Protesting Once or Always: Biographical Outcomes of Student Activists in Serbia and Croatia

The first declaration of the New Left in the Western Balkans happened with student protests that took place in Belgrade in 2006 and later resonated in Zagreb in 2009 before spreading all over the post-Yugoslavian space. More than 15 years later former student activists from Croatia remain politically and socially active in NGOs and new left parties still fighting against neoliberal reforms while Serbian ones disappeared from political scene. Was there a specific key element that led to this drastic difference? Engagement in any type of activism is proved to exert a lasting impact on individuals' lives. The majority of existing works focuses on the New Left, mostly on the cases of democratic regimes. However, some of the scholars precise the difference of this ‘New Balkan Left’ from the more ‘traditional’ New Left that is seen in the USA and countries of Western Europe. My research explores the life trajectories of participants of two aforementioned student movements and long-term impact of the participation on their political views and their political and personal aspects of life. I argue that differences in political and social situation in two countries at the time of the protests and the state of civil society influenced not only the outcomes of the movements themselves but also the biographies. One of the important elements was the actual and perceived success of the movements, where under success I understand the achievement of the goals the movements set for themselves. Moreover, I suppose that the particular context of post-Yugoslavian countries produces biographical outcomes that differ from those explored on other cases. On the basis of in-depth semi-structured interviews, I will discuss the main elements that explain the current difference in the political and social activism between former students from two countries, underlining the role of networks, general societal support and political environment for the continuity or discontinuity of their involvement.