Conversations with Bosnian Youth: From the Youth Relay Race to the Successor Generation Initiative*

Abstract

Youth and their experiences, opinions and attitudes in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter BiH) have typically been left unexamined by both academics and policy makers. Nor is there much attention paid to historical analysis of youth who lived in the socialist period, which could shed some light on the mentality of young generations in present-day BiH. This article provides a historical view of socialist youth in Tito's era, with a special focus on BiH in the late 1980s. The second section provides a survey of how young people live in one of the Yugoslav successor states, BiH, examining the continuity and discontinuity of socio-political and ideological conditions in which youth lived in socialist Yugoslavia. The third section looks at the relationship between youth and the international community, the dynamics of which shed light on common features of both pre- and post-war BiH. Specifically, it will examine the internationally funded and organized “Successor Generation Initiative” (SGI) youth program, which aimed to educate youth in democratic values and develop their leadership skills.