Precarity in Post-Conflict Yugoslavia: What About the Workers?

Framed by historical materialism, this study of labour in post-conflict settings contends that the Balkan peace has been disfigured by a political economy of precarity. Former Yugoslav territories experienced chronic unemployment and precarity, moulded by distinctive cultures and identities, though labour had already been pummelled by the impacts of global integration before violent conflict. Peace meant reordering of pre-war and wartime political economies, which failed to stimulate officially audited employment in order to privilege private capital accumulation. Whilst workers have exerted agency to cope with and resist this, the exercise of labour rights shrank markedly.