Description
Whilst it is long acknowledged that national identity acts as an important filter on Europeanisation processes, much less scholarly attention has been given to the way in which the EU integration process (re)shapes underlying nationalist politics in a candidate country. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining how the EU accession process of Serbia has forced the ruling elite to change the way in which they engage with nationalism.
Building on the literature on First and Other Serbia, Nationalism and Masculinities, we examine how the EU enlargement process has caused shifts in the national imagining. Whereas Serbia’s politics have long been described as a struggle between so-called first and Other Serbia, we observe a new Hybrid Serbia, in which the Serbian Progressive Party is relying on elements of both first and Other Serbia to maintain its position. In order to theoretically understand how this is possible, we employ the notion of hybrid masculinities to capture how also in nationalist politics, actors associated with First Serbia can employ certain narratives from Other Serbia in such a way to soften their own image whilst also maintaining their poser position. Doing so, the middle ground of the political battlefield is being occupied, which leaves only extreme voices to challenge the elite.
Empirically, this paper traces the debates in the Serbian print media, especially with regard to the discursive chasm between LGBT communities/feminisms and the Serbian Orthodox Church, but also with changes in the dominant media discourse. Doing so, it paper contends that nationalist othering in Serbia is consistently reshaped in order to accommodate the changing political climates.
