Contested citizenship: Between national and social rights in post-war Knin, Croatia

The paper deals with the post-war, postsocialist region of Knin in Croatia and discusses the 'grand plan' of Croatian national engineering after the war in the 1990s and its (partial) 'failure' at the local level. Building on concepts of social security and citizenship as an analytical frame, it shows that the Croatian nationality became not only an ideological perspective, but a practical means to achieving social rights, including access to housing. However, this logic was rather shortsighted. While many Croatian settlers as well as Croatian returnees came to Knin with enthusiasm, they became frustrated by the limited access to social and material benefits in the post-war, postsocialist situation and the diminishing power of national rights from 1998 on. The region of Knin became marginalized and 'de-modernised' and many 'national winners' became social losers. With the fragmentation of national solidarity, people in the Knin region started to construct a (fragile) local society, giving hope for the emergence of civil processes