In Search of a Demos: Transformations of Citizenship and Belonging in the Republic of Macedonia Ljubica Spaskovska Working Paper 2010/11 _,_ IDEAS University of Edinburgh, School of Law The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia (CITSEE) In Search of a Demos: Transformations of Citizenship and Belonging in the Republic of Macedonia Ljubica Spaskovska The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia (CITSEE) CITSEE WorkingPaperSeries2010/11 Edinburgh, Scotland, UK ISSN 2046-4096 The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. © 2010 Ljubica Spaskovska This text may be downloaded only for personal research purposes. Additional reproduction for other purposes, whether in hard copies or electronically, requires the consent of the authors. Requests should be addressed to [email protected] The viewexpressed in thispublicationcannot in any circumstances beregarded as the official position of the European Union. Published in the United Kingdom The University of Edinburgh School of Law Old College, South Bridge Edinburgh, EH8 2QL Scotland, UK www.law.ed.ac.uk/citsee/workingpapers The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia is funded by an Advanced Investigator Award for basic research made to Jo Shaw by the European Research Council and runs for five years from 1 April 2009 (ERC 230239) Forinformation aboutthe Project please visit theprojectwebsite at http://law.ed.ac.uk/citsee CITSEE WORKING PAPER SERIES 2010/11 1 In Search of a Demos: Transformations of Citizenship and Belonging in the Republic of Macedonia 1 Ljubica Spaskovska, School of Law, University of Edinburgh Abstract The paper explores the transformations of citizenship regimes and belonging in the Republic of Macedonia within the framework of five consecutive and at times overlapping phases: the (zero) socialist phase; the consolidation phase; the contestation phase; the intervention phase and the stabilisation phase. It argues that they were/are accompanied by a corresponding specific type of citizenship: supranational; abortive ethno-national; ethnizenship and new supranational (European) citizenship. Through analysis of context-specific and regional developments, the paper explores the phenomena of politicisation of citizenship, minority rights, diaspora and Europeanisation in addition to providing an insight into the different citizenship regimes Macedonia has gone through and the implications of their transformations and amendments at different points in time. Keywords: citizenship; contestation; ethno-national; Europeanisation; Macedonia; Yugoslavia. Today's time dates from yesterday, the day before yesterday, and all former times - F. Braudel For citizens are not born, but made - B. Spinoza Introduction In the conclusion to a chapter in a study on Eastern Europe, Robin Okey quotes the case of a British traveller in Epirus who 'in 1805 was entertained by a rendition of Christian rebel songs after which the Ottoman governor led the dancing in bare feet'. Consequently, the author is led to conclude that 'classes, peoples, cultures lived cheek by jowl, at once infinitely apart and inextricably entwined' (Okey 1986: 33). Although originally applied to the whole of Eastern Europe, it seems that this claim has nowhere been truer than in the Balkans and in particular in the region of Macedonia. Christian and Muslim Slavs, Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Yuruks, Vlachs, Sephardic Jews, and Roma inhabited a relatively small region where linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic borders did not necessarily correspond and where 1 Ljubica Spaskovska, Associate Researcher, CITSEE project. Email: [email protected]. CITSEE WORKING PAPER SERIES 2010/11 2 identities were porous, multiple and shifting. The classical western concept of citizenship implying status, membership, rights and duties (Joppke 2007; Shaw 2007) was introduced in the Southern Balkans and Macedonia only after the end of the First World War which followed the Balkan Wars and the demise of the Ottoman 2 Empire. Because of the specific interplay of historical circumstances, the multi- ethnic outlook and an on-going clash between 'state nationalism' and 'minority nationalism' (Kymlicka 2001: 222), citizenship in the Macedonian context has been generally conceived of as membership and belonging or has been understood in only one of its dimensions - that of identity. This was reinforced within the decentralised federal system of socialist Yugoslavia, where - in particular after the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 - the constituent republics acted as de facto sovereign nation states. Following the proclamation of Macedonia's internally and externally contested independence in 1991, Macedonia was confirmed as the state of the (ethnic) Macedonian people and minorities living in its territory. The core constitutional reforms came with the 2001 Ohrid Framework Agreement, when the country progressed from being a nation-state of the Macedonian people to being a multi- ethnic (or as some would argue - a bi-national) rather than a civic state. Thus, this paper explores among other things the several temporal junctures crucial for the understanding of the transformations of citizenship and identity in the Macedonian context. Considerable decentralisation reform, along with the extension of language, representation and other substantial rights to its large Albanian minority, put in place a power-sharing system (Lijphart 1991). This did not, however, change the ethnic conception of political life where political parties function and run on a purely ethnic basis, nor did it solve the most crucial problem the Macedonian state has been struggling with since its foundation as a federal unit of socialist Yugoslavia in 1944 - namely its contested statehood and nationhood coming both from within and from without. This paper seeks to understand the transformations of citizenship and citizenship regimes in contemporary Macedonia, against the background of the Yugoslav disintegration, the internal ethnic and ideological divide and a still uncertain European path. Some of the key problems this paper aims to analyse are: - the understanding of citizenship within the context of the ethnicisation and politicisation of citizenship, belated Macedonian nationalism and 'identitarian entrepreneurs' (Brubaker & Cooper 2000: 27) on all sides; - the politics of numbers as related to citizenship and the citizens' body; - the position and role of smaller minorities; - diaspora politics; and - the prospect of Europeanisation in view of the challenges Macedonia faces. 2 Legally speaking, it took a decadelonger, since the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, to which the territory of today's Republic of Macedonia belonged, enacted its first citizenship law only in 1928. CITSEE WORKING PAPER SERIES 2010/11 3 The transformation of the citizenship regime and all of the above phenomena will be analysed within a framework of four consecutive phases which have arguably at times overlapped and have provided for a complex interplay of factors and consequences: 1) the consolidation phase 2) the contestation phase 3) the intervention phase 4) the stabilisation phase The paper will also reflect upon the historical background and what one could term in this proposed framework 'the zero (socialist) phase' of Macedonian citizenship evolution and the corresponding dimension of supranational Yugoslav citizenship. The first and second phases outlined above will be explored through the phenomenon of abortive ethno-national citizenship, during which the Macedonian state made an attempt at styling itself as the nation-state of ethnic Macedonians. The intervention phase put an end to the exclusive ethno-national concept, stopped the inter-ethnic strife, but engineered however what I would call a specific ethnizenship where citizens realize their rights, duties and participation in the public and political sphere solely as members of ethnic or religious communities. A final stabilisation phase that could be said to have started after the last amendments to the citizenship legislation in 2008 and that coincided with Macedonia's attempts to join the EU could be expected to conclude with the introduction of a new type of supranational citizenship, namely European citizenship. This should strengthen the stability of Macedonian citizenship, in the long term, as it is very likely to diminish the importance of exclusive ethno-national drives, visions and initiatives. 1 Historical background: the socialist phase and supranational citizenship Since the introduction of travel documents and specific civic rights which cut across religious groups came only to the Balkans in the latter half of the nineteenth century, one could still draw a clear line between the different perceptions and understanding of citizenship. Because of the particular developments in state-building in the Balkans where a certain sense of loss and disagreement over non-corresponding ethnic,nationaland state borders has lingeredon for decades, the concept of 'de- and re-ethnicization of citizenship' (Joppke 2003) might be particularly useful. In the context of the former Yugoslavia, there were constant initiatives to foster the de- ethnicisation of citizenship at the federal level, whilst citizenship simultaneously was partially if not overtly re-ethnicised at the republican level. The process of the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation between