Full Description
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, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 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.
Contents
Introduction. Part I. New Ethnic Mosaics: Cleavages within Ethnic Groups. Chapter 1. Negotiating Identities in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina: Self, Ethnicity and Nationhood in Adolescents Born of Wartime Rape. Chapter 2. Dual Citizenship and Youth Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Chapter 3. Complexity of Inner Belonging: Notions of Belonging and Alienation among Adolescents with a Migrant Background in Croatia. Chapter 4. Constructing and Destructing the Ethnic: Discourses of Ethnicity among Hungarian Youth in Vojvodina. Part II. Political Participation and Youth Identities. Chapter 5. Youth Politicization and De-politicization in Contemporary Albania. Chapter 6. From Foreign Mercenaries to Civic Activists: A Comparison of Youth Identity in Post Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. Chapter 7. Forging Civic Bonds "from below": Montenegrin Activist Youth between Ethno-National Disidentification and Political Subjectivation. Part III. Transcending Ethnic Identities: Comparative Perspectives. Chapter 8. Taming Conflicted Identities: Searching for New Youth Values in the Western Balkans. Chapter 9. Beyond Ethnic Identity: History, Pride, and Nationhood across Socioeconomic Lines in Serbian and Croatian YouthChapter 10. Out with the Old: Youth Solidarity and Nationalism among Young Kosovars and Serbs. Conclusion.
