Uneven Citizenship: Minorities and Migrants in the Post-Yugoslav Space

This book introduces the trope of ‘uneven citizenship’ in order to depict not only exclusionary legal, political and social practices but also other unanticipated or unaccounted for results of citizenship policies that were based on specific criteria of membership. By situating this in the context of post-Yugoslav space, the book draws on the richness of the Balkan case-studies as a way of entering the broader debate on citizenship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics.

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.