Volume 73, Issue 3

This article analyses Serbia’s memory politics surrounding the 1999 NATO intervention, focusing on how narratives of victimhood have been reactivated and strategically deployed prior to and since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to undermine Kosovo’s statehood. The author examines how the memory of the intervention has become a foreign policy tool. Drawing on the concept of mnemonic diplomacy, he shows how Serbia has leveraged historical grievance to position itself, as a hedging strategy, between East and West. Sites such as Batajnica and events such as the 2023 paramilitary attack in Banjska have been framed through commemorative practices that intensify anti-Kosovo and anti-Western narratives, while fostering symbolic partnerships with Russia, China, and – paradoxically – Western actors. By situating memory within Serbia’s domestic authoritarian consolidation and shifts in international alignment, the author reframes victimhood discourses based on the 1999 intervention as a dynamic instrument of contemporary geopolitical contestation, with Kosovo at its centre.

Postwar societies often show a shift in gender roles, especially in the labor market. This study focuses on the postwar social transformation from the perspective of women in postwar rural Kosovo. It employs a qualitative methodology involving semi-structured, in-depth interviews and participant observation. The author uncovers how the social transformation is reflected among the women living in the village of Krushë e Madhe. She finds that both the older and younger generations have supported women’s inclusion in parts of society where they were previously marginalized. The older generation revealed a broad understanding of gender roles with their belief that women’s role in society should not be limited in any way. Conversely, the younger generation, while supportive, exhibited a slight tendency toward more traditional ideas regarding the jobs deemed “suitable” for women. The author explores women’s personal experiences in dealing with traditional gender roles and documents the challenges they faced.

This ethnographic article explores the everyday experiences of supermarket employees in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on one hypermarket in Tuzla. Once a highly industrialised city, Tuzla’s landscape has been reshaped by the rise of retail trade, with the Bingo supermarket chain becoming a dominant economic force. Despite paying low wages, the company is perceived as a source of stability and formal employment in an industry where informal jobs predominate. The article examines how employees navigate the paradox of being simultaneously exploited and protected within the supermarket setting. It introduces the concept of “variegated stabilities” – forms of workplace security that are arbitrary, temporary, and dependent on personal relationships with the management. The stabilities that employees gain and foster through shared bonds of mutual support contrast with the perceived absence of the state and reflect the negotiation the workers engage in to achieve a meaningful life in a private company.

Research has amply documented how the strong orientation toward the well-being of one’s own family can negatively affect an individual’s concern for issues within their broader community and the formation of civic social capital. The research presented in this article examines the relationship between the strength of family ties and civic social capital in the Croatian coastal city of Zadar using a mixed-methods approach. The results, explained in detail using common sociodemographic variables, reveal that the strength of family ties here does not have a substantial effect on most of the indicators of civic social capital. Such findings provide important insights regarding the intricate nature of the relationship between ties to family members and ties to the broader society within a postsocialist context, but also regarding the methodological problems with some of the common indicators of civic social capital.

This article examines the evolution of the United States’ balancing strategies toward Türkiye and Greece using Kai He’s concepts of positive and negative balancing. Türkiye’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile system came with strategic and political costs, while Greece has emerged as a more reliable partner, offering expanded military access and normative alignment. The author conceptualizes cost–benefit analysis as a strategic logic shaped by global and domestic political dynamics. Drawing on rationalist and neoclassical realist theories, the author shows how the United States has increasingly pursued positive balancing in its foreign policy toward Greece and negative balancing toward Türkiye – reflecting shifting assessments of partner reliability and strategic value. The author concludes that US policy has been guided by material calculations such as cohesion, deterrence, and access, but that these are increasingly filtered through normative concerns including illiberalism, alliance credibility, and the coherence of the international order.

This study examines the challenges minority communities face in using European Union mechanisms to contest alleged economic discrimination. It focuses on the National Regions European Citizens’ Initiative launched by stakeholders from Szeklerland, a Hungarian minority region in Romania, to urge the European Commission to address concerns over cohesion policy fund allocation. Using a theory-driven single-case design, the research combines economic data, legal analysis, and advocacy materials. County-level GDP per capita trends are triangulated with European Court of Justice jurisprudence and grassroots initiatives, framed against the Sustainable Development Goals. Findings reveal that the EU’s cohesion policy oversight is structurally ill-equipped to uncover or remedy discriminatory practices. The NUTS II statistical aggregation conceals intraregional disparities, and institutional responses to minority claims remain weak. The article focuses on the nexus between regional development and minority rights, proposing reforms to facilitate fairer distribution of funds and ensure the protection of cultural and linguistic diversity.

The latest urban eviction of dwellers from Sofia’s district of Zaharna Fabrika, home to one of the oldest Roma settlements in the city, has shone a spotlight on an “archipelago” of residential clusters in which spatial confinement and the steady erosion of basic rights wall off Roma communities and shrink their space for political participation. In his commentary, the author advances an intersectional reflection that foregrounds the deep-seated anti-Roma discourse and neoliberal urban replanning – phenomena that both had a particularly significant impact on the Bulgarian Roma and fostered far-right violence. Based on previous fieldwork and qualitative studies, this article highlights how the neoliberal restructuring and rescaling of cities drive the patterns of migration from Southeastern to Northern Europe, while the far-right’s anti-migration discourse is taking root within urban migrant/minoritised spaces.