What happens to the citizen when states and nations come into being? How do the different ways in which states and nations exist define relations between individuals, groups, and the government? Are all citizens equal in their rights and duties in the newly established polity? Addressing these key questions in the contested and ethnically heterogeneous post-Yugoslav states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, this book reinterprets the place of citizenship in the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the creation of new states in the Western Balkans. Carefully analysing the interplay between competing ethnic identities and state-building projects, the author proposes a new analytical framework for studying continuities and discontinuities of citizenship in post-partition, post-conflict states. The book maintains that citizenship regimes in challenged states are shaped not only by the immediate political contexts that generated them, but also by their historical trajectories, societal environments in which they exist, as well as the transformative powers of international and European factors.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the citizenship regimes of the new states that emerged out of the break up of Yugoslavia. It covers both the states that emerged out of the initial disintegration across 1991 and 1992 (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Macedonia), as well as those that have been formed recently through subsequent partitions (Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo). While citizenship has often been used as a tool of ethnic engineering to reinforce the position of the titular majority in many states, in other cases citizenship laws and practices have been liberalised as part of a wider political settlement intended to include minority communities more effectively in the political process. Meanwhile, frequent (re)definitions of these increasingly overlapping regimes still provoke conflicts among post-Yugoslav states. This volume shows how important it is for the field of citizenship studies to take into account the main changes in and varieties of citizenship regimes in the post-Yugoslav states, as a particular case of new state citizenship. At the same time, it seeks to show scholars of (post) Yugoslavia and the wider Balkans that the Yugoslav crisis, disintegration and wars as well as the current functioning of the new and old Balkan states, together with the process of their integration into the EU, cannot be fully understood without a deeper understanding of their citizenship regimes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

This book examines Yugoslavia's efforts to build and maintain a relationship with its migrant workers in Western Europe through cultural and educational programs.

This book focuses on the relations between citizenship and various manifestations of diversity, including, but not exclusively, ethnicity. Contributors address migrants and minorities in a novel and original way by adding the concept of ‘uneven citizenship’ to the debate surrounding the former Yugoslavian states. Referring to this ‘uneven citizenship’ concept, this book not only engages with exclusionary legal, political and social practices but also looks at other unanticipated or unaccounted for results of citizenship policies. Individual chapters address statuses, rights, and duties of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees, Roma, and ‘claimed co-ethnics’, as well as various interactions between dominant and non-dominant groups in the post-Yugoslav space. The particular focus is on ‘migrants and minorities’, as these are frequently overlapping categories in the post-Yugoslav context and indeed more generally. Not only is policy framework addressed, but also public understanding and the socio-historical developments which created legally and culturally stratified, transnationally marginalized, desired and claimed co-ethnics, and those less wanted, often on the margins of citizenship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics.

Between 1914 and the present day the political makeup of the Balkans has relentlessly changed, following unpredictable shifts of international and internal borders. Between and across these borders various political communities were formed, co-existed and (dis)integrated. By analysing one hundred years of modern citizenship in Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav states, Igor Š tiks shows that the concept and practice of citizenship is necessary to understand how political communities are made, un-made and re-made. He argues that modern citizenship is a tool that can be used for different and opposing goals, from integration and re-unification to fragmentation and ethnic engineering. The study of citizenship in the 'laboratory' of the Balkands offers not only an original angle to narrate an alternative political history, but also an insight into the fine mechanics and repeating glitches of modern politics, applicable to multinational states in the European Union and beyond.

This book focuses on the relations between citizenship and various manifestations of diversity, including, but not exclusively, ethnicity. Contributors address migrants and minorities in a novel and original way by adding the concept of ‘uneven citizenship’ to the debate surrounding the former Yugoslavian states. Referring to this ‘uneven citizenship’ concept, this book not only engages with exclusionary legal, political and social practices but also looks at other unanticipated or unaccounted for results of citizenship policies. Individual chapters address statuses, rights, and duties of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees, Roma, and ‘claimed co-ethnics’, as well as various interactions between dominant and non-dominant groups in the post-Yugoslav space. The particular focus is on ‘migrants and minorities’, as these are frequently overlapping categories in the post-Yugoslav context and indeed more generally. Not only is policy framework addressed, but also public understanding and the socio-historical developments which created legally and culturally stratified, transnationally marginalized, desired and claimed co-ethnics, and those less wanted, often on the margins of citizenship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics.

Bosnian Refugees in Chicago: Gender, Performance, and Post-War Economies studies refugee migration through the experiences of survivors of the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia as they rebuild home, family, and social lives in the wake of their displacement. Ana Croegaert explores post-1970s Yugoslav-era socialism, American neoliberal capitalism, and anti-Muslim geopolitics to examine women’s varied perspectives on their postwar lives in the United States. Based on more than a decade of fieldwork, Croegaert takes readers into staged performances, coffee rituals, protests, memorials, homes, and non-governmental organizations to shine a light on the pressures women contend with in their efforts to make a living and to narrate their wartime injuries. Ultimately, Croegaert argues that refugee women insist on understanding their wartime losses as simultaneously social and material, a form of personhood she labels “injured life.” At a time of mass displacement and heated political debates concerning refugees, Croegaert provides an engaging portrait of a lively and diverse group of women whose opinions on citizenship and belonging are needed now more than ever.