Collective experiences of the young's through the period of political instabilities and the changes within the framework of collective identification in the territory of former Yugoslavia

Abstract

this study we illustrate and comparatively analyze collective - geopolitical - identifications of Former Yugoslav citizens in the context of a specific process of political transition that took place in its territory. The research into the breadth and character of this kind of group belonging has a great theoretical importance in predicting the development of specific intergroup attitudes (perception of other groups that inhabit the same social territory) and, notably, intergroup relations. The study looks into geo-political affiliations (the sense of belonging to different geo-political communities) of the same generation cohort (the subjects who were between 32 and 38 years old at the time of the research) whose members were born in different historical periods and whose political socialization took place in different social and political circumstances. The direct aim of the secondary analysis of the data collected in two Former Yugoslav citizens' attitudes researches conducted in two different periods of Yugoslavia's transition - the very beginning, in 1990 and recently, in 2006 - was to establish the basic characteristics and possible changes in their geo-political affiliations, in terms of range and intensity. The analysis has shown that in the beginning of the transition (in the first period observed) there was a greater geo-political affiliation differentiation within each subject, but that the majority still preferred Yugoslav nationality. The young from Slovenia and Kosovo represent paradigmatic exceptions that manifest a dramatic decrease in collective identification awareness even at this early stage. This growing trend which, in terms of psychology, represented a transition from the national and civil to ethnic-territorial model of collective identification, gradually takes over the consciousness of the citizens in all new-formed national countries. At the same time, the structure becomes more uniform. The factor analysis based on the 2006 data statistically verified the existence of a dimension we named a parish in contrast to cosmopolitan belonging. The point is that there is a bipolar factor, with regional and national sense of belonging on its negative, and belonging to Former Yugoslavia, to Europe and the world in general on its positive pole. The resulting factor scores showed that the subjects from different geo-political communities of Former Yugoslav territory belonging to the same generation are characterized by a different collective identification framework breadth, i.e. they are positioned on different poles of the local-mondial dimension. This positioning corresponds more with specific trends of political socialization (socialization effect) of separate segments of the Former Yugoslav youth than with the further, common, collective historical experiences (period effect) of the generation in general.