Abstract
Solidarity and citizenship are intertwined in a very complex manner, where the former usually operates as the “social glue” for the latter, holding together its formal components such as rights, duties, and membership criteria. The “we” that sets the parameters for membership and equality is not only legally defined but also discursively produced and maintained. Here, the rhetoric of solidarity plays an important yet ambiguous role, as it can advocate for interdependence and full inclusion while at the same time solidifying the exclusionary “we.” The aim of this article is to show how solidarity reasoning—the question of with whom we should be solidary and why—plays a functional role in maintaining citizenship agendas, and how this reasoning changes to support and enable shifts in these agendas. The dominant solidarity narratives that have supported prevailing citizenship agendas in Serbia (and across the post-Yugoslav space) over the last couple of decades will be discussed, as will counter-narratives that have served to destabilize hegemonic agendas by envisioning citizenship communities differently. Today, the ambiguous role solidarity can play within a citizenship agenda becomes especially obvious in neoliberal regimes, where, as I will show in the case of contemporary Serbia, calls for solidarity can be deployed to foster very distinct, arguably mutually opposing, kinds of political subjectivities and citizen activism.
Keywords
Introduction
“Who is in and who is out,” as Walzer famously put it, are “the first questions every community must answer about itself.” 1 While acknowledging that different co-existing communities are likely to provide different answers to those questions, it also sometimes happens that these questions are answered differently by the same people, in the same geographical space, within relatively short spans of time. This is the case, for example, when political communities dissolve and new ones emerge in their place, or when political regimes radically change, along with their frameworks and laws. Determining “who is in and who is out” is linked to the question of “what binds citizens together into a shared political community,” 2 which has been asked several times in recent history in what we might term the post-Yugoslav space, and is imperative to “imagining and managing” 3 the (newly formed) nations and citizenries in this region. Indeed, this question must be answered institutionally and legally (through borders, constitutions, laws), but also discursively—through legitimizing narratives about members and aliens, the bonds of membership, and the expectations members can or should have regarding other members and state institutions.
This article focuses on the elusive, yet essential, role played by solidarity in these narratives. Solidarity and citizenship are intertwined in a very complex manner, where the former usually operates as the “social glue” for the latter, holding together its formal components such as rights, duties, and membership criteria. The aim of this article is to show how solidarity reasoning—the question of with whom we should be solidary and why—has a functional role in maintaining citizenship agendas and changes to support and enable shifts in those agendas. Equality, justice, and full membership are not only legal categories, they are also subjective experiences as well as the effects of real-existing social relations that are not necessarily reflected in the formal-legal language of citizenship; the “we” that sets membership and equality criteria is not only legally defined but also discursively produced and maintained. Here, the rhetoric of solidarity plays an important yet ambiguous role. It can help reveal vulnerabilities and promote interdependence and full inclusion, while at the same time solidifying the exclusionary “we” through the “destructive solidarity of us-against-them” 4 narratives. The ambiguous role of solidarity within a citizenship agenda becomes especially obvious today in neoliberal regimes, where, as I will show in the case of contemporary Serbia, calls for solidarity can be deployed to foster very distinct, arguably mutually opposing, kinds of political subjectivities and citizen activism.
In the remainder of the text, I will first outline the main framework for analysis, or what is meant by a citizenship agenda and how this notion relates to solidarity as a discursive tool. This is followed by a section that demonstrates how solidarity played an important role in framing and maintaining first the socialist citizenship agenda of the former Yugoslavia and then the ethno-centric citizenship agenda of 1990s post-partition Serbia (as part of the “rump” Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). To that end, changes in specific conceptions of solidarity—from the “brotherhood and unity” and solidarity with “all our working people” that constituted the backbone of socialist Yugoslav citizenship, to a solidarity with “our co-ethnics” that fueled the creation of the majority of the post-Yugoslav states—are discussed. Finally, discourses on solidarity are examined within the context of Serbia’s present-day citizenship agenda, which retains many ethno-centric elements but is increasingly characterized by a neoliberal framing of citizens as “entrepreneurial actors” and, thus, could very well be described as a neoliberal citizenship agenda. 5
It is important to note that the use of historical episodes to frame this account of solidarity and citizenship should not be understood as an attempt to argue for any periodization of Serbian (and post/Yugoslav) society. Reference to socialist, ethno-centric, and neoliberal citizenship agendas as dominant governing forms in different periods are made without insisting on their firm starting and ending points in time, and with an acknowledgement of their sometimes overlapping durations. Citizenship and citizenship agendas are important conceptual mechanisms for analysis here, but the focus is on solidarity, its rhetorical importance in setting and supporting any citizenship agenda, and its fluidity, ambiguity, and yet indispensability for setting the outer boundaries and inner constitutive relations of a “we.”
Defining the Framework: Citizenship, Citizenship Agendas, and Solidarity
The identification of citizenship as a crucial aspect in better understanding post-socialist and post-partition transformations after the fall of communism was most notably exemplified in Brubaker’s work on Soviet successor states. 6 With respect to post-Yugoslav states, Shaw and Štiks have followed suit, insisting on the centrality of citizenship in explaining the complex and interrelated processes that have followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia: the drawing and declaration of new state borders, the drafting of new constitutions, the redefinition of national and other minorities and their rights, the definition of diaspora and their rights, and the regulation of dual citizenship, residency requirements, and the status of refugees. 7 The central notion in their work is citizenship regime, defined as encompassing “the citizenship laws, regulations and administrative practices regarding the citizenship status of individuals . . . [as well as] existing mechanisms of political participation . . . the official or non-official dynamic of political inclusion and exclusion.” 8 Relying on this notion a vast body of work has emerged, addressing a whole array of phenomena within the specific post-Yugoslav context—from ethno-centric citizenship claims, to the politics of refugees, to problems of statelessness, to issues relating to citizenship and religion, gender, and sexuality. 9 In addition, Štiks’s own work on citizenship and the history of South-Slavic and Yugoslav political projects has further developed this perspective, arguing for a political history of Yugoslavia as a history of different citizenship rationales and arrangements. 10
The citizenship regime perspective is important for this article, as it manages to relate the legal, formal, state-related aspects of citizenship to its “non-official dimensions” of inclusion and exclusion. However, as I primarily want to concentrate on the changing discursive and ideological underpinnings of citizenship regimes, central to this article is the notion of a citizenship agenda, as put forward by de Koning, Jaffe, and Koster: We define citizenship agendas as normative framings of citizenship that prescribe what norms, values, and behavior are appropriate for those claiming membership of a political community. These agendas are concerned with defining the meaning of membership in explicitly normative ways that go beyond conventional, legal-formal citizenship status. Citizenship agendas prescribe relations between people and larger structures of rule and belonging, which are often but not exclusively nation-states. Such citizenship agendas invariably imply models of virtuous and deviant citizens, favoring particular subject-citizens over others, and suggesting ways to transform the latter into the former.
11
This conceptualization helps “demonstrate how particular subjects are framed as deficient, as undesirables who must change their norms, values, and behavior in order to meet the criteria of good citizenship.” 12 De Koning, Jaffe, and Koster give special attention to “the variety of normative articulations of citizenship,” 13 a focus I share. Yet they are concerned with this variety in the context of differences of spatial scale—claiming that “as political community and belonging are defined at non-national scales such as that of the neighborhood, the city, or the world, the set of practices that “good citizens” are expected to perform shift accordingly” 14 —whereas my concern is with the shifts that occur over time. In other words, I retain my focus on the state and state-level actors and institutions, as the main transmitters of “normative framings of citizenship,” and am examining the shifting conceptions of a “good citizen” over time, regardless of the fact whether the “transmitting agents” change as well, or in fact remain the same.
Therefore, I understand citizenship as a dynamic complex of legal statuses, rights, and political participation, shaped by a given country’s citizenship legislation, administrative policies, and mechanisms of political inclusion and exclusion. In this article, I focus on the discursive framings (citizenship agendas) that define the meaning of membership and “imply models of virtuous and deviant citizens, favoring particular subject-citizens over others.”
Also key to this analysis is the notion of solidarity, which has received heightened attention in scholarly literature in the last several years, due most notably to economic and refugee crises that are provoking questions about communal bonds, mutual aid, and solidaristic practices meant to substitute for vanishing welfare institutions. 15 Related more closely to the issue of citizenship, some specific issues have been raised concerning “sources of solidarity” that support inclusive redistribution within nation-states in the context of “neoliberal attacks on the welfare state and populist attacks on immigration” 16 and whether “the crises of European integration translate into a crisis of European solidarity, and if so, what are the manifestations at the level of individual citizens?” 17
Whether understood predominantly as a set of attitudes, or as a specific type of pro-social behaviour, solidarity has always been assumed (rather than explicitly theorized) in historical and theoretical accounts of citizenship and political community to fall within the rubric of sense of belonging, shared fate, and collective identity. Additionally, the notion that there is a political dimension to solidarity has often been implied along with a certain tendency to articulate and direct a sense of “we.” 18
In this text, I am not concerned with elaborating on solidarity as theory, but rather in exploring it as a discursive tool for legitimizing the socialist citizenship agenda of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), the ethnocentric citizenship agenda of 1990s Serbia and the post-Yugoslav space generally, and the neoliberal citizenship agenda of present-day Serbia. I will illustrate this using examples of how solidarity has been used to support dominant citizenship narratives and institutions, but also how it has featured in alternative counter-narratives.
From Brotherhood and Unity to Ethno-national “Consolidation”
Discussing the solidarity reasoning of the socialist citizenship agenda of the former Yugoslavia inevitably invokes the slogan of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Bratstvo i Jedinstvo, or Brotherhood and Unity. Originally coined during the struggles of World War II, this saying was later integrated into both the legal and material infrastructure of the country; featured, for instance, in the preamble to successive constitutions and as the name of the longest highway (Autoput Bratstva i Jedinstva). This call for brotherhood among all national and ethnic groups not only promoted their interdependence, but also aimed to overcome national tensions extending from World War II, which had been marked simultaneously by ferocious interethnic bloodshed and a history-making pan-ethnic liberation movement.
Still, the unity “of all working people” was not meant to translate into a unitary citizenship, as socialist Yugoslavia represented an abandonment of the previous unitary political project of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (and its Yugoslav citizenship) and an acknowledgement of the pluri-national composition of the state. A two-tier citizenship regime was introduced, offering simultaneous federal- and republic-level citizenships. 19 The solidarity reasoning of the socialist citizenship agenda thus maintained that Yugoslavia was composed of different ethnic groups, but realized the advantage of nourishing political brotherhood and unity. As stated in the preambles of Yugoslav constitutions from 1963 and 1974: “the nations and nationalities” (narodi i narodnosti) of Yugoslavia, “starting from the right of every nation to self-determination, including a right to secession,” understand their “common interest,” and therefore collectively “realize and maintain,” among other values and principles, the “brotherhood and unity of nations and solidarity of working people.” 20
Many official policies and institutions were designed to support inter-ethnic solidarity in the SFRY, by acknowledging the rights of different communities and working to bring them closer together. These ranged from policies rooted in the “ethnic key” principle, meant to ensure that a majority of important state positions were allocated across ethnicities (a practice that was not without controversy); 21 to the organization of regular youth work actions (Omladinske radne akcije), which brought young people together from different republics to do volunteer activities and promoted a solidaristic moral economy; 22 to a conscription system in which most conscripts were deliberately assigned to units outside their home republics, so that people from different backgrounds could meet and build lasting relationships. 23 This promotion of inter-ethnic solidarity was accompanied by policies promoting intergenerational and interregional solidarity as well. Intergenerational solidarity has in fact been adopted in most European welfare states, primarily through national health care, education, and pension systems, 24 but in the SFRY, interregional solidarity was also exemplified, in an institution known as the Federal Solidarity Fund, the purpose of which was to mitigate the uneven economic development of different regions in Yugoslavia. 25
Revisiting the definition of a citizenship agenda—a “normative framing of citizenship” that prescribes “relations between people and larger structures of rule and belonging”—there is no doubt that brotherhood and unity, as an official legitimizing narrative, sought to shape state policies, institutions, and ultimately the behavior and attitudes of citizens. Of course, in every society, official narratives are met by counter-narratives designed to delegitimize dominant agendas and advocate for alternative, often contrary, agendas, including citizenship agendas. Counter-narratives may, for instance, prioritize differently imagined communities of primary belonging, “favoring [different] particular subject-citizens over others,” and apply different solidarity reasoning.
In Yugoslavia, as we know all too well, nationalistic counter-narratives powerfully subverted the solidarity reasoning of brotherhood and unity. The centrifugal tendencies of nationalisms in the SFRY are widely known, and I will not elaborate on them here. 26 The narratives of rising nationalisms, especially in Serbia and Croatia, criticized the Yugoslav federal system, founded on brotherhood and unity, as inefficient and unfair, but most importantly, claimed the system subordinated and suppressed national interests and solidarity. 27 Yugoslav solidarity was depicted in this way as something imposed, “non-organic,” and artificial to which ethno-national solidarity—allegedly a more “natural” bond with “one’s own group”—had to be sacrificed. 28 By the late 1980s, arguments about the “primacy” of ties with one’s own group, defined in purely ethno-national terms, were used to push not only for economic and socio-cultural transformations but for political transformations as well.
Solidarity through Ethnicity: The Rise of an Ethno-centric Citizenship Agenda
In Serbia, this developing ethno-nationalist narrative gained particular energy with the emergence of new political leader Slobodan Milošević. He skillfully instrumentalized the dissatisfaction workers felt about growing economic insecurity (the country was shaken by a wave of protests and strikes in the late 1980s), channeling their grievances through the lens of nationalist sentiment to move them gradually from workers’ solidarity towards ethno-national solidarity. Indeed, “the protestors came as workers and went home as Serbs” is an oft cited comment attributed to an observer who described a Belgrade workers protest in 1988, 29 when a crowd demanding better economic opportunities and the resignation of the Federal government was calmed only by Milošević himself appearing and promising political and economic reforms and unity in the country. This identity shift among workers was followed by contemplations regarding with whom workers/citizens/“us” should be solidary, and ultimately, with whom “we” should share political community.
The 1990s brought the dissolution of the SFRY, violent conflicts, and war, but also the creation of new states. Brotherhood and unity among different ethnic groups was shattered so that the principle of solidarity with “our co-ethnics” could take its place as the legitimizing narrative of new citizenship agendas. These agendas and their associated regimes defined new citizenries, rules of membership, titular groups, and the rights of citizens, minorities, and the diaspora in ways that largely confirmed their ethno-centric character. 30 In such a context, of new nation- and state-building amidst armed ethnic conflict, solidarity reasoning assumed its most belligerent form, of “us-against-them solidarity.” 31 And “they” were not only ethnic others, “they” were also the internal “enemies” who defied and criticized an ethno-national citizenship agenda and an ethno-centric solidarity.
It was the anti-war movements of the time that most clearly articulated and advocated an opposing logic of citizenship and solidarity, by rejecting nationalism and the rhetoric of war, and insisting on solidarity with the victims of war—no matter their ethnicity. Within the movement, it was feminist activists that especially questioned the idea of citizenship, the frameworks of the state, and rights and belonging, while at the same time articulating the problem of solidarity: With whom should we be solidary and how, and what constitutes our communities of belonging and our basic rights? As Zaharijević explains, feminism of the early 1990s became preoccupied with the state: whose state that was, what were its borders, who belonged, who did not and why, and what was the price of the unreserved loyalty one was expected to give to the newly formed nation-states. Finding themselves territorialised in the non-chosen successor states, feminists refused to accept their new citizenship if it overlapped with an imposed ethnicity. And ceasing to be Yugoslav feminists, they chose to be only feminists, as if feminism itself provided the space of citizenship.
32
This act of self-exclusion, even if only rhetorical, was an impulse to exercise solidarity with those who were violently excluded. It was a situational solidarity, born out of an affective reaction to an imposed situation rather than a need to pursue or establish an alternative citizenship agenda. Yet, along with consistent anti-war activism, this refusal to follow dominant solidarity reasoning, and a symbolic withdrawal from the ethno-centric citizenship agenda, helped shaped Serbian and post-Yugoslav feminism as a form of activist citizenship always in search of alternative ways of imagining communities and acting within them. 33 As Greenberg has noted, “committed women came face-to-face with the challenge of grounding either action or ethics in identities outside ethnicized essentialisms or historical narrative. . . . In this context, grounding oneself in alternative ontologies offered a particular kind of agency.” 34 And it is not by chance that we end here with an emphasis on (grounding oneself in) ontology and agency, as it is the radical transformation of the ontology of belonging and the notion of citizen agency that characterizes the neoliberal citizenship agenda that has gradually come to dominate the modern Serbian state and society.
Solidarity and Citizenship in Present-Day Serbia
Unlike the shift from a socialist to an ethno-centric citizenship agenda—which almost “naturally” and functionally accompanied the breakup of the socialist state and the emergence of new nation-states—there was no clear-cut transition from the ethno-centric to the neoliberal citizenship agenda. In fact, in many respects, citizenship agendas across the post-Yugoslav space are still largely ethno-centric, even in states with consociational solutions, like Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. 35 Notably, in Serbia, ethno-centric citizenship policies were largely adopted following the fall of Milošević in 2000—in the 2006 Constitution, in amendments to citizenship laws made in 2007, and in diaspora politics. The political idiosyncracies of Serbia were such that it was only after abandoning its outright nationalism and isolationism that openly ethno-centric policies officially took hold. 36
Therefore, any discussion of a neoliberal citizenship agenda (or rather its neoliberalization) is not meant to imply that the “previous” agenda has been replaced, but that new discursive modes have come to dominate and colour this agenda; something that became apparent after the 2008 economic crisis, and in Serbia, especially after regime change in 2012. This brought the introduction of austerity measures, which not only affected the economic sphere but drastically reshaped discourses on the “appropriate” behavior of citizens, “realistic” expectations, and responsible economic conduct.
But what exactly is meant here by neoliberalism, and more precisely, by neoliberal citizenship agenda? While the proliferation of the concept has turned it into an imprecise buzzword, there is some general agreement that neoliberalism understands individual liberty “as a sort of mercantile liberty for individuals and corporations” 37 and that it “proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade.” 38 As a logic of government, it “emphasizes the values of personal responsibility and ownership in a context of market deregulation and privatization.” 39 Hence neoliberalism is seen both as a set of (political and economic) beliefs, as a discourse, and as a form of governance. Its discursive dimension has usually been discussed in reference to its ability to produce new social realities, and to affect social relationships, behaviours, and lived experiences. 40 These insights inevitably affected the discussion on neoliberalism and citizenship. In her claims that neoliberalism imposes market criteria on citizenship, Aihwa Ong stresses how its new “technologies of subjectivity” induce “self-animation and self-government so that citizens can optimize choices, efficiency and competitiveness in turbulent market conditions.” 41 Discussing the notion of “neoliberal citizenship” and its impact on producing new forms of subjectivity and governance, Katharyne Mitchel stresses “an increasing interest in the cultivation of young citizens who are nimble, flexible, and adaptable learners . . . trained to rely on themselves.” 42
The power of neoliberalism to deeply transform traditional political underpinnings of citizenship is best summarized in Mavelli’s conclusion that Neoliberal economization turns states and individuals into entrepreneurial actors that attempt to maximize their value, not just in economic and financial but also in moral and emotional terms. This process . . . undermines political notions of citizenship grounded in reciprocity, equality, and solidarity, not by replacing these principles with economic ones but by rewriting these principles in economic terms.
43
Rewriting these principles, solidarity included, demands new discursive strategies to define the “norms, values, and behavior . . . appropriate for those claiming membership” in a citizenship agenda as well as “models of virtuous and deviant citizens, favoring particular subject-citizens over others.” 44 In present-day Serbia—a post-conflict and a post-socialist state, in a seemingly never-ending transition 45 —the rising dominance of a neoliberal agenda is reflected in the fact that the question once deemed most important, of who the favoured subject-citizens are (ethnically), is now accompanied by an equally important question of how those subject-citizens should behave, in terms of economic rationality, entrepreneurship, and independence from the state. Without a doubt, this process is taking place globally, and, as it was mentioned, its impact on subjectivities, self-conditioning, and the language of (social) citizenship claims has already provoked scholarly attention. 46 The peculiarity of post-socialist and transitional countries, however, is that their socialist past serves as a convenient discursive reservoir for legitimizing and normalizing new conceptualizations of citizenship duties and rights. It has become commonplace, for example, for politicians and economic experts to reference a “socialist mentality” and “state dependence” that have allegedly conditioned citizens to rely on the state to solve all their problems, including by providing employment, free education, and social services. 47 These are cited as the main obstacles to true economic reform and social transformation, and (post-socialist) citizens are characterized as unsensitized to private initiatives, self-investment, and privatization in general, because of their “outdated” understanding of their rights and duties. 48
The trope of solidarity and related motifs appear again, in this new agenda, as indispensable in creating legitimizing narratives about “models of virtuous and deviant citizens.” In socialism, apart from brotherhood and unity, the promise of free health care and education, affordable housing, and social security were seen as forms of solidarity. According to the neoliberal narrative, this meant that citizens expected solidarity from the state, which was irresponsible, unrealistic, and economically unsustainable. On the contrary, in this new citizenship paradigm, citizens themselves assume full responsibility for their economic security. Even welfare recipients must give something back. 49 Still, if needed, citizens should be prepared to show solidarity to the state, such as in 2014, when the Serbian government introduced a “solidarity tax” ranging from 10 to 25 percent on monthly public sector salaries higher than 60,000 dinars (at the time, less than 500 Euros). 50 This solidarity tax, far from its typical association with progressive taxation for redistributive purposes, was introduced as a part of austerity measures meant to help the state cope with growing debt and looming bankruptcy. For the same reason, pensions greater than 25,000 dinars (211 Euros) a month were cut as well. These measures represented an ironic allusion to President Kennedy’s famous dictum: Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
This process of redefining the nexus of citizenship, state, and solidarity is taking place in both top–down policies, as explained above, and in bottom–up initiatives and citizen mobilizations, often in reaction to various facets of the neoliberal agenda. In this case, we cannot really talk of counter-narratives—in terms of the differing and opposing accounts of citizenship and solidarity that were described in the previous section—but rather of social responses in reaction to and, to some extent struggling against, the ongoing re-composition of solidarity and citizenship. These are the repercussions of the state’s radical redefinition of its solidarity reasoning, now in the service of disciplining and conditioning citizens to accept new economic realities (and the attendant withering away of welfare institutions designed to channel social solidarity). Depending on the nature and quality of the political invested in solidarity reasoning, I propose to distinguish between displays of reactive solidarity, on one hand, and emerging fields of political solidarity, on the other.
The Political Impasse in Reactive Solidarity
Developing and transitional countries with high levels of poverty and growing inequality often experience declining trust in state and social institutions and an erosion of communal ties and solidary relationships; the Western Balkan and post-Yugoslav states are no exception. 51 However, the social impulse to cooperatively help those perceived as most vulnerable can never be completely numbed, and is activated in critical times and in situations where collective efforts are seen as a necessity. These situations and these types of preformed solidarity shed light on the specificities of the solidarity reasoning in societies. The three examples that follow, of recent displays of mass citizen solidarity in Serbia (each of which involved at least one neighboring post-Yugoslav country as well), illustrate this point.
The first example of solidaristic mobilization, quite widespread in Bosnia and Serbia, concerns the fundraising via text messages for children in need of urgent medical treatment abroad. This practice has become so widespread in Serbia that it has led to the emergence of several private humanitarian organizations that have managed to successfully raise money for many individual cases by operating on this basis. The response of citizens, ready and willing to donate money via SMS, has been impressive; but this practice has also generated criticism aimed at the government and the Ministry of Health for failing to provide institutional support and reliable funding for children who require medical treatment abroad. 52 In fact, this example neatly illustrates how a situational ad hoc solidarity fills an institutional void, how it becomes a replacement for the state intervention.
In May 2014, heavy rain brought catastrophic flooding to a vast area spread across large parts of Serbia, almost a third of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and eastern parts of Croatia. The cost of the damage reportedly exceeded that of the conflicts of the 1990s. 53 These countries declared states of emergency, evacuating hundreds of thousands of people, and citizens across the affected region mobilized immediately to provide shelter, food, medicine, and other help for victims. This voluntary mobilization of citizens was overwhelming and crossed borders, and this show of solidarity made many headlines, as the affected area coincided with the territories most heavily impacted by war in the 1990s. Media reports hailed that “if there is something that brings hope, it is the rediscovered solidarity of the people of the former Yugoslavia,” 54 and said “the solidarity which has emerged from the disaster has been uplifting. After the 1990s war and 20 years of hate speech, humanity still prevails.” 55
Headlines and articles of another theme were also prevalent at the time, and were reflected in public discourse, partly explaining the mass mobilization of citizens as a reaction to the failures of states; for example, “governments are coming under fire for failing to help people on time”; 56 “Serbians and Bosnians are asking why so little was done to protect lives and defend homes when meteorologists had given several days’ notice of torrential rain in an area notoriously prone to flooding”; 57 and “It is a cliché to say that moments of crisis and disaster brings out the best and the worst in people. In Bosnia and Serbia, it mostly brought out the best in people, and the worst in states.” 58 In other words, the inadequacy of these states in preventing and dealing with the disaster and its consequences made solidarity among citizens necessary, as a replacement.
Finally, this third example illustrates not only the incongruence between state institutions and self-organized citizens, where the latter are again “doing the job” of the former, but also the constraints of reactive solidarity among mobilized citizens due to its inability to adequately challenge and shatter the framework put in operation by that very state. Here, the issue is solidarity with refugees, which was especially on display during the summer and autumn of 2015, when the so-called refugee crisis reached its peak in the region with the opening of the “Balkan Corridor” (officially closed in March 2016). 59 More than a million refugees are estimated to have passed through the corridor. Initially, the Serbian state took a benevolent approach to the arriving refugees, but this changed after the first major restriction of movement along the corridor occurred with the closure of the Serbian–Hungarian border in September 2015. The route then became more securitized and repression increased, but even more importantly, the conditions in state-run camps and at checkpoints began to deteriorate. The state was decreasingly the chief source of information, help, support, and guidance for refugees; and these tasks fell to voluntary associations, either formal NGOs or ad hoc self-organized units of citizens, composed of volunteers from across the region and beyond. In this way, “ordinary” citizens showed a great degree of solidarity and empathy, 60 while the role of the state became increasingly ambiguous—perceived as simultaneously hyper-securitized and non-existent. 61
Greenberg and Spasić have deftly captured this ambiguity, which affected the agency and orientation of both solidary activists and refugees. They discovered that activists, for example, often found themselves in unwanted alliances with securitized state entities, as their ability to provide help depended on their acceptance of official policies, such as the restriction of the corridor as of November 2015 only to people from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Volunteers and activists were “thus positioned in complicated ways to both challenge and work within securitized practices for managing often ad hoc humanitarian regimes.” 62 Refugees, on the other hand, experienced the ambivalence of being constrained and conditioned by a state that was absent and invisible. In its absence, their resistance and agency had to be oriented towards visible actors, often those replacing the state, namely, solidarity activists. Greenber and Spasić describe the odd circumstances that developed in March 2016, for instance, when refugees embarked on a series of protests to highlight their being stranded in Serbia, including a hunger strike. 63 As it was volunteer groups and NGOs that were distributing food to refugees, the hunger strike could only be directed against these activists, even though they themselves fully supported the reasons the refugees were protesting: “The refusal of food from Serbian volunteers and organizations—often self-organized and opposed to close-border policies themselves—operates as a kind of recursive protest. As volunteers and NGOs critique the state, they too stand in for it . . . it is not clear who is officially responsible to anyone else. Yet, people still seem to feel ethically compelled to work both in resistance and solidarity.” 64
These examples of solidarity activated to support vulnerable groups—those in need of expensive and urgent medical treatments, victims of natural disaster, and refugees—all testify to the need for self-organization among citizens to compensate for the absence of adequate institutional solutions. But, despite the critique of the absence and ineffectiveness of the state that is implicit in such mobilizations, at the same time, these instances of solidarity serve to unwittingly uphold the new citizenship agenda that normalizes the proactivity of citizens over a reliance on state assistance. As such, solidarity assumes a highly ambivalent position within the neoliberal citizenship regime, at once organizing help for the excluded and, through this self-organization, normalizing the very conditions that generate exclusion in the first place. In order to better understand this complexity, as well as to grasp alternative accounts of solidarity and citizenship within the neoliberal citizenship agenda, I propose to distinguish between situational, reactive solidarity, of the sorts described above, and the political solidarity of new emerging social actors.
Emerging Fields of Political Solidarity
To describe the examples of mass mobilization and solidarity detailed above as only reactive and responsive does not do them full justice; however, it remains true that they mostly lack a political dimension. The reason they were so effective in mobilizing so many people despite failing to develop a clear or coherent social and political critique is that they offered citizens a possibility to “resume some degree of agency.” 65 Indeed, in her commentary on why many cases of mass solidary mobilization across the post-Yugoslav region “are abundant with references to . . . Yugoslav socialism,” Petrović argues that this is “about a lost sense of agency and self-perception of being an actor in both one’s own life and in the broader economic and social processes. In contrast with what prevalent neoliberal and ‘transitional’ political discourses on socialism suggest, citizens perceived themselves as agents during socialism much more than today, when they feel incapable of transforming their desires and visions into action.” 66 Thus, these mobilizations for solidarity with the most vulnerable could be seen as struggles to regain a political subjectivity and agency, perceived to be significantly reduced within the neoliberal citizenship agenda. And as Petrović suggests, this is performed by turning the legitimizing narrative upside-down, and using the socialist past as a reservoir of memories of agency, meaningful belonging, and active citizenship.
I want to turn briefly to some different kinds of citizen mobilizations in Serbia, and also across the post-Yugoslav space, that have more openly and clearly articulated a political dimension in challenging the dominant neoliberal discourse on citizenship and solidarity. Here, the focus is on new social and protest movements that have begun to emerge in the region since the 2008 economic crisis. What connects them, and sets them apart from earlier political protests—beyond the post-2008 crisis context (and a general critique of neoliberal tendencies linked to it)—is their frequent referencing of the Yugoslav experience and their emphasis on being post-socialist and post-Yugoslav, not “as a matter of periodization” but out of a desire to be in “a dialogue with socialist heritage and ideals.” 67 Again, this looking backward with a revived interest in the socialist era has less to do with a nostalgia for times past, and more to do with a present-day longing for citizenship agency. It is a symptomatic reaction to dominant neoliberal narratives about socialist citizenship, solidarity, and community. And though it is well beyond the scope of this article to discuss the emergence of this Yugosphere 68 or Yugonostalgia 69 in depth, this discursive field—as well as the political context—is fertile ground for new, alternative narratives on citizenship and solidarity.
New protests and movements in the post-Yugoslav space have varied in their forms and goals. Some better known examples include the following: the “Right to the city” movements, which have been especially politically effective in Croatia, but exist in almost all post-Yugoslav countries; 70 citizen plenums in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which experimented with direct democracy mechanisms and resulted from mass street protests in 2014; 71 anti-corruption protests that ousted Maribor’s mayor in Slovenia in 2013; 72 the Colorful Revolution in Macedonia, which preceded regime change in the country; 73 and student occupations of universities in Serbia and Croatia. 74 Yet, even though they took different forms and used different methods, these protests and movements share clearly articulated demands for greater citizen participation in political processes, the preservation of common goods (often through struggle against the commodification and privatization of natural resources and education), and more just and solidary societies. Solidarity is in fact one of the key values dominating the agendas of all these protests and movements—as a mobilizing call, as a method of struggle, but also as a political goal in the form of institutionalized solidarity.
The work of a recently formed initiative in Serbia called United Action A Roof over Your Head (Združena Akcija Krov nad glavom, or: ZA) illustrates this political function of solidarity. 75 ZA acts principally in public to protest and prevent home evictions by private executors. 76 It has so far organized a couple dozen collective actions, gathering and mobilizing activists and concerned citizens to stop these executors from forcefully evicting tenants. 77 The practice of forceful evictions gained a sinister momentum after changes were made to the Law on Enforcement and Security Interest in 2016, 78 affording private executors greater authority with the intent to significantly accelerate enforcement procedures. At the same time, the legal remedy for affected tenants was weakened by Article 26 of the Law, which states that when deciding on an objection or appeal, a court cannot abolish the first instance decision in a case and refer it to retrial. This means, for instance, that evicted tenants who are rightful homeowners but have fallen victim to investor fraud or other dubious actions are ordered to vacate their homes despite ongoing and unresolved legal battles.
The social engagement of ZA employs several approaches and tactics. Primarily, their activists mobilize as many people as possible to physically prevent evictions from taking place; and by doing this they have managed to capture the attention of the public, which they have taken advantage of to publicly criticize the Law. ZA also advocates for housing as a basic human right, pushing for a political agenda that relies on solidaristic principles to order and control private interests. They are thus committed to turning the energy of mobilization into a political platform where solidarity is not only an ad hoc remedy to social injustice but a political principle guiding citizen engagement. ZA has succeeded in attracting other social movements to join them in protests against evictions as well as in clearly articulating a common goal—to change the existing Law and insist on housing as a human right. In this way, their actions are not merely reactions, as they are using the visibility of their struggle and their presence in media, however marginal, to promote solidarity as more than just a remedy for the most vulnerable, but as a social value and principle worthy of political struggle.
Concluding Remarks
This article sought to contribute to two perspectives on solidarity and citizenship. First, I approached the recent history of the region as the history of different citizenship agendas legitimized and discursively maintained by specific solidarity reasoning (with whom should we be solidary and why, within a political community). I wanted to show the indispensable role of solidarity as a rhetorical tool that can mobilize support for a concrete citizenship agenda, but can also mobilize and legitimize the ever-present counter-narratives that challenge dominant agendas and assert a different kind of solidarity reasoning.
Second, I wanted to add to our understanding of the meaning and relevance of solidarity in the present historical moment, by pointing to its complexity and ambiguity and by arguing for a need to distinguish between reactive and political solidarity. Solidarity has received much scholarly attention in the last couple of years because of phenomena including the crumbling of welfare economies, refugee crises, and various “post-democratic” tendencies, all of which seem to be eroding institutional forms of solidarity and necessitating displays of reactive, ad hoc solidarity among citizens. Emerging literature on topics like the solidarity economy movement, self-organized aid to refugees, or the ontological and epistemological status of solidarity, testify to growing interest in the subject. 79
What I wished to particularly emphasize, in the context of the current neoliberal citizenship agenda, is how it renders the notion of solidarity highly ambivalent. On the one hand, a “do-it-yourself” imperative is emblematic of neoliberal structural reforms and ideology. This demands that citizens be “proactive” and entrepreneurial—in every aspect of their lives, not only in business—and even engage in mutual cooperation, in order to overcome whatever obstacles they may encounter in their daily lives without help from the state (thus “curing” them of “state-dependency syndrome”—an oft-raised topic in post-socialist countries). In this respect, it could be said that examples of solidarity among citizens are welcomed by new political elites in the region, because they are seen as an impulse towards acceptance of new political realities. Indeed, many examples of mass solidarity in this region—such as assistance for victims of the disastrous flooding in May 2014, self-organized help to refugees crossing the Balkan route, or fundraising via text message for children in urgent need of medical treatment abroad—reflect not only the readiness of “ordinary” people to come to each other’s aid, but also the incompetence or unwillingness of state institutions to offer crucial support. However unintentionally, this situational solidarity thus becomes complicit in normalizing a new order in which the self-organized actions of citizens fill gaps left by a diminishing institutionalized solidarity, and the notion itself is drained of its political connotations.
On the other hand, we are witnessing an emergence of new social movements in the region that are explicit in making solidarity a political issue. The number and influence of these movements hardly compares to that of the contentious post-2011 protest politics in other parts of Europe, but their presence echoes this trend and is a refreshing novelty in the post-Yugoslav space. They react to problems as “acts” of situational, reactive solidarity, but in a way that problematizes the ad hoc and empathic nature of mutual citizen aid and argues for solidarity as a foundational value of social and political institutions. Of course, it is not always easy to neatly separate examples of reactive versus political solidarity, as there is clearly some overlap. Still, through the examples offered in this article, I argue that the context and framework of the neoliberal citizenship agenda, and its solidarity reasoning, allow us to make this distinction; and furthermore, to presume that it is a political solidarity (reasoning) that contains the elements of counter-narratives to that agenda.
