Maja Korac

Ethnic‐nationalism, wars and the patterns of social, political and sexual violence against women: The case of post‐Yugoslav countries

The paper takes the recent conflict and wars in the region of post-Yugoslav states and their impact on women as the point of departure. In this empirical context, I explore the patterns of violence against women, arguing that ethnic nationalism as a social phenomenon engenders a kind of “structural violence” with gender specific implications. Women are exposed to various forms of sexual, physical, and non-physical violence in their relation to ethnic-national movements and their respective states-in-the-making. Therefore the paper examines the ways in which gendered militarization of ethnic nationalism is used to justify different forms of abuse of women, from abuse of womens reproductive rights to domestic violence. Furthermore, it addresses the issue of political exploitation of militarized violence against women, wherein abused women are used by their nation-states to gain more power in the struggle for nationalistic expansion.

Understanding ethnic-national identity and its meaning: Questions from women's experience

Abstract This article examines the meaning of ethnic-national identity focusing on authors personal search for ethnic-national identity or location in the context of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. From that point of departure, the author analyses the position and role of women within ethnic-national discourses in what was Yugoslavia. The article challenges the essentialist notion of belonging to ethnic-national collective and its links to the patriarchal values of brotherhood and solidarity, examining the way that the discourse of male violence and ethnic-nationalism works in relation to gender. It argues for deconstruction and rearticulation of such male-defined maps of belonging, suggesting a more inclusive politics of ethnic-national identity which would allow for allegiances based on acts of conscious political choice and acknowledgement of internal differences.

Transnational pathways to integration: Chinese traders in Serbia

This article focuses on the process of integration of Chinese immigrants in Serbia. It is based on a pilot study conducted among Chinese traders in Belgrade, and examines the ways in which this highly mobile group of people is becoming incorporated into the Serbian society. The discussion points to a set of opportunities that Serbia as a transition society and a non-immigrant country offers to Chinese traders who have been settling in Belgrade and Serbia since 1996. It explores multiple and various types of emerging social interaction embedded in daily life of both Chinese traders and locals, all of which shape their local integration. It argues that a society such as Serbia provides a space for choice and active management of risks involved in trading migration enabling Chinese traders to create a transnational pathway to incorporation. Although their primary aim is not to ‘settle for good’, but to remain mobile for the better, Chinese traders have established a wide range of contacts with the local population and have created some important inroads into the Serbian society.

Is there a right time for gender-just peace? Feminist anti-war organising revisited

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the question of totalising gender-power relations that have led to and shaped the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia and the emerging ethno-national states on the ‘periphery’ of Europe. I argue that the same type of gender-power relations continue to dominate the region, notably Serbia, and to perpetuate gender inequalities and gender-based violence (GBV) in its many everyday and structural forms, causing profound levels of human insecurity. This analysis aims to set in motion a debate around how to tackle these continuing gender inequalities and GBV in post-war societies. In so doing, I propose a shift from focusing on the hierarchy of victimisation that has characterised much of the feminist analyses, activism, and scholarly work in relation to these (and other) conflicts, to a relational understanding of the gendered processes of victimisation in war and peace, that is – of both women and men. Such an approach holds a potential to undermine the power systems that engender these varied types of victimisation by ultimately reshaping the notions of masculinity and femininity, which are central to the gender-power systems that generate gender-unjust peace.

Understanding Ethnic-National Identity in Times of War and Social Change

To introduce the problem of identity and the wars in former Yugoslavia, I begin with the words of a refugee boy from Croatia. In a school in Belgrade the children were asked to describe in writing how they felt about who they are. The boy wrote: ‘I am nobody.’ When asked why he felt this way, he replied: ‘Because my father is from Croatia, my mother from Serbia. Where am I from?’1