CONCOMITANTS OF INDEPENDENCE: CLASS MOBILITY IN THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

In enforcing liberal market economy in post-socialist independent Macedonia dramatic economic changes affected the lives of a group of young female engineers in Skopje. Entering one of the most prestigious professions in Yugoslavia, engineers in the independent and contested Republic of Macedonia found themselves in a class mobility they had not anticipated. Foreign agencies define a new working class, a new emerging class of ‘noveau rich’ alters ownership. I argue that, in redefining their relationship to the process of production through their consumption patterns and not through their labor my group of informants subvert the new emerging class mobility in Macedonia.