will be used for convention and adherence with other chapters of this book. The use of this spelling does not imply any preference in politics or identity.

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Taming conflicted identities  175 Gaertner, S.L., Dovidio, J.F., Banker, B.S., Houlette, M., Johnson, K.M. and McGlynn, E.A. 2000. Reducing intergroup conflict: From superordinate goals to decategorization, recategorization, and mutual differentiation. Group Dynamics Theory Research And Practice, 4(1), 98–114. Golubović, Z. 2003. Politika i svakodnevni život: Srbija 1999–2002 [Politics and the everyday life: Serbia 1999–2002]. Filozofija i društvo, XIX–XX, 307–19. Golubović, Z.T., Spasić, I. and Pavićević, Đ. 2003. Politika i svakodnevni život – Srbija 1999–2002 [Politics and the Everyday Life: Serbia 1999–2002]. Beograd: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju. Hamberger, J. and Hewstone, M. 1997. Inter-ethnic contact as a predictor of blatant and subtle prejudice: Tests of a model in four West European nations. British Journal of Social Psychology, 36(2), 173–90. Hirschberger, G. and Ein-Dor, T. 2006. Defenders of a lost cause: Terror management and violent resistance to the disengagement plan. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(6), 761–9. Lazić, M. and Cvejić, S. 2007. Class and values in postsocialist transformation in Serbia. International Journal of Sociology, 37, 54–74. Majstorović, D. and Turjačanin, V. 2013. Youth Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Social Science Approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Maloku, E., Derks, B., Van Laar, C. and Ellemers, N. 2016. Building national identity in newborn Kosovo: Challenges of integrating national identity with ethnic identity among Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs, in Understanding Peace and Conflict Through Social Identity Theory: Contemporary and World-wide Perspectives, edited by S. McKeown, R. Haji and N. Ferguson. Springer International PublishingSwitzerland, 245–60. Marcia, J.E. 1966. Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551–8. Milošević Đorđević, J. 2016. The role of contact in reducing social distance of youth from the Balkans towards minority groups. Applied Psychology, 8(4), 415–32. Milošević Đorđević, J. and Žeželj, I. 2014a. Psychological predictors of addictive social networking sites use: The case of Serbia. Computers in Human Behavior, 32, 229–34. Milošević Đorđević, J. and Žeželj, I. 2014b. Direct/online contact as predictor of social acceptance: Youth from the Balkan countries. Paper presented at Annual Conference of International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), Rome, Italy. Mitchell, C. 2005. Behind the ethnic marker: Religion and social identification in Northern Ireland. Sociology of Religion, 66(1), 3–21. Paez, D. and Liu, J. H. 2011. Collective memory of conflicts, in Intergroup Conflicts and Their Resolution: A Social Psychological Perspective, edited by D. Bar-Tal. New York, NY: Psychology Press, 105–24. Pasha, A., Xhangolli, K., Dundo, J., Gjokuta, B., Tahiri, Z. and Lena, O. 2012. Kosovo Youth Study. Forward Looking, Grounded in Tradition. Prishtina: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Pettigrew, T.F. 1998. Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 49(1), 65–85. Pettigrew, T.F. 2009. Secondary transfer effect of contact: Do intergroup contact effects spread to noncontacted outgroups? Social Psychology, 2(40), 55–65. Pettigrew, T.F. and Tropp, L. 2008. How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Metaanalytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(6), 922–34. Phinney, J.S. and Ong, A.D. 2007. Conceptualization and measurement of ethnic identity: Current status and future directions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 54(3), 271–81. Riek, B.M., Mania, E.W. and Gaertner, S.L. 2006. Intergroup threat and outgroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(4), 336–53.

176  Vladimir Turjačanin et al. Roccas, S. and Brewer, M.B. 2002. Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(2), 88–106. Schmid, K., Hewstone, M., Tausch, N., Cairns, E. and Hughes, J. 2009. Antecedents and consequences of social identity complexity: Intergroup contact, distinctiveness threat, and outgroup attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(8), 1085‒1098. Stephan, W.G. and Stephan, C.W. 2000. An integrated theory of prejudice, in Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination, edited by S. Oskamp. Psychology Press, 23–45. Tajfel, H. 1981. Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tajfel, H. and Turner, J.C. 1986. The social identity theory of intergroup behavior, in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited byW. Austin and S. Worchel.. Chicago: NelsonHall, 7–24. Taleski, D. and Hoppe, B. 2015. Youth in South East Europe: Lost in Transition. Perspective, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Regional Dialog South East Europe. Tausch, N., Hewstone, M., Kenworthy, J.B., Psaltis, C., Schmid, K., Popan, J.R. and Hughes, J. 2010. Secondary transfer effects of intergroup contact: Alternative accounts and underlying processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(2), 282. Tomanović, S., Stanojević, D., Jarić, I., Mojić, D., Dragišić Labaš, S., Ljubičić, M. and Živadinović, I. 2012. Mladi – naša sadašnjost. Istraživanje socijalnih biografija mladih u Srbiji [Youth – Our Present: A Study on the Social Biographies of Youth in Serbia]. Beograd: Čigoja štampa. Topuzovska Latkovic, M., Borota Popovska, M., Serafimovska, E. and Cekic, A. 2013. Youth study Macedonia. Skopje: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Van Dommelen, A., Schmid, K., Hewstone, M., Gonsalkorale, K. and Brewer, M. 2015. Construing multiple in-groups: Assessing social identity inclusiveness and structure in ethnic and religious minority group members. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45(3), 386‒399. Van Oudenhoven, J.P., Groenewoud, J.T. and Hewstone, M. 1997. Cooperation, ethnic salience and generalization of interethnic attitudes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26(4), 649–61. Vasiljević, J. 2011. Citizenship and Belonging in Serbia: In the Crossfire of Changing Victimhood Narratives. The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States in Former Yugoslavia (CITSEE) Working Papers Series, 17. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Wilcox, C., Sigelman, L. and Cook, E. 1989. Some like it hot: Individual differences in responses to group feeling thermometers. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53(2), 246–57. Williams, R.M. 1947. The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions. New York: Social Science Research Council. Willing, C. 2008. Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology: Adventures in Theory and Method. Berkshire: Open University Press. Worchel, S. 1999. Written in Blood: Ethnic Identity and the Struggle for Human Harmony. New York: Worth Publishers. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K. and Anisman, H. 2010. Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 60–71. Žeželj, I. 2007. Politički cinizam mladih: Kroskulturno poređenje [Political cynicism of youth: Crosscultural comparison], in Psihologija i društvo, editied by M. Biro and S. Smederevac. Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet, 101–13. Žiga, J., Turčilo, L., Osmić, A., Bašić, S., Džananović Miraščija, N., Kapidžić, D. and Brkić Šmigoc, J. 2015. Studija o mladima u Bosni i Hercegovini [A study of youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina]. Sarajevo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

9 Beyond ethnic identity History, pride, and nationhood across socio-economic lines in Serbian and Croatian youth Tamara P. Trošt Introduction Ethnic identity theorists have long come to a consensus that ethnic identities and nationalism are not fixed and static concepts, but are instead fluid, malleable, layered, situational, and contextual (Waters 1990). While earlier debates on the primordial vs. constructed nature of ethnic identity are mostly abandoned, theoretical insights on the nature of the construction of ethnic identity is at a standstill. The field has come to the conclusion that ethnic identity is largely constructed and contextual, but the question of how ethnic identity actually ‘works’ on the ground, and how it is constructed and reconstructed in everyday settings, is still rarely explored. It remains unclear why and how ‘the concept of identity is necessary to explain individual’s and group’s multiple and fragmented understandings of “selves” ’ (Malešević 2006: 5). Brubaker similarly wrote, over a decade ago, that ethnic common sense should be something we want ‘to explain, not explain things with’, and as such belongs in our empirical data, not our analytical toolkit (Brubaker 2004: 8–11). In response to these criticisms, the ‘everyday identity’ approach proposed focusing on everyday individuals as construction agents, pointing to the fact that identity ‘responds to the logics, imperatives, and concerns of the everyday contexts in which it is embedded’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 538–9). Ordinary people’s understandings of identity thus ‘do not simply mimic those variants traded in elite discourse, but more often resonate with the currents and rhythms of their everyday concerns and predicaments’ (539). At the same time, in Jean and John Comaroff’s words, ‘youth tend everywhere to occupy the innovative, uncharted borderlands along which the global meets the local’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000: 308). Youth in Serbia and Croatia have grown up in a completely different era than their parents: whereas their parents lived through the collapse of state socialism and a bloody ethnic war accompanied by economic collapse and political isolation, today’s youths’ earliest memories are of relative peace and openness, and they enjoy plentiful opportunities to travel, participate in student exchange programs, and are exposed to globalization effects. Globally, youth are faced with a new set of challenges, including the rise of the radical nationalist right, the failures and promises of multiculturalism, questions of stateless nations, and transnationalist movements that surpass national

178  Tamara P. Trošt boundaries, which traditional nationalist approaches are no longer able to address (Özkirimli 2017). Indeed, empirically, youth are frequently found to be more open than previous generations, with different values, life cycle patterns, and political attitudes (Suarez-Orosco 2004, Blum 2011, Schwartz and Winkel 2016). Why, then, are researchers still approaching ethnic identity in youth in the same outdated ways as in previous decades? Given the malleability of youth’s identities and the new complex set of factors influencing their development – including globalization, social media, and migration – simple survey questions measuring strength of attachment to a particular ethnic identity, or assuming that the content and modes of attachment to the ethnic identity have been simply transferred from their parents, might no longer suffice. In this chapter, I attempt to fill these lacunas by analysing the multiple meanings assigned to ethnic identity among youth in Serbia and Croatia. I heavily rely on ethnographic methods, utilizing the bottom-up approach to examine the ways in which ethnicity is routinely practiced by youth (see Miller-Idriss 2009, Skey 2011, Bonikowski 2016). Relying on two years of ethnographic research, including 160 in-depth interviews in Belgrade and Zagreb, 1200 surveys, focus groups, and participant observation in Serbia and Croatia, I examine the ways in which contemporary youth understand, prioritize, adapt, or discard facets of their ethnic identities. I tackle the following questions: to what extent are youth’s ethnic identity narratives cohesive and unified; in which cases and how do certain identity narratives become activated; and can mutually contradictory ideas of the nation co-exist with youth? Do youth express their national identity and national pride in current or historical terms: are they able to find present sources of national identity and pride, or do they revert to distant historical battles and figures? In what ways does the past inform their understanding of the present? Which features of their national identity do youth draw on when expressing pride or shame at being a member of that nation? In what way does youth’s understanding of their own identity relate to their idea of how others perceive their national or ethnic group? To what extent do youth identify with Europe and see it as a complement or substitute to their own identity? Finally, are there any cleavages within each ethnic identity: does the meaning ascribed to the ethnic group vary across youth of different socio-economic backgrounds, gender, or region?

Methodology The ethnographic material stems from a longer in-depth study of youth in the two capitals (Belgrade and Zagreb), in which 157 youth (eighth and twelfth grade) were interviewed, in addition to class observation, focus groups, and conversations with history teachers, between 2009 and 2012, as a part of my doctoral dissertation.1 The sample consisted of three groups: eighth grade, twelfth grade in a vocational school (srednja škola), and in a college-preparatory high school (gimnazija), in both countries.2 I interviewed roughly 25 respondents per school, with a relatively even gender distribution (see Table 9.1 below). I inquired about their favourite historical and present national figures, opinions on historical eras,

Beyond ethnic identity  179 Table 9.1  Interview distribution by school and gender Belgrade

8th grade 12th grade vocational 12th grade college-track Total per category Total

Zagreb

girls

boys

total

girls

boys

total

16 15 13 44

9 12 17 38

25 27 30 82

11 2 17 30

14 23 8 45

25 25 25 75

157

their sources of pride and embarrassment about their country, ideas of foreigners’ perceptions of their country, and markers of their own identity (e.g. ‘what does being Croatian mean to you?’), as well as their opinions on whether this national identity was something that could be learned (e.g. if they said ‘speaking Croatian and knowing the customs’, I would ask ‘if someone moved here from X and learned Croatian and the customs, would you consider them a Croat?’). The interview responses were analysed using critical discourse analysis (see Wodak et al. 2009). In addition to the in-depth interviews, I carried out a survey of eighth-graders throughout Serbia, including similar questions to the interviews, but on a nationwide convenience sample. The survey was done during class time, for a total of 1196 surveys, equally split between boys and girls. For a complementary nationwide sample in Croatia, I draw from a similar nation-wide historical consciousness survey done by Snježana Koren, Damir Agičić and Magdalena Najbar-Agičić in 2004 (results available in Najbar-Agičić and Koren 2004 and Najbar-Agičić and Agičić 2007), based on a convenience Croatia-wide sample of 847 eighth and twelfth grade students, as well as a representative Croatia-wide sample of 999 eleventh and twelfth graders carried out by the Gong civic society organization in 2011 (results available in Gong 2011). The surveys provide a sense of the representativeness of the given results of the in-depth interviews.

Findings In the following section, I present the six most relevant findings that emerged from my research: sources of national pride in historical vs. present terms, and positive vs. negative terms; perception of the external image of one’s identity; extent of cohesion of identity narratives; ethnic identity vis-à-vis European identity; and importance of class, gender, and regional cleavages within each ethnic identity. Historical vs. present sources of national pride The ways in which history was utilized by youth when discussing issues of national pride was most astounding, and represents one of the major differences between Croatian and Serbian youth. Serbian youth had trouble finding positive

180  Tamara P. Trošt attributes of Serbian identity in the present and instead reverted to historical events when trying to name aspects of Serbianness of which they were proud. Apart from recent successes in sports (Novak Đoković’s wins in tennis) and entertainment (the Eurovision victory), it was very difficult for Serbian youth to find positive ascriptions of Serbianness, or articulate present-day national pride. When asked about the event they were most proud of, in either history or the present, youth were still most likely to choose a distant history event: freedom from the Ottomans (20%), World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII) (12%), the Battle of Kosovo (11%), and the medieval Serbian state (10%). Conversely, the only contemporary events showing up on the top ten events for pride are the sport successes (16%) and EU candidacy and visa status (3%). Serbian youth did not have many positive role models in the present: when asked to list their favourite contemporary Serbian person in an open-ended survey question, 20% said President Tadić and another 32% listed a sports (17%) or entertainment (15%) person. In Croatia, youth were most proud of Croatia in the present, and particularly in its independence from Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Youth pride in Croatia’s independence features prominently in many recent studies. In Najbar-Agičić and Koren’s 2004 survey of 14- to 18-year-olds, when asked ‘What should the Croats be most proud of from their history?’, independence came first, followed by sports successes, and language and culture. Similarly, when asked ‘What was the most important event in Croatia in the past 10 years?’, about a third responded with Croatia’s independence (32% in 8th grade, 25% in 9th grade, 28% in 12th grade), followed by another third with the Homeland war (40% in 8th grade, 33% in 9th, and 29% in 12th). The contrast between Serb and Croat youth is most clearly visible in Tables 9.2 and 9.3 below: in Serbia, almost a third found the period of the Nemanjić dynasty (12th to 14th century) as the best era, and only 9% chose the current period; while in Croatia, a third of youth chose the period of contemporary Croatia as the best one.

Table 9.2 Survey responses to multiple-choice question ‘What was the most/least fortunate era in Serbia’s history?’ Total N = 1197, 8th graders.

The period of the early Serbian states The period of the Nemanjić dynasty The period of the Ottoman Empire The period between the Uprisings and WWI The period between WWI and WWII The period of the Socialist Yugoslavia (Tito) The period of the 1990s (Milošević) The period of contemporary Serbia (post-2000) Other Total

Best (%)

Worst (%)

3 27 1 3 2 46 4 9 5 100

1 2 46 2 10 5 22 5 7 100

Source: author’s own survey, full results available in Pavasović Trošt (2012).

Beyond ethnic identity 181 Table 9.3 Survey responses to multiple-choice question ‘What was the most/least fortunate era in Croatia’s history?’ Total N = 847, subset of 8th graders.

The period of the ‘rulers of Croatian blood’ The period of the Union with Hungary The period of the wars against the Ottoman Empire The period of the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II The period of the 19th century The interwar period (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) The period of WWII and the NDH The period of the Socialist Yugoslavia (Tito) The period of the independent Croatia Other Total

Best (%)

Worst (%)

0 5 0 38 0 0 14 5 33 5 100

0 0 48 0 0 13 22 13 0 4 100

Source: Najbar-Agičić and Koren (2004).

The overwhelming popularity of the ‘Golden Age’ of Serbian history, and of the Nemanjić dynasty in particular, was evident in both my interviews and the open-ended questions on my nation-wide survey: the period of the Nemanjić dynasty was listed as the best period by almost 30% of youth and St. Sava and Tsar Dušan featured in the top five most favourite Serbs in history, whereas Uroš the Weak features among the top five least favourite Serbs.3 Additionally interesting is the preoccupation with the Ottoman Empire as the darkest and gloomiest period of Serbian history: the Ottoman period is perceived even worse than that of Milošević’s Serbia. As evident in Table 9.2 above, when asked to pick the era they thought was the worst for the Serbs, more youth opted for the period of the Ottomans (46%) than for Milošević’s Serbia (22%). The Kosovo battle serves as a primary source of national pride, surfacing in my interviews as pride of Serbia’s history of resistance despite overwhelming odds. When I asked youth to name a historical decision they were most proud of, many mentioned Serbia’s resistance to the Ottomans or in general expressed pride in being on the right side of wars and not taking the easy way out: ‘We succeeded in freeing ourselves from Turks, we did not lose hope after the battle of Kosovo’; ‘For all our decisions, we’ve always persisted until the end, and I’m proud of that’; ‘We are a brave people, ready to sacrifice, we went through a lot but we managed to get through’. Pride is thus derived from making the correct choices in history and bravery, as well as fighting ‘until the end’: I am proud that we did not join the Axis pact. Everyone else surrendered right away, both big powers like Japan, Turkey and Italy, but also all of the countries around and in the former Yugoslavia, like Hungary, all of them joined. But we did not. (girl, eighth grade)

182  Tamara P. Trošt In both world wars we chose the right side, in first because we stood on the side of Bosnia, and in the second because we joined the Allied powers. (girl, high school) I think it’s very positive that we managed to free ourselves from Turks, and we did not lose hope after the Kosovo battle. (boy, eighth grade) During WWI, we could have capitulated, like the Czech Republic, or we could have just not gotten involved, like Switzerland. They just said ‘here, go ahead,’ they would not stay a thousand years anyway, they’ll leave when the war is over. Maybe that’s better, but that’s opposite to our history. (boy, eighth grade) No matter what, I’m proud of Serbia, because we showed ourselves in every war, even this last one. In WWI everyone was impressed with our readiness to defend our own. (boy, high school) Indeed, these results point to a bigger question of the role played by history in informing contemporary youth’s ethnic and national identity. Knowing Serbian history was central to many of the Serbian youth’s understandings of being Serbian. Being Serbian meant: ‘being born in Serbia, knowing your history’; ‘respecting tradition, knowing the language, knowing the traditions that are specific to this people’; ‘education, culture, knowing Serbian language and grammar and Serbian history’. The importance of respecting Serbia’s long history was stressed by many respondents: It’s important to be a Serb because after all, we have a rich history, we’re not some people from yesterday, and this is a privilege, even though many people have not realized this yet, this history of ours should be respected. (girl, eighth grade) In Croatia, the overwhelming majority of youth were proud of Croatian independence following the Homeland War of the 1990s (see Table 9.3 above). While it can thus be said that Croatian youth largely draw their national pride from the present, responses point to the potency of the historical baggage associated with this pride. The idea of the 1000-year-long dream of statehood and independence, finally acquired with Yugoslavia’s dissolution, permeates youth discourse in various forms.4 The actual discourse content ranges from elaborate historical detail of the stages of Croatia’s quest for independence from the 11th century to the present to a simple feeling of pride in contemporary Croatia’s independence. In in-depth interviews, youth verbalized this foundational myth of statehood in several ways. It included Croatia having been reduced to the ‘remainders of the remains’ (ostaci ostataka), referring to the period of the 16th century when Ottomans acquired

Beyond ethnic identity  183 large parts of Croatia; of being pressured by Germanization and Magyarization; and in general being oppressed (tlačeni) by others who always ‘imposed their will upon us’ (nametali nam svoje), which continued in the First and Second Yugoslavia where Croats were again subjugated under Tito’s impartial rule. I really liked learning about how we’ve always fought for independence . . . and in the end, we succeeded! We did not give up even though they forced lots of things upon us, like Magyarization . . . we always had people ready to fight for independence. (girl, eighth grade) I’m a big fan of the boys who fought in the Homeland War, because Croatia is free now. Before we were in Yugoslavia, the Hapsburg Monarchy, we were always under someone’s influence, Magyarization, Germanization .  .  . we finally got our independence and our own language in schools. (boy, eighth grade) My favourite event was definitely Croatia’s independence, I  mean, others always exploited us, and we were bringing ourselves down, belonging to others, and now we’re finally our own. (boy, high school) The worst period [in history] was when we were under the rule of the Turks in the 15th and 16th centuries. Then we were under constant Germanization and Magyarization, and we were always oppressed. (boy, high school) We would not be who we are today if we had not resisted the Magyars and everyone who always tried to impose their will upon us. (girl, high school) Other prominent historical figures are evoked when discussing this historical yearning for independence: King Tomislav (‘Croatia was independent, it was the biggest, most powerful and a real kingdom’), Stjepan Radić (‘very important to our history’, ‘did a lot for Croatia’), and Ban Jelačić (‘made a big step forward for our history and brought us to the point where we are today’). Nevertheless, except for very general justifications, the respondents could provide very limited historical detail, mostly knowing just the key phrases about Croatian heroes connected to Croatia’s national question and listed as their favourite Croats (Radić, Jelačić, Stepinac, Frankopan, Gubec, Strossmayer, Zrinski, Ljudevit Gaj). Most students were not able to provide concrete details on their actual contributions, or even place them in the appropriate historical era. This has significant implications for interpretations of other events in the past and present, such as justification or condemnation of war crimes and relativization

184  Tamara P. Trošt or denunciation of the fascist past. For instance, the Croatian president during the Homeland War, Franjo Tuđman, is seen in unambiguously positive terms: Under Tuđman we and Croatia as a country came to its independence for the first time. We Croatians have a long history and this is not a small thing – after the 12th century and the Pacta conventa, after that we were not independent for almost 1000 years until Tuđman came to power. (boy, high school) More importantly, even those youth who voluntarily mentioned crimes committed by Croats during the 1990s (I did not specifically ask questions about the war in the interviews), many considered them a fair price for achieving Croatia’s independence. There were many war crimes committed in this war, of which I’m certainly not proud of, but all in all, I consider this to be a positive episode in Croatian history. (boy, high school) [favourite era of history] Independence definitely. I  do not know; I  would even say the NDH5 was one of the better things that happened to us. (boy, high school) I’m proud that we defended our country in blood.

(boy, vocational school)

The Homeland War might not have been good, but winning it was definitely good. (boy, eighth grade) However, just as many youths had very balanced and reasonable understandings of the dynamics of war and did not interpret it in black-and-white terms. Many youths chose the Homeland War as the most negative episode in history, or listed it as both the most negative and most positive event in Croatia’s history: The worst episode in our history was the Homeland War. We achieved independence, so it’s a good thing. But I think we did not really have to go about it that way. (girl, eighth grade) Definitely the worst event was the Homeland War . . . so many victims just so that we would fight for our country. So we did get a free Croatia . . . the sacrifice was worth it, but the number of victims is worse than terrible. (girl, eighth grade)

Beyond ethnic identity  185 The worst episode was the Homeland War. I really am not interested in this, Serbs this, Serbs that. . . . So I listen to [Serbian] turbo-folk, should I also get beaten up in the street? It’s just a type of music. Now I’m supposed to get in trouble because of the Homeland War. I’m not interested in it anyway . . . if we were smarter, we would not have to reciprocated in the same amount . . . but ok, then who knows. (boy, eighth grade) If the war had not happened, if relations between Croats and Serbs were not like they are now, if we had gotten our independence in some other way, I think it would have been better . . . going to war does not achieve anything. (boy, vocational school) While several of these quotes might indicate a certain obsession with the past in both countries, it is important to note that these choices do not necessarily indicate a preoccupation with history or even basic knowledge about the events and personas discussed. Youth clearly demonstrated a much stronger worry with immediate livelihood concerns, as discussed in subsequent sections.6 Instead, certain ideological catchphrases and imagery (such as being reduced to the ‘remains of the remains’, victimization, or resistance despite overwhelming odds) serve as fragments that inform and justify current identity narratives. Positive vs. negative bases of ethnic identity As discussed above, for Serbian youth, there is a marked lack of positive bases of national identity and positive role models in the present, aside from sports and entertainment successes. Most frequently listed moments of national pride included tennis successes, the Eurovision win in 2007, and organizing the Youth Olympics in 2009. In her examination of youth, Yerkes (2004) came to a similar conclusion: she points to the 2002 Serbian victory in the world basketball championship as the first time many of her respondents had been able to actually be proud of something. In her words: ‘Many interviewees want simply to live normally and surround themselves with positive things. Of utmost importance is feeling positive about oneself and having a positive identity’ (Yerkes 2004: 934). This underscores the importance for youth to be proud of their national identity, particularly in non-ethnic terms. When I  asked youth to explain what being Serbian meant abstractly, several respondents explained that it meant a particular tradition, religion, and culture: ‘Normally, being Serbian means being born in Serbia, or for your forefathers to be from Serbia, but now it has more of a patriotic meaning, like defending Kosovo’; ‘You can find what it means to be Serbian in our church, our tradition and culture that has existed for centuries’; ‘To be Serbian, you have to celebrate the slava, you have to be Orthodox, you have to know that we were under the Turks’; and ‘You have to be Orthodox first’. However, even those youth who stressed

186  Tamara P. Trošt the importance of generic traditions that must be preserved frequently found it difficult to articulate what these traditions were or what they meant. They mentioned mostly banal things – drinking rakija, dancing kolo, and eating ćevapi. Concretely, however, being Serbian to the respondents meant being fun-loving, having a good night life (mentioned by one third of the eighth graders), being good hosts to visitors, having great sports players, good-looking girls, sticking together, and drinking and singing together. I think we are a good people . . . I do not know, I get the impression that all other peoples are kind of monotonous, and we are not . . . it is always fun with us. (girl, high school) In contrast, while Croatian youth also frequently turned to sports successes as a source of pride, they additionally named the seaside, the landscape, natural beauty, the environment, the sea, islands, beaches, national parks, tourism, lakes, and forests as sources of national pride. The Adriatic Sea alone was mentioned as a source of pride by 28 of my in-depth interview respondents, and a further 14 mentioned Croatia’s natural beauty: We have everything, we have a sea, we have where to go to ski, each one of our regions has its own distinguishing characteristics. (girl, high school) I love how our country looks, I think we have a fantastic geographic position, a really beautiful sea, and the continental part of the country is also beautiful too. (boy, high school) Croatia is rich in minerals and natural riches. We could be among the richest nations in the world if we knew how to take advantage of this. We have beaches, forests, a beautiful and clean sea, ski slopes . . . it’s all here, but not used fully. (girl, eighth grade) These findings point to the need for ethnicity and nationalism scholars to pay more attention to sources of non-‘blatant’ nationalism, such as geography, nature, and sports, as essential building blocks of non-ethnic national pride. Previous studies have demonstrated the extent to which national symbols and messages about national identity (e.g. ideas regarding how old the nation is, who has a right to belong in it, and which aspects of the nation should students feel most proud of) are clearly evident in Croatian nature and society and geography textbooks very early: for instance, they emphasize the Adriatic Sea as ‘our sea’ (naše more) and the pride students should take in Croatia’s natural resources as early as fourth grade (Pavasović Trošt in press).

Beyond ethnic identity 187 While both Serbian and Croatian youth attempted to articulate the positiveness of being Serbian or Croatian, equally as many respondents thought that belonging to a particular ethnic group did not really mean anything special, or that it was simply a marker for country of origin. For several Serbian youths I interviewed, being Serbian was the same as being a member of any other ethnic group: you were Serbian if ‘you live in Serbia, that is it . . . we are just the same as any other nation’; ‘all peoples are the same, similar somehow, I do not know . . . Serbs are not really characteristic in any particular way, we are all the same’; ‘we are mostly similar to other people, maybe a little more stubborn’. ‘Serb’ just means being a citizen of Serbia and that’s it, whoever you are and wherever you come from, depending on how you feel. For example I personally do not feel any kind of belonging toward Serbia, but if I went abroad, I’d say I was Serbian. (girl, high school) To me being Serbian means loving your country, but being objective in it, realizing what is good and what is not good, being real patriots and not chauvinists, and working on changing the things that need to be improved. (girl, high school) Negative opinions of the in-group were also clearly present, though they were mostly in reference to what outsiders might think of Serbs, discussed in greater detail in the following section. For instance, youth frequently mentioned that Serbia is ‘known by the fact that it likes to go to war’, as ‘a dirty country, with football hooligans and fights, and people who like the disgusting Grand Parade [reality] show’. Being Serbian meant ‘to be vengeful, guard your own with pride’, ‘that we speak Serbian and go to war every 20 years’, as opposed to what Serbs should be like: ‘actually doing something productive, not just talking and stealing shoes [referring to looting after Kosovo protest], and if you protest, to protest in a normal way’. Some youth compared what they perceived as Serbian traits with traits of other nationalities: Being Serbian means being backwards in every way . . . for example when my bathroom was being built, the construction workers took two hour breaks for coffee, while for example in Germany people work much more, when we visited, you could not see anyone in the streets because everyone was at work. That is just our mentality. (girl, high school) Serbia is not a very educated and civilized nation compared to the rest of Europe, it is focused on patriotism, narrow views, not thinking about changing traditional attitudes even though it is more and more clear things just do not work that way anymore. (girl, high school)

188  Tamara P. Trošt When I asked Serbian youth whether they could think of something Serbs did which made them ashamed to be a part of the ethnic group, the top two events that were repeatedly mentioned were the murder of French football fan Brice Taton by football hooligans in Belgrade in 2009, and the destruction and shop looting during the protests against Kosovo independence in 2008. These two were followed by a general embarrassment by politicians in parliament (in particular, a recent shoe-throwing episode), the recent fistfight between priests, and fights of football fans in stadiums. In fact, Serbian youth were far more likely to be ashamed of the violence during protests against Kosovo independence than about the actual event of Kosovo’s independence. In the vocational school, interviewees were also ashamed that Serbs allowed the gay parade to take place, and that Montenegro recognized Kosovo’s independence. Similarly, Croatian youth also frequently – without being prompted – defined their ethnic group in negative terms. These mostly included being passive, lazy, not being proactive about improving one’s country, and leaving when things get rough: Being Croatian means the ability to not move, not work on things, I mean we just sit around and wait for somebody else to things for us. . . . Of course there are exceptions, but the majority of us just sit around and wait for better times. For example, we do not go out to vote, everyone constantly complains about how our political situation is a disaster but no one will go and vote. So basically do not do anything and you’ll be Croatian. (girl, high school) Being Croatian means being dishonest and lazy, and that’s it. (girl, vocational school) Croats are marked by inconsistency . . . we cannot agree on things ourselves, even in politics we need the arbitration of some higher courts. . . . I mean, we do not know how to agree on things, we always set each other up . . . we like to work on someone else’s dime.  .  .  . But I  guess we’re good, we have some special mentality, it’s like we’re in the Balkans, but we’re also in Europe, the West, I mean we like turbo folk, but we keep away from it, we’re contradictory. (boy, high school) A Croat is someone who is passive in politics, does not go to vote . . . people who are sometimes primitive and have a rough disposition. . . . I guess we’re not really calm, as opposed to for example the British. (boy, high school) Harbouring both positive and negative feelings about one’s ethnic group is far from unusual; the larger point to underscore is the need for positive non-ethnic bases of pride, such as pride in the environment and landscape, food, music, sociability, etc.

Beyond ethnic identity  189 External perception of the nation/ethnic group The preceding section pointed to the relevance of sports and entertainment successes of their nation in international competitions, where youth in both countries were very much concerned with what kind of image their nation was projecting in other countries. For youth, the issue of pride and shame in one’s nation is inextricably connected to its perceived image in other countries, as evident in my interviews and surveys. It is thus unsurprising that Serbian youth found their greatest source of national pride in Đoković and Serbian sports victories, and voiced hope that these successes would begin broadcasting a more positive image of Serbs in the world. In an open-ended survey question on who was their favourite or most positive Serbian figure in the present, a sports (17%) or entertainment (15%) person was mentioned by more than a third of the surveyed youth.7 However, when trying to articulate their own feelings about their identity, youth very frequently resorted to explaining what it was not, i.e. how they felt Serbian identity contrasted with the outward perception of Serbs, and spent time refuting or challenging these notions. With only a few exceptions, youth were very bitter about the collective Serbian identity ascribed to Serbs by people in other countries and the media. Many youths found it unfair that all Serbs should be judged by events of the 1990s, and that when they personally travelled abroad and interacted with foreigners, this collective identity was automatically conferred upon them. This was true for respondents both apologetic and condemning of the 1990s crimes; most clearly articulated by a high school girl: When I  was in Germany, some kids asked me whether the war was over and similar questions like that. They are probably aware that we’re a postCommunist country dealing with a lot of problems, although I think that people in the West generally think we’re backward, which I do not agree with. I do not feel any sense of belonging to Serbia, nor do I practice any of the customs that are a part of our cultural tradition. One girl in Germany asked me if it was true that every house in Serbia had three guns. The wars have just left a bad impression about us. I do not think this is right, because I could also ask Germans the same things about Nazis. Other youth expressed similar opinions, voicing their dismay with the expected image of Serbs they encountered when travelling abroad: There is a bad perception of Serbs . . . for instance when there is a football game, 100,000 of our fans go, get in a fight, and then the entire world gets a bad impression about us because of a few football fans. There are other countries also with football hooligans just like ours, but this is not mentioned. (boy, eighth grade) What we think about Iranians and Afghans, that’s just about what the world thinks about Serbs. (boy, high school)

190  Tamara P. Trošt I know some people perceive Serbs as terrorists and vandals. But I guess it’s our fault – like when we go on a class trip to other countries, it’s like organized theft. For example, my friends from another high school went to Greece and they found a sign in a store written in Serbian ‘Serbs, do not steal!’ (girl, vocational school) I’m ashamed that I cannot introduce myself anywhere without people judging me through my nation. These prejudices are largely the fault of the media . . . but I guess it’s also due to some of the moves we made in history. (girl, high school) To further probe this notion of external perception, I included a survey question: ‘What do you think other nations think about Serbs, and why?’ The responses mirrored the results from in-depth interviews discussed above. Of the 878 students who responded to this question, 49% listed a negative opinion, 25% provided positive descriptors, 12% replied a mixture of positive and negative, and the remaining 14% replied with some version of ‘I do not know’ or ‘do not care’. The most frequently listed negative descriptors included: savages/hooligans/ criminals/thugs/primitives (71 respondents), ‘just the worst opinion’ (64 respondents), and uncultured/uneducated and undeveloped (35 respondents each). Unfortunately, only 196 (a little over 10%) respondents provided the reason why they thought this opinion was positive or negative. Among those 196 who provided a reason for their perception, 30 respondents thought other nations had a negative opinion about Serbs ‘because it’s the truth’, 32 listed politicians and Milošević as the reason, 26 listed the media, and 20 listed envy. This is intricately related to youth’s sense of vindication and pride when a foreigner would travel to Serbia and subsequently change their mind about Serbs; or in lieu of the fact that sports successes are ‘changing what people think of Serbs’ figured so prominently in the mind of youths. One boy mentioned ‘I love it when some foreign singer performs in Serbia and really likes it here’. Among those youth who thought that foreigners had a positive image of Serbia, the most frequently mentioned reasons included ‘good people’ (51 respondents), ‘we’re just the best’ (47), friendly and hospitable (23), and good-looking women (14), corresponding with the way many youths described their own identity, discussed in the previous section: I think we are pretty fun. Everyone who comes to Serbia leaves pleased, they like it here, so I assume it is a good place to be. (boy, eighth grade) We are very hospitable as a people . . . our nightlife is great, everyone who comes here loves the nightlife. (girl, eighth grade) Youth highlighted the importance of loving your country and representing it in the best possible light abroad, and accordingly, had very negative opinions of Serbs who ‘bash’ on Serbia in the international sphere, whether or not they agreed

Beyond ethnic identity  191 with the issues at stake. For example, when I asked respondents about their least favourite Serbs in the present, I received the following responses: Veran Matić (‘he makes shows as if we were a genocidal people’), Nataša Kandić (‘she shows her own nation in the worst possible light, as if she does not belong to this nation’), Čeda Jovanović (‘he is an American mercenary’), and Brankica Stanković (‘she is against the hooligans, but she is also against Serbdom generally’; ‘there is no base for the things she says and she bashes on Serbs too much’). Croatian youth were similarly proud of sports successes: the third place at the 1998 World Cup football championship featured very prominently when asked for their favourite event in Croatian history, as well as sports successes as a general category, due to the effect these successes have on Croatia’s image in the world: What I’m really most proud of are our sports successes, that’s just really one of the things I’m very proud of . . . because in effect the entire world hears about us when our sports players make something big. (boy, high school) However, as opposed to Serbian youth, who frequently pointed out that being Serbian meant something different from the external perception of Serbianness, Croatian youth were less preoccupied with what others thought about them. External perception showed up only in the context of football hooliganism that was tarnishing Croatia’s image, and the importance of representing Croatia properly when travelling overseas: Being Croatian means first of all loving your country, but also when you go to some other country, you have to act in accordance with what you want people to think about your country. You should not make it look bad, like clashes of the Bad Blue Boys which did . . . just make as little disorder in Croatia as possible. (girl, high school) Only one of the respondents replied with what he thought others thought about Croats: ‘I think Europe and all those other countries look at us as if we’re from the Balkans, rude, ignorant, things like that’ (boy, vocational school). Another respondent said: Being Croatian means respecting other people and your homeland. You should support everything Croatia produces, buy Croatian things, and present yourself appropriately . . . not like for example at a tennis game when we end up looking like total Balkans peasants, we should actually respect our opponent. (boy, high school) This distinction between the self-perception of not belonging to the Balkans, as opposed to those ‘less civilized populations’ living to the east of Croatia, clearly

192  Tamara P. Trošt mirrors the discourse in fourth and eighth grade geography textbooks, discussed above. Incoherent and contradictory narratives; everyday problems, everyday identities One of the most patent impressions from all of the in-depth interviews was a lack of internal coherence in the youth’s narratives. For example, one boy who might be considered very ethno-nationalistic by several of his responses – including his opinion that being Serbian meant ‘fighting for Kosovo’, discussions of Draža Mihajlović’s merits, and espousal of conspiracy theories such as B92 journalists being mercenaries of the West. Yet, at the same time, one of his favourite Serbs was then-President Tadić, a liberal politician, and the event he was most ashamed of in Serbia’s past was ‘burning mosques and embassies, I do not support that because violence and hooliganism are not the right way to demonstrate your patriotism’. Among other respondents, it was possible to be pro-Kosovo, pro-Russia, yet also pro-EU: for instance, one girl said her vision of Serbia in ten years was ‘Serbia with Kosovo as its part, in the EU, close to Russia and China’. Similarly, one boy from the vocational school, when listing his three favourite Serbs, included both the radical Tomislav Nikolić (who he would like to see as Serbia’s president) and the liberal Čeda Jovanović, two ideologically incongruous personalities. Tensions could even be found within the same sentence: the following quote, for instance, indicates the marriage of diametrically opposite ideas: In ten years, I see Serbia without Kosovo, but in the EU, although what do I know, I do not know much about these issues. There’s no need to continue fighting for Kosovo, I mean I know it’s a part of Serbia and that our greatest battles and all of that happened there, but if they want it so much, it’s not worth so much effort. They are going to keep multiplying more and more, and there will be more them than us, simply, no matter how much we fight, we would not be able to do anything against them. It’s not so important for Serbia to be a big country, it’s more important what it’s like on the inside. (girl, eighth grade) In addition to frequently espousing contradictory and incoherent identity narratives, Serbian youth were much more preoccupied with everyday concerns than ideological ones, including unemployment, corruption, and the economic crisis. Students who could otherwise be classified as having right- or left-leaning tendencies were equally consumed by the economic situation and tangible questions of employment and financial stability. Similarly, regardless of ideological persuasion, Croatian youth were much more preoccupied with present concerns than historical or ideological ones. In Najbar-Agičić and Koren’s study (2004), when asked ‘what is the biggest threat to the future of Croatia?’, the top two concerns

Beyond ethnic identity  193 included joining the EU and economic concerns – external debt, privatization, unemployment, under-development, and the financial crisis. These were followed by environmental concerns, terrorism, and politicians. Indeed, youth in both Serbia and Croatia were equally worried about the end of the world, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Croatia, when asked ‘what is the biggest threat to the future of the world?’, almost a third responded the US and/or George Bush (20% in 8th grade, 49% in 9th grade, 25% in 12th grade), followed by terrorism (around 20% in each grade), and nuclear wars/end of the world or other wars (20–25%), and environmental concerns with around 5% (Najbar-Agičić and Koren 2004). In my sample in both countries, this showed up most clearly when youth were asked what they were most ashamed of in their country: many mentioned corruption, politicians, the economic crisis, standard of living, parliament, football fans, government, unemployment, and several mentioned that they would personally lower salaries to all politicians and football players. Youth also frequently explicitly referred to being Croatian as a marker of where you live your everyday life, as opposed to simply ethnic belonging. This was most evident in their discussion of Croats in the diaspora, who many youths did not consider as ‘real’ Croats, since they did not share the everyday predicaments of people living in Croatia: A Croat is someone who is born in Croatia and lives here. I don’t think our diaspora is really Croatian. I mean, they are Croats by nationality, but a real Croat is someone who lives here and bears everything that happens here, obeys our laws and everything. (girl, high school) To be a Croat, you first have to be born in Croatia. You also have to present her the best you can, and not just leave. . . . I mean I know a couple of people who were proud Croats, but then when the war started, they suddenly ran off to America. (girl, high school) Finally, it is important to underscore that many youths provided nuanced, balanced interpretations of their ethnic identities, and the importance of civic duties (voting, playing an active role in politics), defining their ethnic identity in terms of mutual respect and openness: I think that being a Croat means knowing about Croatian history, being aware of your country, of your possibilities, of the possibilities of your country, how and what can be used, what is good, and what is bad, not exaggerating your worth, but also not completely disregarding it. We are worthy, but for example we cannot make it into the EU if we insist on buying just Croatian products (girl, high school)

194  Tamara P. Trošt Being Croatian means respecting your nationhood, but naturally, not at the expense of some other nation . . . it means loving and respecting your country but to some normal extent, not being a nationalist or something like that. (boy, high school) If you’re a Croat, born here and live here, then you cannot say bad things about your country, you cannot pretend to be some kind of Croat and not vote, in other words you have to participate in what is your civic responsibility. . . . You have to promote your country in other countries, and not saying bad things about your country when someone comes to visit [. . .] I mean, you do not need to be a nationalist who listens to Thompson and things like that, but I think you also should not mock your country either. (girl, high school) European identity vis-à-vis ethnic identity Although the fieldwork was completed far in advance of Croatia’s accession to the EU, for Croatian youth, Croatia as a natural part of Europe was taken as given. Youth who were negative about Europe mostly expressed concern about how EU membership would affect the financial situation in Croatia. Some youth expressed unease about the EU as a ‘punisher’ for International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indictments, which were almost exclusively seen as unjust: one boy described the EU as ‘blackmailing’ Croatia; another hoped that in the future, ‘we will have our own opinion and that no one will blackmail us like Slovenians and the EU are doing right now’. Similarly, one respondent thought that in ten years, Croats ‘will be slaves of the EU’, and several listed Croatia’s candidacy to the EU as the worst decision made in Croatia’s history. Several respondents listed the extradition of generals and cooperation with the ICTY as the most negative episode in Croatian history, and one explicitly said that Gotovina’s verdict as a war criminal was ‘false’.8 Many youth still perceive the Hague as biased against Croatia, a sentiment that is reflected in the broader population as well: in the Gong 2011 nation-wide survey of youth, 41% agreed with the statement that ‘all attempts to prosecute Croatian soldiers for crimes committed during the Homeland War should be stopped’, while only 29% disagreed. Many youths were also concerned with the EU’s effect on weakening Croatian identity and traditions: 39% agreed with the statement that ‘by joining the EU, Croatia will lose her national and cultural identity’, while 35% disagreed, and 42% agreed with the statement ‘after joining the EU, we will have to give up some of our traditions’, while 29% disagreed. Many Serbian youth also automatically connected their understanding of Europe with their attitudes towards the EU as an entity. What again stood out most was the lack of knowledge about what the EU actually was or what accession would actually mean. Even the forward-facing youth were very sceptical about the West. While virtually all of the respondents in the college-track high school believed that Serbia should be in the EU, the actual perception of the EU was not

Beyond ethnic identity  195 very positive, even among the more liberal-leaning respondents. Instead, like in Croatia, the EU was perceived by many as blackmailing and endlessly making demands to humiliate Serbia, most notably in its insistence for Serbia to give up Kosovo. Many perceived this demand as entirely hypocritical, given the events in Europe itself: youth frequently provided examples of problems in the EU, such as the expelling of Roma and the riots in the south of France. Aside from Kosovo, grievances held against the EU included its role in pushing to indict war criminals in a deliberately unfair manner (having purposely persecuted only a few Croats and Muslims), and having been ‘forced’ to hold the gay parade. Serbian youth did not comprehend the actual consequences of being in Europe, aside from having higher salaries, cleaner streets, and less corruption: I do not really support Europe, I do not like what they’re going to do to us if we join, everything will have to be the way they say, then we’ll also have to have a gay parade, to give up Kosovo, I just really do not care about the EU. (boy, vocational school) The demands of the EU are insane, if we accept everything they trying to make us to, in the end only Belgrade will be left. Although maybe it would be cleaner if we were in the EU. (boy, eighth grade) I would love for Serbia to be more modern, to develop our tourism better, to have nice public transportation and busses, and not ruined with graffiti like now. But how it’s actually going to be, I think it will be even worse. The EU means ruin, nothing good. We’ll only be able to enter the EU if we accept an independent Kosovo, independent Vojvodina etc., and it looks like in the end we’ll just accept it all. The only thing I care about from the EU is that I can now travel everywhere without a visa, because I had that problem until now . . . that’s the only advantage I have from the EU. (boy, eighth grade) Aside from highlighting the leftover effects of the attachment of EU conditionality to ICTY indictments, these results point out to a need to go beyond simple survey questions (such as the World Survey item on ranking importance attached to particular identities) in order to understand the complexity of the meanings assigned to Europe and the possibility of forging a common identity. The differences between understandings of Europe vis-à-vis ethnic identity in Croatia and Serbia can largely be attributed to historical and contextual factors (such as the NATO bombing), and are well-documented in the literature (Subotić 2011). However, among youth, I find a more pressing theme across both countries; that of EU failure to educate youth in candidate countries on positive and democratic aspects of EU belonging. The overwhelming impression of the EU among youth in both countries was related to conditionality/blackmail, cleanliness/order, and visa-free travel, lacking a deeper ideological understanding of the implications of belonging to the EU.

196  Tamara P. Trošt Beyond ethnicity identity: class, gender, and regional cleavages In the interviews and surveys, significant cleavages in youth’s understandings of their ethnic identity emerged, further underscoring the lack of a uniform identity across the entire ethnic group. Most importantly, these included class, gender, and regional cleavages. The interview sample was purposely designed to capture class differences (college-track vs. vocational school), as well as gender (roughly split between boys and girls), though all of the interviewed youth lived in the two capital cities, so regional effects (north, central, or south Serbia) were drawn from the nation-wide survey. Class cleavages emerged clearly in my interview sample, with college-track youth sharing much more in common with their cross-country peers than with their withincountry peers of different socio-economic status. This became apparent already as the same three figures that were suggested by youth in college-track high schools as their top three most positive Serbian/Croatian figures appeared on the top three most negative Serbian/Croatian figures in the vocational school, and vice versa, as mirror images. In Serbia, radicals were supported much more frequently in the vocational school – almost half of the respondents mentioned at least one radical when asked for the three most favourite Serbs – compared to only one respondent in collegetrack high school. Some indicative examples from the vocational school are: ‘Šešelj, because he defended the interests of all Serbs’; ‘Ratko Mladić because he defended us’; ‘Šešelj, because he has his own opinion and does not care what they’ll say to him, that’s why they’re trying to poison him’; ‘Šešelj, because of his idea about Great Serbia, that one people should live in one state and for Serbia to have access to the sea’. This is in stark opposition to the college-track high school, where Šešelj appeared almost uniformly on the list of the top three most negative Serbian figures. In the survey of Serbian youth, I used parents’ education to determine effects of socio-economic class on youth’s responses. In an open-ended survey question asking youth to list the historical event with the most negative consequences for Serbs, 23% of youth overall listed the rule of the Ottomans. Among youth with least educated parents this figure was as high as 32%, while it was much lower (21%) among youth with highly educated parents. For the most negative Serbian figure in the past, Vuk Branković featured higher among youth with low-educated than with highly-educated parents (20% versus 14%), while conversely, for the most negative figure in the present, Čeda Jovanović featured prominently among youth with low-educated parents (24% versus 6%).9 Class effects were also noticeable when youth discussed their present-day worries. Here, the sharp differences between youth in the college-preparatory and vocational high schools was the starkest. In both countries, youth in the elite high school complained about hooligans terrorizing neighbourhoods and rallies, limiting their ability to go to football games or walk down the street, or ‘just getting criminal complaints, with no consequence’, whereas the vocational high school youth complained about constantly getting harassed by the police simply because they had very short haircuts or wore hoodies, supposedly appearing like hooligans.

Beyond ethnic identity  197 In the Croatian sample, there were also important differences between the college-track and the vocational high school, particularly in the questions concerning most and least positive Croatian historical figure. When asked to name the most positive figure in Croatian history, youth from the vocational school were more likely to select Ante Starčević and Tuđman. Some figures appeared as the most positive figures only in the vocational school and not at all in the eighth grade or college-track high school: including Ante Pavelić, Ante Gotovina, and the football coach Slaven Bilić. Conversely, when asked to name the most negative figure, the college/track youth frequently selected Pavelić and Ante Gotovac (whereas Gotovac was listed by two and Pavelić by only one student in the vocational school as a negative figure).10 For the most negative episode in Croatian history, nobody from the vocational school named the ISC, whereas college-track youth frequently brought up the ISC as a negative episode. Important to note, however, is that there were no class differences among Croatian youth in several categories: in feeling pride in Croatia’s coast, environment, tourism, and sport, as well as in being worried about corruption, politicians, and the economic crisis. Additionally, when asked to list the most positive episode of Croatian history, youth were unanimous in their selection of the Homeland War and Croatian independence: in the college-track high school, this was listed by 22 of my 25 interview respondents, in the vocational high school by 17, and in the eighth grade by 16 – over half of all respondents in each group. Independence also featured prominently in the response to the question of the best decision made by Croatia, across socio-demographic status. The influence of class and gender on identity and nationalism was best captured by the 2011 Gong survey of Croatian 11th and 12th graders, where the differences between college-track and vocational high schools were astounding. Simply looking at the means for each of the statements (see Table 9.4 below)11 shows a clear pattern: attitudes are most ‘liberal’ in the college-track high school, grow more ethno-nationalist in the four-year vocational school, and are the strongest in the three-year vocational high school. Particularly interesting is that these class and gender patterns hold true for a variety of statements, including attitudes concerning the EU, fascism, personal marriage preferences, homosexuality, censorship of the media, and gender equality at home and in society. This finding similarly surfaced in a nation-wide representative study of adults: the South East European Social Survey in 2004, for instance, similarly found a correlation between occupational position and income with an attachment to a European (rather than Croatian) identity (Sekulić and Sporer 2008: 17). Gender cleavages: As mentioned previously, and consistent with the literature, boys tend to be more ethnocentric than girls (Verkuyten and Kinket 2000). Table 9.4 above points to enormous gender differences between boys and girls in Croatia: for a vast majority of the statements included in the survey, boys exhibited much more ethno-nationalist and exclusivist tendencies than girls on questions ranging from identity superiority, to censorship, LGBT issues, and gender equality.

198  Tamara P. Trošt Table 9.4 Attitudes towards several ethnic and national identity questions of Croatian youth in college-track, 4-year vocational, and 3-year vocational high schools (Gong 2011). Overall Girls Boys By joining the EU, Croatia will lose her national and cultural identity.

%

College- 4-year 3-year track vocational vocational

35 Disagree % Agree 39 Mean 3.0

31

40

40

35

31

40 3.1

40 3.0

38 2.9

40 3.0

40 3.1

After joining the EU, % 29 we will have to Disagree give up some of our % Agree 42 traditions. Mean 3.2

31

27

33

29

25

40 3.1

46 3.3

44 3.2

40 3.2

44 3.3

In Croatia, Croats should have more rights than other ethnic groups.

37 Disagree % Agree 41 Mean 3.1

39

35

43

39

28

36 3.0

47 3.2

37 2.9

39 3.0

48 3.4

Croatia should be % 40 constitutionally Disagree defined as a national % Agree 31 state exclusively of Mean 2.9 the Croatian people.

41

40

48

44

23

28 2.8

35 3.0

26 2.7

28 2.8

42 3.3

Croatian tradition is richer than the tradition of most other nations.

18 Disagree % Agree 47 Mean 3.4

19

19

21

20

14

44 3.3

51 3.5

46 3.3

47 3.4

46 3.5

I can imagine myself married to a person of another nationality.

%

23

26

18

25

30

54 3.4

50 3.4

62 3.6

48 3.4

46 3.2

%

%

24 Disagree % Agree 52 Mean 3.4

Evident in both interview responses and the nation-wide survey in Serbia, there were remarkable differences between boys and girls as well. When asked about the biggest threat to Serbia, boys were more preoccupied with political issues than girls: Albania/Albanians, the US, EU membership, and politicians, whereas girls were much more worried about general livelihood threats: the economic crisis, the end of the world, the environment, and population decline. Similar tendencies were evident in other questions: 74% of youth who listed an entertainment-related most important event were girls and 60% of those who listed President Tadić as a negative figure were boys. Boys were more likely to list Tito (63% of all such responses), and less likely to list Milošević as a negative figure (44%). Girls more frequently listed President Obama’s election and Serbia’s EU candidacy as the most important events in the past decade in the world and Serbia, respectively, and were more likely to list Tito, St. Sava, Karađorđe, and Tesla as the most positive figure in Serbian history, while boys listed Tsar Dušan, Prince Lazar, Miloš Obilić, and

Beyond ethnic identity  199 Draža Mihajlović. For the most positive figure in the present, girls were more likely to list Tadić and Patriarch Pavle, while boys listed Šešelj/Karadžić/Mladić. For the most negative figure in the past, girls were more likely to list Milošević, while boys listed Vuk Branković and Tito. For the most negative figure in the present, girls were more likely to list radicals (Nikolić/Vučić) or Hague indictees (Šešelj/ Karadžić/Mladić), while boys were more likely to list Tadić, Čeda Jovanović, and Dinkić. Overall, all events related to politics, wars, and terrorism were more present in boys’ responses, while girls were more likely to provide responses connected to environment, entertainment, science, and economy. Regional differences: The presence of strong regional differences further pointed to the fragmented nature of ethnic identity.12 When asked about the best era of Serbian history, Tito’s Yugoslavia was selected by 46% of respondents; regionally more frequent in north Serbia (56%) than central and south Serbia (around 45%), and a similar regional distribution was obtained for Tito as a favourite historical figure. For the most positive historical event for Serbia, 12% overall selected liberation from Ottomans; with percentages rising from north (8%) to south (15%). For the most negative Serb in history, Milošević was listed by 25% of the sample, significantly higher in north Serbia (31%) than in south Serbia (21%). The percentage of youth listing the loss of Kosovo as the event they were least proud of decreased from south to north (south Serbia 16%, central Serbia 13%, to only 10% in north Serbia). There were also significant regional differences in youth’s day-to-day concerns, such as what they perceived as the biggest threat to Serbia, and extent of pre-occupation with the economic crisis versus Kosovo independence. While I did not have a comparable regionally stratified sample for Croatian youth, other studies have pointed to significant differences across Croatia’s regions in terms of identification and political attitudes (see Sekulić and Šporer 2008 and Kolsto 2014).13

Conclusions In the preceding sections, I pointed to the six main findings that surfaced in my research: National pride based in the past or in the present: I find that many Serbian youth derive a sense of national pride from the distant past, but they have trouble finding contemporary sources of pride in their ethnic/national group, aside from individual sports success. In contrast, Croatian youth almost unanimously pointed to the modern period as their source of pride, as contemporary Croatia represents the fulfilment of a century-long dream of statehood and independence. Positive and negative bases of national pride: I explored which features of their national identity the youth drew on when expressing pride or shame at being a member of that nation; aside from sports successes, which were also a source of pride among Serbian youth, Croatian students additionally claimed pride in the Adriatic Sea, the landscape, natural beauty, and the environment.

200  Tamara P. Trošt Perception of external image of their nation: Inextricably linked with positive and negative bases of national pride is the way in which youth’s understanding of their own identity relates to their idea of how others perceive their national or ethnic group. Particularly in Serbia, when trying to articulate their feelings about their own identity, youth very frequently resorted to explaining what it was not, i.e. how they felt Serbian identity contrasted with the outward perception of Serbs. Incoherent and contradictory identity narratives; everyday problems, everyday identities: My interviews pointed to the many nuanced inconsistencies in narratives, with very few cohesive and unified narratives. I demonstrated how youth are able to combine within the same narrative very pro-Western and yet very ethnocentric notions of identity. Further, I found that in both countries, extreme identity narratives loaded with ethno-national content from the Tuđman and Milošević eras were marginalized: the large majority of narratives included balanced, middle-line discourse, while extreme displays of nationalism were seen by many as backward. Most marked in both countries was a general fatigue with history and politics, and a greater preoccupation with social concerns than ideological ones, including unemployment, corruption, and the economic crisis. European vs. ethnic identity: I examined the relationship between national and European identity, exploring the extent to which the youth identify with Europe (at the time of the interviews, neither of the countries were in the EU). For Croatian youth, belonging to Europe and having a European identity was taken as given. Common for both countries was youth resentment towards the European Union’s demands, particularly relating to the Hague (perceived by most as unjust) and acting as a ‘punisher’. Also common was an absence of understanding what belonging the EU actually meant, aside from cleaner streets and easier travel. Beyond ethnic identity; class, gender, and regional cleavages: I discussed the ways in which other identities interact with ethnic identity. The most significant cleavages observed include class, regional, and gender cleavages, further underscoring the lack of a uniform identity across the entire ethnic group. In particular, traditionalist claims had special appeal among the less educated, in smaller towns, and among boys; and I found that youth of the same socio-economic class share much more in common with their acrosscountry peers than with their within-country peers of a different socioeconomic class. These findings have several important implications. First, they point to the importance of paying attention to non-‘hot’ nationalism sites such as geography education, but also sports, tourism, and the environment. The research above pointed to the extent to which non-nationalist terms such as pride for the seaside, clean air, or sports successes can and do inform youth’s understandings of their own national identity, sometimes to a larger extent than official national history narratives. Second, they point to the importance of ethnographic fieldwork and actually talking to

Beyond ethnic identity 201 youth, in order to effectively disentangle the complex and contextual meanings of identity. While youth might indeed choose nationalist categories when prompted in a multiple-choice setting,14 once probed in a one-to-one conversation, it quickly becomes clear that these understandings are in no way one-dimensional, and that these attitudes might be countered by simultaneous conflicting liberal views on the same question. Youth in the Croatian college-track high school, for instance, demonstrated great introspection on how they felt about the Homeland War and the difference in which they considered goals to justify the means – reflection that would otherwise seem absent in their choice of a ‘favourite’ historical figure or event. Moreover, simply noting the percentage of youth who are proud of the war or particular war criminals would obfuscate the fact that the majority of my respondents were tired of history and politics and much more preoccupied with present, everyday concerns. In other words, an individual’s choice of the Homeland War as the most positive historical event on a survey might not at all be indicative of that individual’s actual reflections on the war or even the importance of this event in any consequential facets of his/her life. This has important implications for the measurements used in studying ethnic identity in contemporary times, particularly amongst youth.

Notes 1 The author would like to thank her dissertation (Pavasović Trošt 2012) committee members, Mary Waters, Jocelyn Viterna, Chris Winship, and Veljko Vujačić, for their help with conceptualizing and executing the dissertation research, the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship for supporting a year of dissertation fieldwork, as well as Snježana Koren and Magdalena Najbar-Agičić for generously sharing the results of their research. 2 They are referred to simply as ‘high school’ or ‘vocational school’ throughout the chapter. 3 This obsession with Nemanjić era was found among the adult population in several nation-wide studies as well: not only does it appear as the favourite era, but the majority adults have misconceptions of this era, for instance believing that Dušan’s kingdom was much larger than it was – spanning to include both Belgrade and Thessaloniki (Stojanović et al. 2010). 4 Stef Jansen demonstrates the potency of the 1000  year myth in his interviews with Serbian and Croatian villagers in Croatia, pointing out the appropriation of the narrative (e.g. ‘1000 years under the Serbs’), despite the fact that Croatia was under various – Hapsburg, Ottoman – rules during those ten centuries, of which Croatia was in Yugoslavia for only 70 years (Jansen 2002: 79). 5 NDH refers to the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist state created during WWII. 6 This disconnect was also evident in the IPSOS 2010 survey of the adult population: Tsar Dušan similarly emerged as an immensely popular figure, but in follow-up questions, most adults had no knowledge whatsoever of what Dušan’s Serbia was actually like. 7 Of the open-ended responses, Boris Tadić placed first with 20%, followed by names from sports or entertainment (32% combined). Another 12% of responses included nationalists/radicals such as Nikolić, Vučić, Šešelj, Mladić and Karadžić. See Pavasović Trošt 2012 for full results. 8 Explicit condemnation of Hague indictees was made by one student: when asked for the most negative figure, he mentioned Mirko Norac, ‘because of war crimes . . . I just

202  Tamara P. Trošt

9

10 11

12

13

14

cannot understand someone pulling an old 85-year old woman out of a line and coldly shooting her in the head, at only 23 years old. . . . I just really cannot fathom that’ (boy, high school). This agrees with the results of my 2007 ethnic distance study among eighth graders, where I found that, in addition to gender, school achievement – which could be seen as a proxy for class – was one of the most important predictors of ethnic distance scores. In fact, school achievement mediated gender differences; the higher the respondent’s school achievement, the lower their ethnic distance score (p