Kosovo: The Politics of Identity and Space

Throughout the 1990s, pictures of Albanian youngsters studying in makeshift classrooms became a symbol of Serbian state repression in Kosovo. The establishment of so-called parallel education in private houses and businesses in Kosovo became part of Albanian resistance to Serbian rule and an important gesture towards the existence of the self-declared Albanian shadow state in Kosovo. This book explores the construction of the nation identity of Kosovo Albanians after Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power and the abolition of Kosovo's autonomy through the lends of the province's educational system. The text is woven around the story of ethnic segregation in Kosovo's education system and its impact on the emergence of exclusive notions of nation and homeland among the Albanian and Serbian youth in segregated schools in the province during the 1990s. While focusing on the issue of education in post-autonomy Kosovo, this monograph critically explores the wider contest of the Albanian resistance, includingthe emergence of the parallel state as an integral component of non-violent resistance. Ultimately, this book provides an insight not only into events that led to the bloodshed in Kosovo in the late 1990s, but also show that the legacy of segregation is one of the most major challenges the international community faces in its efforts to establish an integrated multiethnic society in the province. Of interest to academics and students of Albanian culture and Balkan history, this book is an important advance in research on one of the most tragic European conflicts of recent times.

Denisa Kostovicova is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance. London School of Economics and Political Science.