Forced Evictions and Resistance from Below

Abstract

The phenomenon of forced evictions and the organized resistance of citizens from below can be found throughout the world. In this piece we intend to briefly present this phenomenon in Serbia, and in the Eastern European context, which shares certain characteristics with Serbia due to some common elements of socialist heritage in these countries. The phenomenon of forced evictions appeared in this region with the so-called process of democratic transition, and is intensified by the strengthening of the global economic crisis. At the legal level, it is the result of the process of ownership transformation, the emergence of the heirs to the ruling class from the period prior to real-socialism, and the general impoverishment of the population, which is unable to sustain the imposed neoliberal pace of life on the periphery of the capitalist system. The state in these countries first stopped taking care of the housing issue for the population, and then began battling those who tried to solve it themselves. But both in the countries of the former eastern bloc and in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the way in which this happens varies.