Citizenship and Belonging in Serbia: In the Crossfire of Changing Nationhood Narratives

Abstract:     
Drawing on the idea that politics of citizenship mirror specific ideas of nationhood, this paper aims to show how the changing citizenship regimes in Serbia translate the varying narratives and perceptions of nationhood into the realities of political community. The first part of the paper offers a short historical overview of the citizenship regimes practiced in Serbia, with an emphasis upon the socialist regime and the Miloševic regime of the 1990s. Apart from providing necessary historical context, this section offers an insight into the important themes and topoi of Serbian nationhood narratives and their legal and political emanations. The second part deals with post-2000 Serbia and changes within the legal framing of citizenship status as well as the changes (or, in some respects, only partial changes) in the overall political climate. The third section of the paper shows how the current citizenship regime and dominant political narrative imagine Serbia’s political community and accordingly manage groups and identities. Finally, the last segment of the paper briefly discusses the impact of Europeanisation taken both as a process of a political transformation and as a new emerging transformative discourse.

Keywords: citizenship, Serbia, narratives, politics of belonging

JEL Classification: P30, K10, K19

working papers series