Production of Social Critique
Couple of hundred citizens gathered in front of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade on May 26. The reasons for their dissatisfaction are the new authorisations given to private enforcement officers and the criminalisation of solidarity. The demand of the protest organised by the United Action Roof over One’s Head (Združena akcija Krov nad glavom) is to protect the right to have a home.
Stronger and more powerful creditors will continue to torture the most vulnerable members of the society, states the United Action Roof Over One’s Head (Združena akcija Krov nad glavom). Regarding the announced Amendments to the Law on Enforcement and Security activists will organise a protest on Sunday in Beolgrade.
Six years ago a wave of demonstrations broke out throughout Spain. What started as a protest against the widespread political corruption and the lack of “real” democracy soon spread to millions of people challenging the current political and economic order. This movement will have later come to be known as the Indignados, or the 15M movement. The main three slogans of the May 15, that were supported by almost 80% of the population, were: “You call it a democracy – but it’s not”, “It’s not a crisis, it’s a scam”, “We are not merchandise in the hands of the politicians and the bankers.”
Members of United Action Roof Over One’s Head and Efektiva groups, joined by their sympathisers, held a protest gathering in front of Hotel M in Belgrade, where an assembly of the Chamber of Enforcement Officers was taking place.
Activists belonging to the United Action Roof Over One’s Head and United Action Roof Over One’s Head Novi Sad groups prevented three evictions in one day.
The Serbian state undertook action to evict refugees from their homes in Ustanička street and the Bristol hotel in Belgrade. In the first case the results of an open call for residency in the apartments used by the Commissariat for Refugees are used as justification for the evictions. In the second it is the whim of private investors.
Rory Archer is a historian who researches social history of the Balkans in the 20th century and currently works at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University College London. Archer explores the ways in which “ordinary” Yugoslavs interpreted economic, political and cultural tensions in late socialism and reacted to them. Since 2014 he has worked with Goran Musić on a research project titled Between Class and Nation: Working class communities in the eighties in Serbia and Montenegro. In 2015 he completed his PhD in Graz with a dissertation on the (in)affordability of housing among the working class in Belgrade, and in 2016 co-authored the book Social Inequalities and Disaffection in Yugoslavian Socialism.
Evictions are an increasing threat to indebted citizens of Serbia. Thus they are marking the final phase of the transformation strategy which led to the privatization of Serbian housing fund.