Serbia in Flux: From a Country of Emigration to a Country of Immigration

Serbia has long been a country of emigration, and more recently has become a refugee buffer zone for European Union countries. Labor emigration, mostly to EU countries, such as Germany, continues pronouncedly. At the same time, Serbia is both coping with the refugees from Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo of the 1990s, and with the more recent arrivals of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Coping with unprecedented global displacement, the EU and some of its member states (e.g., Hungary and Croatia, in this context) responded since 2015 by closing their borders and by endorsing stringent policies designed to limit arrivals and to outsource responsibility to regions and countries outside of the EU. Serbia, often seen as a country of emigration, finds itself as a node in the network of immigration, transnational migratory movements, and supranational migration regulation. The arrival of thousands of new asylum seekers, refugees, and others and their protracted presence (partly in reception centers) set new social, political, cultural, and bureaucratic challenges for this nation-state. This paper focuses on the social and cultural challenges facing contemporary Serbia, as its institutions pursue EU membership, seem to foster a welcoming environment for newcomers, and face austere economic constraints. This work is based on three weeks of ethnographic fieldwork in Belgrade, including interviews with local NGO actors. Serbia, like other southeastern European countries, faces the difficult task of improving its migration policies, as well as designing and implementing effective measures concerning integration of newly arrived refugees.