Forging Transnational Belonging through Informal Trade Analyzing informal trading practices and smuggling through the case study of Novi Pazar, this book explores how societies cope when governments no longer assume the responsibility for providing welfare to their citizens. How do economic transnational practices shape one’s sense of belonging in times of crisis/precarity? Specifically, how does the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – and the subsequent migration of the Muslim Slav population to Turkey – relate to the Yugoslav Succession Wars during the 1990s? Using the case study of Novi Pazar, a town in Serbia that straddles the borders of Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo that became a smuggling hub during the Yugoslav conflict, the book focuses on that informal market economy as a prism through which to analyze the strengthening of existing relations between the émigré community in Turkey and the local Bosniak population in the Sandžak region. Demonstrating the interactive nature of relations between the state and local and émigré communities, this book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in Southeastern Europe or the Yugoslav Succession Wars of the 1990s, as well as social anthropologists who are working on social relations and deviant behavior. Sandra King-Savic is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe (GCE) at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). She served as a human rights educator for Amnesty International and conducted research for the Foreign Military Studies Office at the University of Kansas (KU) before receiving a Swiss National Foundation scholarship for her dissertation on the transversal relationship between migration and informal markets. Southeast European Studies Series Editor: Florian Bieber The Balkans are a region of Europe widely associated over the past decades with violence and war. Beyond this violence, the region has experienced rapid change in recent times though, including democratization, economic and social transformation. New scholarship is emerging which seeks to move away from the focus on violence alone to an understanding of the region in a broader context drawing on new empirical research. The Southeast European Studies Series seeks to provide a forum for this new scholarship. Publishing cutting-edge, original research and contributing to a more profound understanding of Southeastern Europe while focusing on contemporary perspectives the series aims to explain the past and seeks to examine how it shapes the present. Focusing on original empirical research and innovative theoretical perspectives on the region the series includes original monographs and edited collections. It is interdisciplinary in scope, publishing high-level research in political science, history, anthropology, sociology, law and economics and accessible to readers interested in South- east Europe and beyond. The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution Jelena Đureinović Social Mobilization Beyond Ethnicity Civic Activism and Grassroots Movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina Chiara Milan Memory Politics and Populism in Southeastern Europe Edited by Jody Jensen Forging Transnational Belonging through Informal Trade Thriving Markets in Times of Crisis Sandra King-Savic For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ SoutheastEuropeanStudies/bookseries/ASHSER1390 Forging Transnational Belonging through Informal Trade Thriving Markets in Times of Crisis Sandra King-Savic First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Sandra King-Savic The right of Sandra King-Savic to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: King-Savic, Sandra, author. Title: Forging transnational belonging through informal trade : thriving markets in times of crisis / Sandra King-Savic. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Southeast European studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020051436 (print) | LCCN 2020051437 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367900731 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003022381 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Smuggling—Social aspects—Serbia—Novi Pazar. | Informal sector (Economics)—Serbia—Novi Pazar. | Transnationalism— Economic aspects—Serbia—Novi Pazar. | Muslims—Serbia—Novi Pazar—Social conditions. | Belonging (Social psychology)—Serbia— Novi Pazar. | Novi Pazar (Serbia)—Economic conditions. | Novi Pazar (Serbia)—Social conditions. | Serbia—Foreign economic relations— Turkey. | Turkey—Foreign economic relations—Serbia. Classification: LCC HJ7015 .K56 2021 (print) | LCC HJ7015 (ebook) | DDC 382—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051436 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051437 ISBN: 978-0-367-90073-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-75403-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-02238-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction: šverceri, people like you and me 1 Context and research setting 3 Aims and contributions 4 Europe in the head, Turkey in the heart 7 Methodological considerations and data 9 Restrictions and limiting conditions 11 Who speaks 13 Semi-structured interviews as narratives 15 Questionnaire 16 Newspaper articles 20 Structure 21 PART I 27 1 Narrating history through the prism of šverc 29 Cultivating belonging across time and space 30 Nationalization and migration processes: a shrinking world for the Muslim population of Novi Pazar 35 Diaspora as a “category of practice”: a precondition for the creation of transnational trade practices 37 Diaspora connections and neo-Ottomanism: a Turkish perspective 41 Transnationalism as a constituent component of trading practices, and the formation of social relations 43 The road to hell is paved with good intentions: illicit trade practices and sanctions-busting in Serbia during the 1990s 46 ‘Making do’ 48 vi Contents Frontier economy 50 Small-scale trading and šverc among common citizens 52 Small-scale trading and šverc among common citizens: looking beyond the Western Balkans 53 PART II 63 2 The ‘inner logic’ of transnational relations 65 Belonging through the prism of šverc: making sense of the Yugoslav Succession Wars 66 Synthesis 79 3 Novi Pazar as a mnemonic nucleus for the transmission of memory 83 Social sites of belonging 84 Social sites and family narratives: chronicles of belonging in Novi Pazar 92 Collapsing the time-space continuum 98 The maintenance of kin relations across space and time 108 Synthesis 109 PART III 115 4 Recontextualizing narratives of šverc within the discourse of economic collapse 117 A discursive analysis of šverc in Serbia 121 An analysis of ‘discursive qualifications’ about šverc in Novi Pazar 129 Synthesis 132 5 Speaking about the practice of šverc 136 Šverc as a narrated practice 138 Practicing šverc 143 Anomia 151 Synthesis 156 Conclusion 160 Appendix – questionnaire 164 Bibliography 174 Index 184 Illustrations Figures 0.1 Sandžak region 2 0.2 National affiliation 17 0.3 Citizenship 17 0.4 National identification 18 0.5 Native language 18 0.6 Gender 18 0.7 Age in range 19 0.8 How long a resident in Novi Pazar 19 1.1 Sandžak region including municipalities 30 2.1 Starinska ruža (antique rose) 67 2.2 Starinske ruže (antique roses) in jars 68 2.3 Perception toward past empires and supranational collectives 72 2.4 Origin of goods available on the market in Novi Pazar during the 1990s 73 3.1 The town of Novi Pazar 85 3.2 Ottoman fort in Novi Pazar 85 3.3 Isa-Beg hamman in Novi Pazar 86 3.4 Lučna zgrada in Novi Pazar 87 3.5 St. Peter and Paul Church in Novi Pazar 87 3.6 Djurdjevi Stupovi 88 3.7 Pansion Amir-Aga Han in the center of Novi Pazar 89 3.8 Ovo je naša dedovina, banner hanging from the Amir-Aga Han in Novi Pazar 89 3.9 Altun-Alem Mosque in Novi Pazar 90 3.10 View of Novi Pazar from the Altun-Alem Mosque 91 3.11 Opinions toward career options and government services 95 3.12 Transnational connections with Turkey 98 4.1 Coded terms, Večerne Novosti 119 4.2 Večerne Novosti, December 7, 1994: 7 121 4.3 Večerne Novosti, December 7, 1994: 7 122 viii Illustrations 4.4 Večerne Novosti, May 5, 1993: 9 123 4.5 Dinar Briše Lire, Novosti, September 23, 1994: 4 124 5.1 Transnational connections with Turkey 140 5.2 Potential for development and satisfaction with governmental services 154 Tables 4.1 Atlas.ti coefficiency table 120 Acknowledgements There are a great many people who supported my research project, the result of which is this publication. I am deeply grateful to those individuals who partici- pated in this research in and out of the field. The completion of this study would have been impossible without your willingness to invite me to your homes and into your lives. The Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Kansas (KU) initially enabled this research financially and logisti- cally. My research was financed by a joint initiative between KU, the Foreign Mil- itary Studies Office (FMSO), and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) scholarship. Just as important was the camaraderie among peers, including Austin Charron who supported me in the creation of a proper questionnaire. I received invaluable academic support from Mehrangiz Najafizadeh, who read countless drafts of my MA thesis which ultimately turned into a PhD dissertation and then this book.