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Dignified Work and the Politics of Mobility in Serbia

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Dignified Work and the Politics of Mobility in Serbia University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses July 2019 What Will You Do Here? Dignified orkW and the Politics of Mobility in Serbia Dana N. Johnson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Eastern European Studies Commons, Migration Studies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Johnson, Dana N., "What Will You Do Here? Dignified orkW and the Politics of Mobility in Serbia" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1643. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1643 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WHAT WILL YOU DO HERE? DIGNIFIED WORK AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY IN SERBIA A Dissertation Presented by DANA N. JOHNSON Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2019 Anthropology © Copyright by Dana N. Johnson 2019 All Rights Reserved WHAT WILL YOU DO HERE? DIGNIFIED WORK AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY IN SERBIA A Dissertation Presented by DANA N. JOHNSON Approved as to style and content by: ___________________________ Julie Hemment, Chair ___________________________ Elizabeth L. Krause, Member ___________________________ Krista Harper, Member ___________________________ Sangeeta Kamat, Member ___________________________ Julie Hemment, Acting Chair Department of Anthropology DEDICATION For Aca ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is daunting to write on a topic that so many people find to be so very important. My hope for this dissertation is that it rings true to my interlocutors even as they uncover its faults; that they find in these pages stories that resonate with their own and with the experiences of those whom they hold dear. To all of them: I am honored by the time you gave to this endeavor, the trust you showed in my efforts, and the experiences, dreams, disappointments, and astute analyses you shared. Thank you. This project would not be what it is without Tamara Belenzada, whose influence is imprinted on each page. Focus group moderator, interview transcriber, sounding board, dear friend, and my anchor in Belgrade, Tamara embraced my work with unmatchable enthusiasm. To her: thank you—I continue to be humbled by the generosity of your spirit and the sharpness of your analytical mind. Other members of my Belgrade family provided a warm welcome, warm food, and warm company, especially Orli Fridman, Snežana Škundrić, and Ivana and Marko Marinković. I’m so glad to have them to return to again and again. The delightful complication of ethnography is how the line between interlocutor and friend so readily blurs. I thank Niko, Bojana, and Vukašin in particular for their friendship as well as insights. Radmila was the ideal landlord (even if our apartment was plagued by failing appliances). Some may advise against adopting a dog during fieldwork but I respectfully disagree. Lusi opened up a novel ethnographic sphere, from the v series of field notes I collected under the theme of “tales from the dog park,” to navigating the strange world of Serbian veterinary care, to committing a minor act of fraud in the course of the bureaucratic adventure of bringing her home. But most of all, I am grateful for those she brought into our Belgrade life. I hope that Zoja and Danijela are finally convinced of our fitness as dog parents. And I know that the legend of Lusi lives on among her many four-legged friends and human fans in Vračar. At UMass Amherst I could not have asked for a more supportive committee. I have always felt that I worked “with” rather than “under” each of my mentors. I am eternally grateful for the perfect combination of incisive feedback and prodding encouragement provided by my advisor, Julie Hemment. Betsy Krause guided my first fieldwork experience and supplied many hours of thoughtful exchange as well as laughs. Krista Harper welcomed me to UMass and illuminated all the important things about navigating academic life. Sangeeta Kamat has asked questions and voiced insights that crucially shaped this project. I also thank Jackie Urla for her belief in my ability and continued support. To my fellow dissertators at the end, especially Christa Burdick, Elena Sesma, Julie Woods, Seda Saluk, Lauren Woodard, Erica Kowsz, and Alina Ryabovolova Parker: thanks for pulling me back from various edges and for sharing the bumpy homestretch. Christa deserves special mention for entertaining my most undercooked ideas and for being the most delightful conference buddy. Heidi Bauer-Clapp has been my guide through all things grad school and a model of perseverance and balance. vi I wrote the bulk of this dissertation away from my home department and am grateful to those who made the process less lonely. Dimitar Bechev and Adi Džumhur looped me into the activities of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and supplied some much-needed intellectual stimulation and interdisciplinary perspectives on my work. Participants in the Representing Migration Humanities Lab at Duke University, and especially Charlotte Sussman, generously included me in their activities and offered much food for thought (and food!). Each of these chapters contains material first presented at the 2016, 2017, and 2018 meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the 2018 meeting of the Council for European Studies, and the 2018 meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. I thank panel discussants Kimberly Arkin, Jessica Greenberg, and Dace Dzenovska for engaging with my work and pushing it forward. Sarah Wagner and Jelena Subotić deserve special thanks for their generous feedback on an early draft of chapter 4 as well as their ongoing encouragement. A 2018 workshop on the Eurasian migration system in the context of the Summer Research Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, expertly organized by Cynthia Buckley, was a wonderful opportunity to test the framing of my project with an interdisciplinary audience. I thank all participants for their collegiality but especially Nikki Kraus, Erin Hofmann, Laura Dean, and Catalina Hunt for their ongoing critical engagement with my work. I also thank Ivan Rajković and Fabio Mattioli for lively exchanges that shaped how I think about the moral valences of work in Serbia. vii My research was generously funded by several agencies in addition to the UMass Amherst Graduate School and Department of Anthropology. Fieldwork was supported by the Title VIII Research Scholar Program, funded by the US Department of State Title VIII Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and Eurasia and administered by American Councils for International Education; the Fulbright US Student Program, funded by the US Department of State and administered by the Institute of International Education; and the National Science Foundation (award no. IIA-1261172). Writing was supported in part by a Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowship, administered by the Council for European Studies. I am not at all sure I would have reached this endpoint without such generous support, and I am very grateful to CES in particular for the conviction shown in this work. The opinions expressed herein, as well as any faults, remain my own. Finally, I thank my parents, Tim and Mary Johnson, and sister RaeMarie Davis, for the support they have shown over my many years in graduate school, even if they are still dubious about this particular path. I am grateful to my mom in particular for her embrace of the role of grandmother, which allowed me many hours of happy writing knowing that my son was happily cared for. To the other women whose undercompensated caretaking labor I relied upon, especially Chelsea Earles, Emily Deahl, and Teachers Alison, Sue, and Courtney: a million thanks. As is customary, I save the most inexpressible debt for last. Would this dissertation have been possible without the support of my partner, Drew Adamek? I am happy to not have had to know. Thank you, Drew, for everything. viii ABSTRACT WHAT WILL YOU DO HERE? DIGNIFIED WORK AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY IN SERBIA MAY 2019 DANA N. JOHNSON, B.A., DEPAUL UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Julie Hemment Serbia is said to have one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world. For the generation glossed as the “children of the 1990s,” stances toward mobility and migration have shifted along with geopolitics. Following nearly two decades of wartime entrapment, in 2009 the conditions of possibility for mobility fundamentally changed for Serbian citizens. Of both symbolic and material consequence, the country’s return to respectable geopolitical standing also marked a shift toward more nuanced stancetaking in relation to mobility and migration. Namely, by the time of my research, the expectations of youth—not only of “normal mobility” but of “normalcy” more generally—had become more and more often calibrated against personal experiences of real-life travel. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Belgrade,
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