2.1 Citizenship as a Multidimensional Concept and Discursively Crafted Phenomenon

The concept of citizenship as a direct relationship and legal bond between citizens and the state has become the central feature of the modern socio-political structure (Heater Reference Heater1999). It endows an individual with certain entitlements and duties and defines his/her relations to other citizens and non-citizens. Traditionally conceived as encompassing civil and political rights, the scope and meaning of citizenship have been reconfigured and broadened by newly emerging historical contexts (Joppke Reference Joppke2007, 37; Deiana Reference Deiana and Roseneil2013). After Marshall’s (Reference Marshall1950) seminal concept of social citizenship brough the class aspect into Western intellectual debates on citizenship, the scope of citizenship rights has been extended to also include gender and ethnic aspects (Walby Reference Walby1994) or cultural rights (Kymlicka and Norman Reference Kymlicka, Norman, Kymlicka and Norman2000). This article therefore conceptualizes citizenship as a multidimensional concept, encompassing not only status and rights but also identity as well as symbolic or psychological aspects (Bosniak Reference Bosniak2006; Joppke Reference Joppke2007, 37; Deiana Reference Deiana and Roseneil2013).

Furthermore, the article draws on recent approaches, which depart from the historical perspective commonly used in earlier works by sociologists and political scientists and suggest we should not understand citizenship as a given phenomenon, but as an experience lived by people on a daily basis, subject to constant negotiation (Džankić Reference Džankić2015, 339; Štiks Reference Štiks2015, 10; Džankić et al. Reference Džankić, Kacarska, Pantić and Shaw2015, 341). The actual functioning of citizenship is shaped by informal ideologies, social practices and rituals, and personal and collective narratives that serve as signifiers of citizenship by ascribing to it particular meanings, identity, status, and values (Fairclough, Pardoe, and Szerszynski Reference Fairclough, Pardoe, Szerszynski, Hausendorf and Bora2006, 101). That is why many scholars (Asen Reference Asen2004; Kock and Villadsen Reference Kock and Villadsen2017; Fairclough, Pardoe, and Szerszynski Reference Fairclough, Pardoe, Szerszynski, Hausendorf and Bora2006) have recently called for the use of discursive approaches and rhetorically oriented studies of citizenship, which this article pursues.

The article follows Kock and Villadsen (Reference Kock and Villadsen2017, 571; 578) in considering citizenship as discursively enacted and crafted, while simultaneously reflecting and affecting the way we see our place in a community and the nature of that community. It understands citizenship deliberations as debates concerned with boundaries of membership and belonging or formulations of “us” versus “them,” which represent essential questions of citizenship. They are not only arenas for negotiating the notion of citizenship but are also constitutive of it – of what it means to be a citizen and what rights it entails (Livio Reference Livio2017, 2671).

Rhetorical approaches to citizenship have shifted attention to occasions of social mobilization when citizenship acts break with hegemonic citizenship practices and open space for redefining the boundaries of membership (Deiana Reference Deiana and Roseneil2013, 187; Gleiss Reference Gleiss2017, 233). New meanings, identity constructions and “boundaries of the permissible” are created through the process of social mobilization. However, they do not take place in a vacuum, as they relate to and are pre-determined by past articulations (Gleiss Reference Gleiss2017, 234, 237). The two series of protests taking place in BiH in 2013 and 2014 marked the two most important civil awakenings and events for the citizenship debate in the last decade. The article thus analyzes how various formulations and practices of citizenship developed during that time of opening and how they interacted, were mutually constitutive of one another, and positioned themselves in relation to the hegemonic ethno-national frame.

2.2 The Troubling Nexus of “the People” and “the Nation”

For understanding the citizenship debate in the Bosnian context, the following paragraphs expand on the strand of theory that addresses specific challenges brought to multinational democracies by ethnopolitics as a result of the difficult connection of citizenship and nationalism (Habermas Reference Habermas and Beiner1995, 107). Although citizenship regimes historically precede democratic political systems (Mann Reference Mann1987; Turner Reference Turner1990), the concept of citizenship is crucial for democratic theory and practice. Democracy is inconceivable without citizenship, as it delineates the boundaries of a polity, sets rules for inclusion and exclusion, and construes an ensemble of equal citizens as a unit of democratic deliberation and decision-making (Taylor Reference Taylor, Gagnon and Tully2001, xiii). However, due to a paradox inherent to the intersection of citizenship and nationalism (Habermas Reference Habermas and Beiner1995, 259), the citizenry has come to be typically perceived as a nation, as something that is more cohesive than just a set of individuals who, by historical coincidence, happen to be legally bound to the state (Brubaker Reference Brubaker1992, 21). The process which Delanty (Reference Delanty2000, 91) calls “the coupling of nation and state” resulted in the equation of nation, state, and people in modern political thought and discourse (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1992, 19). As a result, the politics of citizenship usually mirrors specific ideas of nationhood (Štiks Reference Štiks2006, 484). The state – and nation – building projects, however, often do not overlap. In the context of ethnic pluralism, their incongruency poses an essential challenge to state formation and legitimacy.

It was this troubling nexus of “the people” and “the nation” that proved to be critical for the fate of multi-national Bosnia and Herzegovina during the disintegration of Yugoslavia and has remained a source of tensions ever since the war. As post-communist realities and conflicts accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union brought the issue of ethnicity to the fore, theoretical literature has also sought to answer the question of how far ethnopolitical challenges to citizenship can go for a state to be viable. The intellectual debate has focused mostly on the question whether, and to what extent, a common citizenship identity is necessary for the functioning of a polity and state legitimacy. This discussion has been of crucial relevance to Bosnia and Herzegovina where the problematic nexus of the people and the nation raises a significant challenge to the state’s legitimacy and functioning. It is, consequently, the ambivalent feelings and contested commitments of BiH citizens that this article aims to explore.

3.1 BiH Citizenship Regime After Dayton and Ethnic Determinism

The Bosnian constitution as well as its citizenship regime are contained in the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) and defined a new institutional design for the country. Bosnia and Herzegovina was created as a highly decentralized state. Its organization rests on the principle of territorial autonomy comprised within its division into two entities: the Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH). FBiH is further divided into ten cantons. The level of decentralization of the system is manifested through the existence of fourteen parliamentary assemblies and governments. The territorial autonomy principle is complemented with a consociation through power-sharing among Bosnia’s three constituent peoples: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. The ethnic logic is deeply entrenched in the institutional set up and determines the allocation of positions at almost all levels of the state administration, based on the contested demographic data from the 1991 census (Žíla and Čermák Reference Žíla and Čermák2021).

The citizenship legislation is defined by Paragraph 7 of Article 1 of Annex IV (DPA, 1995) and mirrors the complicated set up of post-Dayton BiH. Unlike the citizenship regimes of other post-Yugoslav states, that of BiH is two-tiered: state-level and entity-level (Article 1 (7), Annex IV, DPA, 1995). Although the Constitutional Court on July 1, 2000, confirmed the sovereignty of BiH over the entities and the supremacy of the BiH constitution over the entities’ constitutions, the de facto power, including management of citizenship registers and issuing of passports, lies with the entities (Štiks Reference Štiks2011, 256).

While entity-level citizenship reflects the territorial autonomy principle, the consociation principle also finds its expression in the citizenship regime as it differentiates between “Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, as constituent peoples (along with Others), and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.” This phrasing draws on the legal tradition of Socialist Yugoslavia where citizens were often mentioned as a specific category of people that, together with “working people” and “nations and nationalities of Yugoslavia,” defined the citizenry of the state. The wording itself is significant since rightful owners of the country are defined as members of the constituent nations: “Others” (read: national minorities) and “citizens,” “in apparently descending order” (Guzina Reference Guzina2007, 226). Citizens, together with the “others,” represent residual categories and are left without a clear status (Hooper and Schwartz Reference Hooper and Schwartz1999, 57; Stipić Reference Stipić2017, 95; Guzina Reference Guzina2007, 226).

The constitution, therefore, ethnically stratifies the “demos” and leaves little space for purely civic loyalties to the state (Džankić Reference Džankić, Kacarska, Pantić and Shaw2015, 531). The endorsement of ethnicity as the primary dimension of citizens’ identities, destruction of shared public spaces, or segregated media and education landscapes create room for continuing competition between Serb, Croat, and Bosniak nationalism and cultural fundamentalism (Hromadžić Reference Hromadžić2015, 10; Hromadžić Reference Hromadžić2012, 32; Bieber Reference Bieber2006, 56; Deiana Reference Deiana and Roseneil2013, 189). Alternative narratives, which try to escape three dominant ethno-national interpretations, such as those formulated by protesters, remain unorganized, themselves contested, and rather context-dependent (Bougarel, Helms, and Duijzings Reference Bougarel, Helms and Duijzings2007, 19; Moll Reference Moll2013, 922).

3.2 Socioeconomic Factors and Protests as Windows of Opening

Although the previous section paid attention to Bosnian ethno-national segmentation, contemporary BiH cannot be understood only through identarian post-conflict lenses. A growing strand of literature, often of an ethnographic nature, call for appreciation of the effects of post-socialism and socioeconomic factors on the most troubling problems of BiH society (Arsenijević Reference Arsenijević and Arsenijević2014; Bieber Reference Bieber, Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić2017, 158; Kurtović Reference Kurtović, Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić2017; Čelebičić Reference Čelebičić, Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić2017).

The concurrent processes of post-war reconstruction and post-socialist transformation accompanied by a high level of corruption and clientelism resulted into enrichment of a small segment of political elites and war-profiteers, often linked to criminal networks (Bieber Reference Bieber2006, 34–35; Mujkić Reference Mujkić2008, 25). Poor performance of the BiH economy has resulted in persistently low wages and high unemployment. Political parties are largely held accountable for the country’s difficulties and are believed to work solely in their own interests. Ordinary citizens, therefore, feel alienated from politics and the term “political” has negative connotations for them, implying something immoral, ethnically driven, and subject to party manipulation (Milan Reference Milan2017, 1353). Opinion polls show that the vast majority of people do not feel pride in BiH political institutions (Roick and Huskić Reference Roick and Huskić2020), and the higher the level of government, the less they feel represented by its institutions (Carsimamović Vukotić et al. Reference Vukotić, Naida, Kadić, Hadžić, Puljić, Tihak and Zhang2017).

Frustration over the economic situation and unresolved constitutional issues have led to two major waves of protests in 2013 and 2014, which represented the most significant bottom-up challenge to the ethnically defined post-Dayton order. Other civic mobilizations were either much smaller in their scale or not organized around questions of membership and belonging and the people-nation nexus. That is the reason why the article does not analyze, for instance, the more recent “Justice for David” protests, dominated by topics of criminal justice, state violence, and security. As citizenship-related issues were intensively discussed during the course of 2013 and 2014 protests, they have been seen by scholars as windows of opportunity for societal change and generation of new conceptualizations of citizenship, breaking with the hegemonic ethno-national discourses (Arsenijević Reference Arsenijević and Arsenijević2014; Stipić Reference Stipić2017, 91; Majstorović, Vučkovac, and Pepić Reference Majstorović, Vučkovac and Pepić2015, 663; Kurtović and Hromadžić Reference Kurtović and Hromadžić2017, 263).

The first protests, known as JMBG or Babylution (Bebolucija), took place in June 2013 in reaction to the failure of MPs to pass a new law allowing newborn babies to obtain a citizen identification number (jedinstveni matični broj građana, JMBG) after the original law was suspended by a court. The protests began with a blockade of the Parliament building by a few protesters after a story was shared by an activist on Facebook of a terminally ill baby who was prevented from travelling to Germany for medical treatment as a result of not obtaining a JMBG and a passport (Stipić Reference Stipić2017, 98). In just a few days, some ten thousand protesters gathered in the square in front of the Parliament, and a series of protests continued throughout June, supported by protesters gatherings in many other towns across the country, resulting in a major demonstration that took place on July 1, 2013 (Milan Reference Milan2017, 1352; Mujkić Reference Mujkić2016, 225).

In February 2014, the second wave of protests broke out. Protests were started by factory workers in Tuzla – and later joined by the wider public – demanding the resignation of the cantonal government for its inability to deal with the effects of corrupted privatization. Within a few days, they spread to several other Bosnian towns, though only in the Federation of BiH, to develop into what is now known as the “Social Uprising” or “Bosnian Spring.” Protests eventually turned violent and governmental buildings in several towns, including the building of the Presidency, were set on fire, and thus attracted massive attention from foreign media (Mujkić Reference Mujkić2016, 226). In several towns, citizens’ plenums were established and served as forums for discussions, engagement, and articulation of demands.

Plenums were perceived as experiments of direct democracy for giving “voice to those whose voices have so far been politically marginalized and repressed” (Kurtović and Hromadžić Reference Kurtović and Hromadžić2017, 277). The protesters achieved the resignation of several cantonal governments, but the initial enthusiasm over the awakening of society and expectations of a brighter future appeared to have been overstated, and the plenum’s activity slowly faded out. Looking back, the protests have not achieved any tangible change. According to some, they are rather seen as a wasted opportunity that, in the long-term, brought even greater disillusionment and apathy.Footnote ¹

3.3 Setting the Terminology – “Građanin,” “Državljanin,” and “Narod”

The existing concepts and meanings that citizenship-related terms have been traditionally associated with crucially influence present-day discourses and shape the political and social imaginary. It is thus necessary to take a closer look at these terms, identify the various meanings they bear, and deal with some terminological complexities. The English term “citizenship” has two equivalents in the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language – it can be translated as “državljanstvo” or “građanstvo.” The term “državljanstvo” is utilized in the citizenship legislation of BiH, but outside the administrative and legal sphere its utterances are rare. In contrast, the term “građanstvo” has a much broader meaning and is used in many different contexts.

Besides referring to citizens as members of a state entitled with certain rights or as a specific group of people alongside constituent nations and the others, the term “građanstvo” is used when speaking about people living in a country or area, regardless of their formal citizenship status, or even about people in general. Similarly to “citizen” in English, “građanin” also denotes an inhabitant of a town or an urban area. The term is, furthermore, often linked with more specific aspects of citizenship, such as with public activities of citizens and active engagement in civil society (“Šta Je Građanin?” 2016). The term can be also connected with certain socioeconomic, political, or class connotations. “Građanstvo” often implies “ordinary people,” as opposed to the rich, politicians or other elites. Moreover, in the ethno-national order of BiH, “građanstvo” is claimed by those who do not wish to identify themselves in ethnic terms, and interpreted as a universal term which escapes the ethno-national categorization.

Moreover, any analysis of rhetoric of citizenship must pay attention to the term “narod,” which either overlaps with the terms “nation” and “ethnic group,” or refers to “all ordinary people” and transcends, and challenges, ethnic identification (Hromadžić Reference Hromadžić2015, 132). Hromadžić also shows that although “narod” is usually understood as an inherently apolitical category, it is largely used to criticize the establishment and politics, and thus acquires a political or metapolitical meaning. This observation is significant as it is exactly this usage of the term “narod” where it overlaps with the rhetoric of citizenship.

5.1 Description of the Discursive Arena

The analyzed media capture narratives of protest organizers, civil activists, political analysts, and journalists sympathetic to the demonstrators’ cause, reactions and proclamations of leading politicians, as well as voices of randomly interviewed ordinary citizens and statements by international community representatives. The corpus of texts thus provides a comprehensive and balanced pool of formulations of citizenship-related issues from various perspectives. The review of the two sets of data enables us to see that the debate taking place during each of the observed periods took specific contours influenced by the context of the demonstrations, their means and demands. Before delving into the analysis of specific uses of citizenship-related terms, it is useful to outline key features of the respective discursive arenas.

The JMBG protests initially attracted significant media attention but overall gained less coverage than the February mobilizations. Given the peaceful character of the protests and the human and universally understandable nature of the demonstrators’ demands – that political representatives pass a new law enabling the issuance of personal identification numbers to babies – the analyzed corpus was at first dominated by protesters’ narratives and voices sympathetic to them. The main narrative constructions and framing of protesters’ aims were narrowly focused and remained rather consistent over time. Politicians, against whom the protests were aimed, resorted to short comments on the demonstrators’ cause and aims – but not on their means. A blockade of the Parliament Building that that took place during the first major demonstration on June 6, when MPs and other people present in the building were prevented from leaving it until the evening, sparked debates and provided fertile ground for politization of the events.

During the wave of protests and the establishment of plenums that took place in 2014, both the character of the media debate and the content of dominant narratives and conceptualizations of citizenship differed significantly from the JMBG protests. The corpus was characterized by higher narrative plurality, and a more active exchange of opinions took place among various actors. Violence that accompanied unrest in several towns provoked fierce political reactions and disapproval by some people, who would otherwise support the protesters’ cause, as images of burnt buildings and cars were reminiscent of war years and sparked fears. The protests and plenums were also characterized by a higher level of decentralization and regionalism, as they to a large extent maintained local character and raised specific demands to their cantonal governments or FBiH leadership.

The sections “We – The Citizens” and “The Other – Political Elites” analyze the formulations of “us” versus “them,” articulated by protesters and their sympathizers, and the following section looks at their contestations and conflicting narratives of boundaries of membership proposed by other actors. While these three sections rest mainly on the analysis of narratives put forward by various actors as they were captured by the analyzed media, the last section on citizenship’s ethnic and regional dimensions also brings to light a meta level of medially constructed narratives, showing that media discourse is not a mere reflection of debates in the public space.

5.2 We – The Citizens

Differences regarding the way in which citizenship was dominantly conceptualized by people supporting the protests are apparent between the two observed periods. During the JMBG demonstrations, the protesters’ discourses remained focused on civil and political rights-based citizenship and citizenship as identity, while during the February protests socioeconomic issues assumed a key role (see also Milan Reference Milan2017, 1356). Consequently, the dimension of citizenship encompassing civil and political rights was evoked in almost a quarter of mentions during the JMBG protests, compared to only 8 percent during the Social Uprising (see Table 2). In contrast, the social-rights dimension, which was mentioned in only a handful of cases during JMBG, was implied in more than a quarter of occurrences of citizenship-related terms during the 2014 protests (see Table 2). These differences, combined with a distinct political imagery, gave rise to strikingly different portrayals of citizens.

During the JMBG mobilization, the notion of an active citizen ready to fight for his or her fundamental rights and demand the accountability of the authorities dominated the citizenship debate. When looking at nomination strategies related to the participants of the protests, who represented “we – the citizens,” the frequently mentioned references included “parents,” “babies,” “students,” and “children” “who were playing and drawing” (Rizvanović Reference Rizvanović2013). The square in Sarajevo where demonstrations took place was likened to a “playground,” as babies were described as “the youngest citizens” and fighting for their basic rights epitomized the righteousness of the demonstrators’ cause. Citizens were most often characterized as “dissatisfied” and their demands as “justified.” “Responsibility,” “dignity,” “peacefulness,” “solidarity,” and “care” commonly appeared as the defining traits of citizenship. This understanding was encapsulated in a Oslobođenje piece where the journalist said that “after the end of the demonstrations, despite the rain and cold weather, organisers collected rubbish and completely cleaned Trg BiH to deliver one more positive example of citizens” responsibility” (Rizvanović Reference Rizvanović2013). As other Oslobodjenje journalists noted, “the protests show that citizens finally woke up, reclaimed responsibility and took things in their own hands” (Karić, Gudelj and Katana Reference Karić, Gudelj and Katana2013). According to widely shared logic, by fighting for their rights and speaking out, BiH citizens finally became fully fledged citizens. The notion of citizenship thus presupposed an active agency and exercise of rights. The salience of this narrative is shown by the fact that the meaning of “a citizen” as “an active member of civil society” who fights and stands for own rights was evoked in 40 percent of mentions of the term (see Table 1).

During the February 2014 protests, a new set of more revolutionary political and social imagery emerged that was inspired by radical leftist ideologies or the discursive tradition of socialist Yugoslavia. Workers replaced parents and babies as initiators of the protests – their relationship to citizens, however, remained fuzzy. In most common formulations, “workers and citizens” appeared side by side as a specific category, thanks in part to the legacy of the Yugoslav socialist discourse. Other groups designated as citizens included “students,” “pensioners,” “veterans,” or “the unemployed.” Portrayal of citizens as “ordinary people” became widespread, invoking the particular meaning of the term that entailed a social class dimension as shown for example in the following quote from Dnevni List: “the country is divided between two groups of inhabitants. One comprises rich political elites and tycoons who are not even aware of all the assets they possess, and the other one includes millions of poor citizens, at whose expense the first group got rich” (Osmović Reference Osmović2014b). Similar references to citizens, often using the term “narod,” appeared in 25 percent of mentions, and were thus twice as common in comparison to JMBG (see Table 1).

The emphasis on the citizens’ struggle for rights persisted and the active agency meaning of citizenship was evoked in 30 percent of analyzed sequences in 2014. However, the content of rights changed and was narrowed to social and working rights and justice. Citizens were described for example as “seeking “social justice, better life, their working rights and change of government” (Mustafić Reference Mustafić2014) or “better material conditions for living, but also confronting those responsible for exploiting hungry people” (Hasić Reference Hasić2014). As a protest and plenum participant summed it up, “among the basic problems are those of economic nature, very few working places, violation of workers’ rights, very bad social security, and lack of health insurance for some citizens” (Bradvica Reference Bradvica2014). While “what it means to be a citizen” was explicitly formulated during JMBG, and citizenship was endowed with certain positive values, during the February protests, all predications focused on citizens’ state of mind and the situation that this group of people found themselves in, such as being “thirsty,” “hungry,” “furious,” or “having nothing to lose.” Interestingly, “citizens as ordinary people” were thus almost never endowed with agency and remained rather passive subjects. Most of these predications also pointed to the significance of social and class aspects.

Citizens were still characterized as dissatisfied, but more expressive adjectives were added as well, such as “impoverished,” “disempowered,” “robbed,” “deceived,” “humiliated,” “furious,” or “hungry.” An image of “a hungry citizen” became particularly widespread. “Hunger” gradually begun fulfilling the role of a substitute for a wide range of problems stemming from dire socioeconomic conditions, inefficient government, or corruption. Exclamations such as “We are hungry!” or “Who sows hunger, reaps horror!” (Mustafić Reference Mustafić2014) then came to be used as a general justification of reasons for protests and righteousness of demands. Hunger and poverty were additionally evoked as sources of cohesion and citizens’ unity during the Social Uprising, as manifested for example in the slogans: “Hungry stomach reacts the same, it has no ethnicity” or “Hunger does not choose, it affects everyone” (Grabovac et al. Reference Grabovac, Dl and Brkić-Čekić2014). When contrasted with humanity and compassion for rights of the “youngest citizens,” which were often depicted as sources of solidarity during the Babylution, we see that the definition of the central cohesive force uniting citizens significantly differed.

5.3 The Other – Political Elites

In contrast to fluid and shifting notions of what citizenship was, there seemed to be a much broader consensus on what it was not among demonstrators and their sympathizers. As was already pointedly highlighted in scholarly literature (Stipić Reference Stipić2017; Mujkić Reference Mujkić2016; Arsenijević Reference Arsenijević and Arsenijević2014; Kurtović and Hromadžić Reference Kurtović and Hromadžić2017), protesters during both mobilizations formulated the main boundary separating “us” from “them” as a division between “the citizens” and “political elites.”

During the JMBG protests, nominations of “the others” included “politicians,” “political elites,” “government,” “authorities,” or “political representatives.” One of the most frequently voiced critiques of their conduct was that they were “not doing their job,” “the job for which they were elected by citizens and for which they receive decent wages” (Osmović Reference Osmović2013). An activist from Mostar called on the governing elites to “realise they were not granted their offices by God and have to be accountable for their doings” (Šimović Reference Šimović2013). The narrative of politicians’ inactivity often appealed to their conscience, as nicely captured in a quote by an NGO representative: “It is a shame that politicians do not do their job and that all citizens of this country pay the price of their idleness” (Karić, Gudelj, and Katana Reference Karić, Gudelj and Katana2013). Politicians were frequently predicated as “unprofessional,” “incompetent,” “disinterested,” “not working” and “irresponsible.” Given the emphasis on citizens” responsibility, this virtue and its absence emerged as one of the crucial elements for drawing a boundary between “the citizens” and “the others.”

During the Social Uprising, the mentioned names given to the out-group were expanded by “gangsters,” “tycoons,” or “criminals” to also include economic elites. Ruling elites were said to be “living in richness for as long as 20 years while pushing their citizens to the brink of existence” (Čustović Reference Čustović2014) or accused of “putting the state and its future on fire” (Osmović Reference Osmović2014a) and “making it poor and hopeless” (Mustafić Reference Mustafić2014). Besides irresponsibility and incompetence, the elites were described as “criminal,” “corrupted,” “lying,” or “looting” and “impoverishing” the country’s assets and people. As a result of statements such as “politicians, amongst whom there are no innocent” (Osmović Reference Osmović2014a) and the more revolutionary nature of the February protests, the dividing line was more radical, while appearing somewhat softer and more porous during the Babylution.

This definition of “we” versus “them” made even so inherently political agendas as those performed by protesters and plenums to strictly distance themselves from any partisan and official politics. People were invited to participate in demonstrations and plenums only as individuals, not representing any party or association, and principles of leaderlessness and horizontality were declared by protest and plenum organizers. This approach was aptly captured in a commentary made by a civil society activist and Tuzla plenum participant: “Behind the Plenum are ordinary people [“narod”], no leader. People from various political structures try to infiltrate us but […] the Plenum, we all together, won’t let it happen” (B. D. 2014). Another Tuzla plenum member saw the happenings as the “beginning of a new democratic BiH” and plenums as an “authentic way of national organization, where everyone can come, everyone has a right to vote and all are equal” (B. D. 2014).

A look at the global context and grassroot social mobilizations, such as the Spanish Indignados Movement or the worldwide Occupy movement (both 2011 and 2012), however, shows that these principles were far from unique for BiH. The understanding of the public sphere as a forum where ordinary people without official power rely on open deliberation, and where no one speaks for groups or collectivities, but always as an individual, was in fact a defining feature of these earlier movements as well (Rovisco Reference Rovisco2016, 14–15). The JMBG manifesto bears striking resemblance to the Indignados movement manifesto, and the organizational principles of plenums also show inspiration by principles articulated by this and other global movements. So, while the negative connotation of anything political played a crucial role in drawing the boundary of inclusion and exclusion as “citizens” versus “political elites,” choices of particular narrative constructions and organizational principles were influenced and inspired by the narratives, practices, and ideology of contemporary global social movements.

On the discursive level, these particular narratives and principles served to reinforce the alienation of “citizens” from politics. The evocation of “an unbridgeable gap between them [ethno-national oligarchies] and their citizens” (Mujkić Reference Mujkić2016, 226) has had specific consequences for the citizenship debate. The fact that “the evil other” was embodied by the official representatives of the state or its elites points to the deep crisis of trust in the state and its institutions, which crucially contributes to the contested internal legitimacy of BiH statehood. Movements that claim to be profoundly democratic and to represent all citizens regardless of their ethnicity, status, or occupation then also themselves effectively construct new sharp frontiers running inside the Bosnian polity. While the discursive separation of the governed and the government is common at anti-government protests, articulations of “we” versus “them” during BiH protests draw firm and unbreachable boundaries. People categorized and labelled as members of the ruling class were stripped off their citizenship and peoplehood and turned into aliens. The dominant narrative construction of “us” versus “them” articulated by protesters therefore did not propose any all-encompassing notion of citizenship on which a viable alternative to the post-Dayton order could have been based.

5.4 Contested Boundaries of Inclusion and Exclusion – Competing Appropriation Claims and Narrative Reframing

Although the protesters’ narratives analyzed in the previous chapters have been in the focus of most analyses, they were not universally shared but were contested by competing visions proposed by various actors. The category of “citizens,” no matter whom it was to represent, largely emerged in the corpus as a subject of competing claims for appropriation by multiple actors who asserted to speak in its name and defend its interests.

Contradictory views on the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion were most vocally proposed by the governing political elites, who either openly confronted the protesters’ narratives or questioned and redrew the boundaries of membership. The blockade of the Parliament Building during the JMBG protests and the outbursts of violence during the uprising were interpreted by some leading politicians, most notably the Republika Srpska leadership or Bosnian Croats representatives, as “attacks against the state.” In 2014, the framing of the events as “a coup” was used by almost all prominent political figures across the party spectrum and ethno-national boundaries. However, as a Nezavisne Novine journalist noted: “The problem lies in ‘corrupted politicians’ but this apparently does not concern everyone, only mid-level government officials” (Kuljiš Reference Kuljiš2014). Furthermore, as both series of demonstrations took place mostly in predominantly Bosniak-inhabited areas, the involvement of Bosniak politicians was often asserted. Protests allegedly had an anti-Serb and anti-Croat focus, and attempted to centralize the country by dissolution of Republika Srpska or the cantons. While RS political representatives “concluded that unrests in FBiH are politically instrumentalized with the ultimate aim of spreading to RS and destabilizing it” (Katana Reference Katana2014), a university professor from Mostar warned that “claims by Dragan Čović that this is a Bosniak plan for the abolition of cantons hit their mark in Northern Herzegovina” (Šišić Reference Šišić2014).

By framing the events as threatening the security of the country, politicians presented themselves as protectors of their citizens – whom this category encompassed remained vague but usually implied their own voters and constituent peoples – and turned the protesters into “the other.” Demonstrators were described as “criminals,” “hooligans” or “vandals,” and protests as “orchestrated,” “politically motivated,” and “subject to manipulation.” These narratives served to defy the legitimacy, authenticity and proclaimed apolitical and anational character of the protests.

Other political figures, either against whom the protests were not primarily directed or from smaller multinational parties, chose a strategy of distancing themselves from “the political elites” and supported the protesters’ cause, claiming to be a part of “we – the citizens.” Naša stranka, a multi-ethnic anti-nationalist party, for example stated that protests were “justified supranational and supra-ethnic social unrest of citizens who have been impoverished, disenfranchised and humiliated by the authorities for twenty years” and encouraged BiH citizens “to not believe messages shared by some media, political parties and leaders that give the protests ethnic meaning” (Naša stranka 2014). On some occasions, the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion were questioned more subtly by those who happened to be a part of the out-group. For example, during the JMBG protests, several female MPs pointed out that “by showing up to stand for the rights of children the demonstrators violated the rights of many mothers in the building and of their children who were waiting for them at home or at their granny’s or aunt’s” and so while “seeking to defend their own rights, they threatened the rights of their fellow citizens” (Degirmendžić Reference Degirmendžić2013).

These conflicting narratives were often repeatedly reframed and recontextualized by the involved actors, dynamically influencing each other’s constructions of “us” and “them” (see also Touquet Reference Touquet2015 for these “framing battles”). The captivity theme was recontextualized by assertions that it was politicians who “had kept all citizens in captivity, treating them as servants and slaves and holding them in a “camp of poverty, dark present and even darker future” (Osmović Reference Osmović2013). Accusations of hooliganism were disputed by arguments that protesters were university-educated people who could not find a job, and violence was justified as a last resort for people struggling to protect their bare existence. Several commentators also pointed out that the violence of protesters paled in comparison with the country’s destruction caused by the elites. Such reframing is illustrated by an Oslobodjenje journalist who asserted that “violence of the authorities lasts twenty years while violence of citizens a couple of days. It is clear that the country is threatened not by its citizens but by the authorities who have ruined it for so many years and who have led citizens to a point when they have no other choice than destroy” (Kahrović-Posavljak Reference Kahrović-Posavljak2014).

Boundaries of inclusion and exclusion were then also questioned by some of those who were supposed to be part of “we – the citizens.” The corpus contains expressions of distance from the protests, such as “organizers of the protests who claim about themselves to be citizens of BiH” (Hasić Reference Hasić2013). The detachment was either based on the alleged ethno-national dimension of the protests – depicted as a Bosniaks plot – or on the portrayal of demonstrators as subjects of political manipulations, thus questioning the righteousness of their aims and means. Articulations of distance appeared most often in Nezavisne Novine and other RS-based media but gradually also became more widespread in other parts of the country in 2014, either as a consequence of violence or in relation to the plenums’ activities. Violence that occurred in the streets raised fears, especially in Mostar, as voiced by several citizens interviewed by Dnevni List including a man who said: “I was afraid that 1992 would repeat. Dissatisfaction has to be expressed at peaceful gatherings and not by burning down houses that people built and will have to rebuild” (Šimović Reference Šimović2014).

The plenums’ legitimacy to speak in the name of the citizens was increasingly challenged, pointing for example to the fact that the plenums’ participants were not elected, and represented only a handful of people (Raspudić Reference Raspudić2014). In addition, the hegemonizing claim to represent the will of the people were somehow complicated by the overlap of two different meanings of the term “citizen,” referring both to a town inhabitant and a citizen of a country. Given that the plenums were even named “Plenums of citizens of a particular city,” it often remained unclear to whom exactly the appeals to “citizens” referred, thus increasing tensions between the simultaneous claims of universality and the acknowledged regionalism of the plenums.

5.5 Who and Where? Ethno-national and Regional Dimensions

The last section looks at the ways in which the complex BiH citizenship regime combining territorial autonomy and consociation principles was translated onto the discursive level during the civil awakenings. In the scholarly literature, protests have been understood as moments of rupture with the hegemonic ethno-national order, and their anti-nationalist character has been considered their key feature (Arsenijevic Reference Arsenijevic2014; Mujkić Reference Mujkić2016; Stipić Reference Stipić2017; Murtagh Reference Murtagh2016; Milan Reference Milan2017). Mujkić (Reference Mujkić2016) for example suggests that through protests and plenums, citizens radically broke away from the post-Dayton “ethnocracy,” and called forth “the Demos as opposed to the dominant Ethnos” (222; 231). Stipić (Reference Stipić2017) argues that they effectively “managed to convert ethno-national subjects into fully-fledged citizens” (102; 108).

In the corpus of media texts, however, the positioning of citizenship as anational and opposed to the ethno-national divisions formulated by protest organizers has not stood out so prominently. It appeared more often in June 2013 than in February 2014, but on average reached only 11 percent mentions, while the social or right-based dimensions were evoked in a quarter of them. The opposite side of the relation between citizenship and ethno-nationalism, the affirmation of the ethnic dimension of citizenship – meaning particular constituent people when referring to citizens – was not frequent in the corpus either. It was evoked rarely during the JMBG, and during the uprising, it emerged with the passage of time and the politicization of the events. It was implicated in 10 ten percent of mentions in analyzed periods in 2014. Besides the political elites, the ethno-national understanding of citizenship was articulated by those who distanced themselves from the protest movements and voiced disagreements over protesters’ claims to embody “all the citizens.”

In sum, in the analyzed media coverage, the ethnic dimension of citizenship – either its assertion or rejection – has been shown to be a less pronounced aspect than citizenship as rights or its social dimension, and gained less attention than earlier scholarly works suggested. This finding is interesting, as it is to be attributed to the particular source of data that this analysis relies on. When looking at slogans, manifestos, and other textual and audio-visual materials from the mobilizations, their claims of an anational character indeed stand out, but this dimension received disproportionately less attention in media coverage. The reasons for this remain unclear, and the analysis cannot establish whether it was a result of a deliberate or unintended choice by the journalists. Interestingly, the anational notion of citizenship on one hand and fears of ethnicization of the protests on the other were the most frequent in Mostar-based Dnevni List, where inter-ethnic tensions have been lately very tangible and politically relevant. The “ordinary people” meaning of citizenship was also used significantly more often in Dnevni List, and often implied the anational character, in contrast to the social dimension highlighted elsewhere. This might suggest that ethic hegemony, which is the post-war reality of most places including Sarajevo and Banja Luka, makes ethno-national issues less relevant at the local level, and journalists do not feel the need to accentuate them.

This observation is also related to the importance of entity-level citizenship in Republika Srpska and cantonal-level administration in the Federation of BiH for the citizenship debate. Media in the RS reported little about the mobilizations and portrayed them as only concerning the people in the FBiH. In an interview with Nezavisne Novine, for example, Prime Minister of RS Željka Cvijanović said she “supported the right of each RS citizen to express their own […] thoughts because RS is a mature democratic society, but did not support any activities that would help spread the crisis from a totally chaotic environment such as FBiH to an organized one such as RS” (H. A. 2014). Entity-level citizenship was thus constantly accentuated in RS-based Nezavisne Novine, and RS representatives almost exclusively referred to “citizens of RS,” who are in the nationalizing entity largely understood as consisting of Serbs only. The ethnic and entity dimensions of citizenship overlap in their discourse, and are consequently sources of confusion. Furthermore, the “an inhabitant of a town” meaning of “a citizen” was used frequently in citizenship debates in both entities, and during the February protests, cantonal-level administration was often referred to in FBiH media. If we look at a unit of a polity that citizens are suggested to be members of, BiH was implicated in a quarter of mentions during the Babylution, while only in one tenth during the February protests (see Table 2). The decentralization of the state administration, combined with the meanings of “citizens” as town inhabitants, civilians, demonstrators or people in general that were often used, crucially shapes the citizenship debates and blurs the concept of citizenship as a link between citizens and the state.