Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe: Beyond Ethnicity

256 Pages·2017·1.947 MB·English

by  Tamara P. Trošt, Danilo Mandić

‘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, sus-
tained 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 chang-
ing, 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 identi-
ties 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, Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vojvodina, con-
tributors 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 Har-
vard 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 man-
uscript 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 transfor-
mation. 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 contempo-
rary perspectives, the series aims to explain the past and seeks to examine how it
shapes the present. Focusing on original empirical research and innovative theo-
retical 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
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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.
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without intent to infringe.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 9781138086364 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781315111049 (ebk)
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Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
Editors xi
Contributors xii
Acknowledgements xv
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 groups 17
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 75
KRISZTINA RÁCZ
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 159
8.2 Share of people that had rare or no contact with the ethnic
outgroup by country, town, and ethnicity 161
8.3 Average number of direct and online outgroup friends within
ethnic majorities and minorities group in the Western Balkans 164
8.4 Social identity complexity and inclusiveness by country and
majority/minority status 169