Language Rights and Multilingualism in Vojvodina

The aim of this Paper is to analyse the implementation of minority language rights and explain the gaps between the legislation and everyday practices in Vojvodina – an autonomous province within the asymmetrically decentralized unitary state of Serbia. Combining socio-linguistic and legal approaches, field work, interviews and the comparison of legal documents with lived experiences help illuminate both variations of multilingualism in different localities and significant trends. In the first part of the study I build up the conceptual framework and the historical context for the analysis. How "equality” can be interpreted in a context where institutions of the nationalizing state are producing asymmetrical power relations and how patterns of "multilingualism” are changing as speakers of minority languages adapt to socio-economic changes? How multilingual "ethnoscapes” have been transformed as a result of migration processes following the Yugoslav wars of succession or the granting of dual citizenship to transborder Hungarians? In the second part of the Paper I shed light on the weak linkage between legislation and implementation by comparing de iure and de facto situation. I illustrate my observations with case studies that show a big variation in multilingual practices depending on local community and power relations (e.g. Belo Blato/Erzsébetlak versus Temerin) on the one hand, and the practical obstacles to the implementation of language rights on the other hand. There are both explicit and implicit problems that undermine the fulfillment of minority language rights, including the lack of awareness among the minority communities concerning their rights, the limited access of municipalities to resources that could be used for the extra costs of multilingualism (e.g. translation and interpretation) or the hidden discriminative employment policy at the police, for instance. Investigating as various potential sites of multilingualism as village, street or institution name plates and road signs, court proceedings, public employment, use of public documents, textbooks used in education etc. I aim to emphasize that there are a lot of practices that could be changed in order to improve both legal framework and its enforcement. In the third part of the Paper I argue that only a relative concept of equality can be applied as the basis of multilingualism if our aim is to correct the existing inequalities between groups. This approach recognizes the right to be different in a context where majority rights are implicit and minority rights are seen as "special” and recognizes also that minority communities living in different circumstances and conditions in certain aspects need politically, legally and socially different treatment.