The Struggle for Humanity: Deinstitutionalization of the Post-Yugoslav Space in a Historic Perspective

Abstract

While communist gender policies have been widely discussed, little is known about the history of disability in the post-Yugoslav space and its connection to the gender order, and how deinstitutionalization and current process of repatriarchalisation are linked. Yugoslavia’s socialist social policy provided a vast network of residential institutions and boarding schools for people with disabilities and stripped them of their individuality and political subjectivity, as they were run as industrial plants, providing employment opportunities for women in rural areas. Whereas under state socialism women were regimented into paid employment, today they are employed in isolated contexts of home care as foster carers, long-term carers, and personal assistants. The current process of deinstitutionalization tends not so much to ideas of independent living, but to family-centered care of people with disabilities. The comparative material shows that deinstitutionalization in the post-Yugoslav space has many similarities; it has not achieved major systemic transformations, is slow, and partly relies on (and at the same time produces) new trends of repatriarchalization of societies instead of independent living. Three areas are described in more detail: deinstitutionalization of children and adults; reinstitutionalization and transinstitutionalization; and personal assistance.