https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8117-0081
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ABSTRACT
The Great Recession of 2008 created a political opportunity for the mobilisation of various social groups, especially those most affected by the crisis. However, the two largest protest waves in Serbia - Against Dictatorship and One of Five Million, did not articulate economic grievances as the most pressing. The main question is why economic demands were so weakly expressed during these protests. Our contention is that the protesters' predominantly middle-class backgrounds and a lack of class solidarity hampered the framing of popular discontent in economic terms. The analysis here is based on surveys of the protest participants.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/lfsa_qoe_4ax1r2/default/table?lang=en (accessed on 2 June 2022).
2 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?%20locations=RS.&locations=RS (accessed on 3 May 2021).
3 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00098/default/table?lang=en (accessed on 3 June 2022).
4 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/LFSA_ETPGAN__custom_3620556/default/table?lang=en (accessed on 18 October 2022).
5 https://socijalnoukljucivanje.gov.rs/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Polozaj_osetljivih_grupa_u_procesu_pristupanja_Republike_Srbije_EU-Polozaj_mladih.pdf (accessed on 17 October 2022).
6 https://insajder.net/sr/sajt/vazno/4118/ (accessed on 5 May 2021).
7 The Alliance for Serbia was an umbrella initiative gathering ideologically heterogeneous opposition parties, spanning from the political right to the left-of-centre, with a concentration of parties in the political right and centre, displaying only scant articulation of traditional leftist ideas of social justice and solidarity.
8 https://rs.n1info.com/english/news/a458177-serbian-opposition-publishes-agreement-with-the-people/ (accessed on 3 May 2021).
9 The data collection was coordinated by the researchers of Institute for Sociological Research, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, in April and early May 2017.
10 The survey data were collected at the height of the protests in February 2019 as a part of a joint collaboration between researchers from Institute for Sociological Research (University of Belgrade) and SeConS Development Initiative.
11 https://www.ecoi.net/en/document/2029665.html (accessed on 27 April 2021).
12 One of the shortcomings of the empirical research is that it was not conducted in Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia that had the second largest protests in 2017 and 2019. Moreover, it should be noted the 2017 protests in Novi Sad were organized by leftist organizations insisting on “social” rather than on political demands.
13 Education attainment has been operationalised through four categories in such way that category elementary education equals to levels I and II in International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) system, category secondary education (three years of secondary education) equals IIIb in ISCED system, category secondary education (four years of secondary education) equals IIIa in ISCED classification, while category tertiary education comprises IV-VI levels in ISCED system.
14 The question about the goals of the protest was open-ended, leaving the respondents the opportunity to single-out and articulate one most important goal. Subsequently, the answers obtained were recoded and classified into categories by the researchers.
15 Although it should be noted here that systemic changes are perceived in different ways, so this represents more of an empty signifier rather than a clearly articulated desire to change the entire system of social relations.
16 https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/novi-protesti-protiv-izbornih-rezultata/28412532.html (accessed on 6 September 2021).
17 https://www.danas.rs/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Predlog-sporazuma-sa-narodom.pdf (accessed on 5 September 2021).
18 https://www.danas.rs/politika/beograd-44-protest-jedan-od-pet-miliona-na-19-godisnjicu-petooktobarskih-demonstracija/ (accessed on 7 September 2021).
19 More on that, see in Pešić and Petrović Citation2020.
20 If we compare displayed figures with the EU-SILC data reported few years earlier, at the peak of the crisis, we will see that the share of the deprived was significantly higher among all categories; namely, in 2014, material and social deprivation experienced 64.1 percent of those with primary education or less, 43.4 percent of those with secondary education and 19.9 percent of the highly educated. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ILC_MDSD03__custom_3609776/default/table?lang=en (accessed on 17 October 2022).
21 Data from the last census in Serbia (2011) show that the percentage of the population older than 15 with a tertiary level of education is 16.24 percent (https://publikacije.stat.gov.rs/G2021/Pdf/G202117014.pdf, accessed on 2 May 2021).
22 While in the 2017 protests had a clear prevalence of younger people (under the age of 30), this category, although still the most numerous, was no longer the absolute majority in the 2019 protests. The median age of participants increased from 26.5 years of age in 2017–32 in 2019.
23 If we add to this the category of those registered as self-employed, we get 47.1 percent of those in relatively stable work.
24 Even among unemployed respondents, 59 percent of whom were highly educated, this is a significantly higher share of highly educated people than the unemployed population of Serbia in 2018 (21.9%) or Belgrade (33.8%) (see: Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2019, https://publikacije.stat.gov.rs/G2019/Pdf/G20192052.pdf).
25 Within the category “Other”, the highest frequency, in both surveys, had answers in which the main goals of the protests were articulated as raising the level of political activism of the citizens themselves (14.6% in 2017 and 7.8% in 2019). Since this was an internal and not external goal, together with other answers whose frequency was relatively low, it was classified in the category “Other”.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jelisaveta Vukelić
Jelisaveta Vukelić is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Jelena Pešić is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade.