Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai<br />
Kosovo would need much more space than the present paper would allow,<br />
some of its key features should be examined, as they are significant and<br />
often recurring themes in the interviews and narratives.<br />
In particular, the emergence of social antagonism in Kosovo should be<br />
understood in relation to the politics of the Yugoslav State concerning the<br />
status of Albanians. Their experience in Yugoslavia follows a history of<br />
prejudice and exclusion at the political level, an all-important area in a<br />
Communist state. Because of their unwillingness to deny their religion and<br />
their perceived implicit “non-Yugoslavian-ness”, Albanians were severely<br />
restrained from joining the Communist Party, and therefore barred from<br />
the levers that controlled the most crucial state apparatus. Even when some<br />
Albanians did manage to enter these places of influence, their roles and<br />
voices were diluted and disproportionate to their demographic and cultural<br />
hegemony in Kosovo. Moreover, as a consequence of the process of<br />
further Serbianization of Kosovo, which was inaugurated with Slobodan<br />
Milosevic’s rise to power in 1989, thousands of Albanians were dismissed<br />
from public employment and party membership. 2<br />
Finally, because of their exclusion from the party-state-dominated centralized<br />
economy, the Albanians came to be at the helm of the informal economic<br />
sector, which they organized and managed. They also resorted to<br />
emigration to Western Europe (mainly Germany or Switzerland) and to<br />
America, to a much greater extent than the Serbs. Gradually, the Albanians<br />
accumulated private fortunes, which contrasted sharply with the policies<br />
and ethics of a supposedly egalitarian regime from which they had been<br />
excluded in the first place. This could not but generate animosity and tension<br />
between the various social actors and groups.<br />
In Kosovo, the fact that Serbs were in control of all of the key political<br />
positions, meant that they were in a position of domination. Although<br />
Albanians were officially granted full political participation, they were<br />
only allowed to express their cultural identity through a formally deethnicized,<br />
but actually and increasingly Serbo-centric cultural and political<br />
order. On the other hand, because of their privileged position in the<br />
informal and private economy (which had come as a consequence of their<br />
marginalization or exclusion from the institutional public sector and state<br />
controlled formal economy) and of their widespread resort to emigration,<br />
the Albanians found themselves in a position of stark economic superiority,<br />
in a period of deep economic crisis in Kosovo. Despite this, their situation<br />
at the margins of political institutions placed them in a very weak<br />
position within an ever Serbianizing and exclusive Yugoslav state. Within<br />
this context, it becomes important for the purpose of present research to<br />
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