Citizenship as social object in the aftermath of the Yugoslav break-up

Abstract

The break-up of Yugoslavia disintegrated the Yugoslav citizenship regime, and new communities of citizens and citizenship regulations were born. Since the identitarian and lived aspects of citizenship are inseparable from its formal and legal aspects, (not) having the ‘right’ personal documents and (not) being recognized as the ‘right’ kind of citizen had profound effects on the lives of many individuals. Relying on the concept of documentality and stressing the feature of documents as being constitutive of social reality, this article analyses personal narratives illustrating the lived experience of citizenship transformations after the break-up of Yugoslavia.