Maple Razsa
Colby College
Research Country: Slovenia
June 2012
SCHOLAR RESEARCH BRIEF:
MIGRANT ACTIVISTS AS INSURGENT CITIZENS: DIVERSITY AND
DIRECT DEMOCRACY WITHIN OCCUPY SLOVENIA
My research is an ethnographic examination of the organizational and
decision-making practices developed around what came to be known as 15o
or Occupy Slovenia. I conclude that earlier activist efforts by migrants and their
allies to confront dominant xenophobic policies, especially by encouraging
migrants to speak and act for themselves, have contributed to the
development of a distinctive and minoritarian form of direct democracy that
has successfully facilitated broad participation. These practices serve as an
implicit critique of how majoritarian democracy has functioned in postsocialist
Europe and beyond. They also offer one model of how the exclusionary
ethnonationalist politics that have defined the past two decades in the former
Yugoslavia might be overcome.
The following opinions, recommendations, and conclusions of the author are his/her own
and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IREX or the US Department of State.
WWW .IREX.ORG
RESEARCH IN CONTEXT
Only once I began to read the internal critiques
emerging from other Occupy movements—from
New York City, Oakland, California and my own
hometown of Portland, Maine—did I realize that the
ethnic diversity of the movement in Ljubljana,
Slovenia was one of its most remarkable
characteristics. At the daily assemblies in Ljubljana
it was not unusual to find a variety of migrant
laborers and other ethnically non-Slovenes voicing
their concerns and organizing politically. I had come
to Ljubljana to conduct research on migrant rights
campaigns involving precisely these constituencies
but I was nonetheless, like many of them, surprised
by the speed, scale and dynamism of the protests
that gathered around the encampment in front of the
Ljubljana Stock Exchange from October 2011
onward. While it remained important to understand
earlier initiatives organized by migrants and local
allies since 2000—and I carried out extensive
archival research and background interviews with
leading activists—my research shifted its focus
towards the contemporary activism of migrants
within the Occupy movement. What, I asked, made
the movement more inclusive in relatively
homogenous Slovenia, a country that the
Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik recently
praised for its resistance to multiculturalism? Might
the inclusive practices of the movement in Slovenia
point towards a path beyond the intolerant and
ethnically exclusive politics that have defined the
former Yugoslavia for the previous two decades?
Indeed, following Yugoslavia’s collapse, the
formation of an independent and ethnically defined
state, and accession to the European Union,
citizenship and migration have become the most
politically charged issues in contemporary Slovenia.
In just the past decade public conflicts have erupted
around the series of migrant populations that
subsequently became involved in Occupy: preindependence immigrants from elsewhere in the
former Yugoslavia protesting their removal from the
register of permanent residents; displaced Bosnians
seeking official status as refugees; asylum seekers
pushing for greater freedom of movement pending
hearings; undocumented migrants denouncing their
The former bicycle factory Rog is now a hub
of activism in Ljubljana
detention conditions; and guest workers
objecting to labor abuses. Whereas in popular
and scholarly representations alike migrants are
often seen as either a threat to receiving
countries (Huntington 2004; Hirsi Ali 2006; Ye'or
2005) or as helpless victims of human rights
abuses (Cunningham 1995; Giordano 2008), my
research indicates that a different approach is
needed. Considered in light of the theory of
insurgent citizenship, first developed to describe
the informal practices of residents in Brazilian
favelas who “created new spheres of
participation and understandings or rights”
(Holston 2008:303), it is increasingly clear that
migrants have found creative ways to act
politically even when they have none of the legal
rights afforded to citizens.
My research in Slovenia explores the activist
and migrant practices developed to cultivate this
insurgent citizenship. I conclude that earlier
organizing efforts to challenge anti-minority
politics and encourage migrants to speak and
act for themselves, have come to define the
organizational practices developed around the
occupy
encampment—especially
the
minoritarian decision making that activists
termed the “democracy of direct action.” These
practices serve as an implicit critique of how
majoritarian democracy has functioned in
postsocialist Europe and beyond.
1
RESEARCH PROCESS AND RESULTS
My interest in migration issues emerged from my
doctoral research on NGO and activist responses to
globalization in the former Yugoslavia. My primary
focus in that project (Razsa 2008; Razsa & Velez
2010) was on transnational organizing and identities
as a critical response to both globalization and the
dominant nationalist politics of the region.
Throughout this earlier fieldwork I was struck by the
unexpected prominence of migrants in the political
imagination of activists in Europe generally and in
Slovenia specifically. Initially, I understood the
activist preoccupation with migration as a response
to the rise of right-wing anti-migrant politics across
Europe. It became increasingly clear, however, that
this is more than a defensive reaction to growing
xenophobia—migrant activity is understood quite
literally to be a “social movement” in its own right. In
the early 2000s activism supporting migration,
including a series of “Noborder Camps” near
Slovenia’s international border and anti-racist
demonstrations in Ljubljana, was largely symbolic
and did not yet involve organizing with migrants
themselves. Soon, however, activists who had
previously focused primarily on questions of
globalization, neoliberalism and privatization were
working closely with a series of migrant
constituencies.
“Migrant Activists as Insurgent Citizens,” my new
research project begun this year with IREX support,
included extended interviews with twelve key
activists involved in these migrant rights initiatives
during the 2000s as well as extensive archival
research. During interviews I focused on how
activists understood their own politicization, their
roles in seeking social change, as well as their
explanations for the turn towards minoritarian
politics, not only in the sense of ethnic minorities but
in terms of encouraging minority political positions
rather than relying on majoritarian voting.
While there is no space here to review the full
history of migrant activism in Slovenia, I would
highlight my initial conclusion that the practice of the
democracy of direct action has developed out of
activists’ experience and knowledge, produced
through the campaigns of the 2000s. Indeed,
according to movement participants, it was
experiences of majoritarian direct democracy in the
form of referendums against minority rights, and
the difficulties activists encountered in opening
spaces for the agency (protagonizem) of
migrants in a context in which citizenship and
the state were increasingly defined in
ethnonationalist terms, that led to the adoption
of a minoritarian decision-making model within
Occupy Slovenia. This decision-making process
ensured a space, they claimed, for action by
those who belonged to marginalized minorities
or held minority political positions and thereby
also facilitated the dynamic expansion of the
movement
by
encouraging
participation,
innovation, and initiative.
In addition to formal interviews, I also carried out
extensive ethnographic research with activist
initiatives, especially the loose knit association
of migrants and Slovene allies gathered around
the Social Center Rog (SCR), a social and
political association housed in a former bicycle
factory. In these previously abandoned facilities
activists built meeting spaces, a kitchen, and a
multimedia center. Migrants, whether asylum
seekers, guest-workers, undocumented or
Erased, along with Slovene allies—a number of
whom were activist researchers with one foot in
the academy—gather regularly at SCR’s social
and cultural events. My participant observation
at SCR was a centerpiece of “Insurgent
Citizens.”
While SCR activists were often marginalized
during earlier campaigns, especially when
working with the Erased—who were widely
vilified in public discourse and the media—by
Striking workers gather in front of the port
2
the time my research began in July 2011, they had
established a strong public profile. In August 2011,
early in my fieldwork, I had the opportunity to see
the fruits of this growing legitimacy when labor
unrest at Slovenia’s container port, Luka Koper,
grew into a joint strike by directly employed crane
operators, primarily Slovene citizens, and
subcontracted dockworkers, mostly Bosnian guest
workers. The strike organizers reached out to SCR
for advice on media relations, organization and
pressure on labor unions and politicians to support
the campaign. With SCR’s help the striking workers
were able to achieve strong visibility, public support,
and, after eight days of work stoppage, significant
contract concessions.
In September SCR activists were invited to join “hub
meetings” with activists from around the
Mediterranean, first in Tunis and then in Barcelona.
These gatherings, initiated by participants in the
Arab Spring in Tunisia and Puerta del Sol
movement in Spain, reached a decision, in part
inspired by the growing Occupy Wall Street
encampment in New York City, to plan a global day
of action against austerity for October 15. An
alliance of local social and political initiatives,
including centrally SCR, settled on a set of guiding
principles and organized protests in Ljubljana. The
principles they selected embodied the values of the
democracy of direct action (DDA): decentralization,
eschewal of representation and the valorization of
minority positions rather than the rule of the
majority.
A few words more about DDA will help to clarify
what is distinctive about this form of direct
democracy, how it developed out of earlier activist
experiences and why many activists saw it as key to
the further minority and migrant participation. The
specific decision-making practices that constitute
the democracy of direct action and are seen in its
daily assemblies have a number of political
implications. To clarify these practices, it is helpful
to first contrast them with those of the much better
known Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampment in
Zuccotti Park. At first glance, the democracy of
direct action, as embodied in the assembly, appears
quite similar to those direct democratic practices
adopted by OWS, comprising the constituent
elements of general assemblies and working
groups—or assemblies and workshops, as they
have come to be known in Ljubljana. In fact, the
relationship between workshops and the
assembly is reversed, which shifts significantly
how decisions are made. In short, whereas at
OWS all decisions need to be approved by
modified consensus at the general assembly—
that is, at least 90 percent approval after all
objections have been heard and addressed by
facilitators (#OccupyWallStreet New York City
General Assembly 2011)—the assembly in
Ljubljana was not Occupy Slovenia’s primary
decision-making unit. Workshops, although they
operated under the umbrella of Occupy Slovenia
and reported back to the assembly, had
autonomy to organize themselves in any
manner they saw fit, implementing the internal
forms of decision-making they thought most
appropriate. Working groups at OWS, by
contrast, were empowered only to develop
proposals, which had to be approved through
modified consensus at the general assembly.
Participants in the general assembly sometimes
numbered in the thousands, and proceedings
lasted for many hours (Gessen et al. 2011),
whereas assemblies in Ljubljana typically lasted
from 30 to 45 minutes. My point here is not
primarily related to efficiency, though it is not
irrelevant, for as Barbara quipped in late
November, “It’s too cold for consensus.” More
importantly, when I asked activists about their
impressions of the democracy-of-direct-action
model, two themes came up repeatedly: that it
formed empowered minorities and that it
unleashed energies that were otherwise
dormant or even actively blocked in their daily
lives.
A General Assembly at the stock exchange
3
RESEARCH
AND buoyant
RESULTS
The mood ofPROCESS
activists was
in these early
days of Occupy Slovenia, or 15o as it was more
commonly know locally. They suddenly found
Body
radical activism to be much more popular. They
understood this newfound public support in relation
to political disorientation and even disillusionment in
Slovenia. The goals that oriented public life for two
decades—economic
liberalization,
European
integration, and democratic consolidation—had lost
their self-evidence in the face of the political and
economic crisis.
The media was especially receptive to the swirl of
direct actions associated with Occupy Slovenia. On
many occasions, those actions generated dozens of
news articles, sometimes occupying several of the
first slots on the evening news, even in the midst of
the election campaigns for imminent parliamentary
elections. Journalists—and many others, one
activist suggested—were well disposed to Occupy
Slovenia because they could increasingly see that
their own working and living conditions were
characterized by the social and economic precarity
the protests denounced. Activists who had struggled
with the political consequences of nationalism for
more than a decade, and who were worried that a
populist turn might again marginalize non-Slovene
participants, responded to their newfound popularity
with an insistence on a transnational rather than
national framing: “On the way,” as a participant
described one major protest, “slogans from abroad
are heard: Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, New York,
Tunis, and Argentina are echoing in our chants.
Que non nos representan! Degagez! This is what
democracy looks like! Que se vayan todos! And the
Slovenian refrains. No one represents us! Money to
people, not banks! We will not pay for your crisis!”
(Večer 2011). By stressing “No one represents us,”
“Real democracy now,” and “Que se vayan todos”
[They all must go], as well as bemoaning the
consequences of the “monopoly of ‘democratic
parties’ over political life,” activists positioned
Occupy Slovenia as a response to a crisis of
representative democracy in Slovenia.
To be clear, this was a period of political
effervescence that activists proved incapable,
ultimately, of sustaining. After more than six months
of occupying Stock Market square, 15o opted to
close the encampment, primarily over concerns, like
those that plagued Occupy elsewhere, that the
difficulties of homeless and especially addicted
CONTENT
campers was overwhelming activists and
coming to drain all their energies. Activists had
also faced declining numbers at general
Body
assemblies, fewer attendees at direct actions
and protests and diminished media attention as
the novelty of the movement waned. That said
the movement in Slovenia organized in
distinctive and inclusive ways, developing
innovative new directly democratic forms that
were informed by previous migrants campaigns
even as they fostered the participation of
previously marginalized constituencies.
Picture, Graph, Quote
Several campuses were also "occupied”
4
CONTINUING RESEARCH
RELEVANCE TO POLICY COMMUNITY
Theorists, including Slavoj Žižek (2011), Judith
Butler (2011), and Michael Hardt and Toni Negri
(2011), have framed the protest movements of 2011
as a response to a fundamental crisis of
representative
politics.
The
response—from
Northern Africa, through Southern Europe to North
America—has, in many cases, centered on a
radicalization of democracy, especially an embrace
of direct democracy. Our knowledge of these
directly democratic experiments remains, however,
inchoate. Little description and analysis is available
on the specific forms of directly democratic practice
enacted in settings as distinct as the Casbah in
Tunis, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Syntagma Square in
Athens, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Tel Aviv’s tent
city, the Wisconsin statehouse as well as the
hundreds of encampments associated with the
Occupy Movement.
“Insurgent Citizens” has far-reaching policy
implications for Slovenia, the former Yugoslavia,
and beyond. My research addresses migration
one of the most divisive “domestic” issues in
Slovenia, an issue that many perceive as
contributing significantly to a growing Slovene
intolerance towards foreigners and a turn
towards nationalist extremism. What is more,
given Bosnia’s reliance on remittances from
guest workers in Slovenia, migration has
implications for regional relations as well.
Furthermore, migration and the integration of
minority communities are among of the most
pressing issues at the European level. My
research therefore contributes to academic and
policy understandings of migrant rights and to
the recognition of new forms of political
participation and social inclusion. Finally my
research helps us to understand the growing
discontent with the politics of austerity across
the US and Europe and the range of directly
democratic movements that have arisen in
response to this crisis.
The need for ethnographic accounts of direct
democracy is especially urgent because many
movements have refused official representatives of
their practices and because democracy has been
extended beyond formal institutions into new
spheres of life. Further ethnographic and
comparative research is needed on direct
democracy. As initial steps in this direction I have
co-edited a forthcoming “Hot Spot” for Cultural
Anthropology on the Occupy movement, bringing
together twenty scholars who are writing on the
protest movements of 2011, and organized an
invited panel for the 2012 American Anthropological
Association Meetings in San Francisco titled “The
2011 Global Uprisings and the Anthropology of
Direct Democracy.” I will continue to study activist
movements in Slovenia in dialogue with these
broader trends.
5
REFERENCES
Butler, Judith
2011 “Bodies in Public.” in Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America. Keith Gessen,
Carla Blumenkranz, Mark Greif, Sarah Leonard, Sarah Resnick, Nikil
Saval, Astra Taylor, and Eli Schmitt, eds. Pp. 192–195. London:
Verso.
Cunningham, Hilary
1995 God and Caesar at the Rio Grande: Sanctuary and the Politics of Religion. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Gessen, Keith, Carla Blumenkranz, Mark Greif, Sarah Leonard, Sarah Resnick, Nikil
Saval, Astra Taylor, and Eli Schmitt, eds.
2011 Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America. London: Verso.
Giordano, Cristiana
2008 “Practices of Translation and the Making of Migrant Subjectivities in
Contemporary Italy.” American Ethnologist 35(4)588.
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri
2011 “The Fight for ‘Real Democracy’ at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street.”
Foreign Affairs, October 11.
Hirsi Ali, Ayaan
2006 “Europe's Immigration Quagmire.” Los Angeles Times. July 16, Pp. 12.
Holston, James
2008 Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P.
2004 Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York:
Simon and Schuster.
Razsa, Maple
2008 “Mutual Aid, Anti-Authoritarianism, and Dumpster Diving: Anarchist Activism
in Croatia since 2000.” in Croatia since Independence: War, Politics, Society, Foreign
Relations. Sabrina P. Ramet, Konrad Clewing and Renéo Lukic, eds. Pp. 321. München:
Oldenbourg Verlag.
Razsa, Maple, and Pacho Velez
2010 Bastards of Utopia. 54 min. Documentary Educational Resources.
Cambridge, MA.
Žižek, Slavoj
2011 Occupy Wall Street. http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/slavoj-zizekat-occupy-wall-street-transcript, accessed November 24, 2011.
6
IREX is an international nonprofit
organization providing leadership and
innovative programs to improve the
quality
of
education,
strengthen
independent
media,
and
foster
pluralistic civil society development.
Founded in 1968, IREX has an annual
portfolio of over $60 million and a staff
of 500 professionals worldwide. IREX
and its partner IREX Europe deliver
cross-cutting programs and consulting
expertise in more than 100 countries.
This Scholar Research Brief was
developed as part of the Individual
Advanced Research Opportunities
(IARO) Program, an IREX program
funded by the US Department of State.
IARO supports in-depth field research
by US students, scholars and experts in
policy-relevant subject areas related to
Eastern Europe and Eurasia, as well as
disseminates knowledge about these
regions to a wide network of
constituents in the United States and
abroad. The IARO Program plays a
vital role in supporting the emergence of
a dedicated and knowledgeable cadre
of US scholars and experts who can
enrich the US understanding of
developments in Eastern Europe and
Eurasia.
ABOUT TITLE VIII
The Title VIII Program, administered by
the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, provides funding for research
and language training to American
scholars and students for the study
of Eastern Europe and Eurasia
(Independent States of the Former
Soviet Union). Title VIII maintains U.S.
expertise in the regions and brings open
source, policy-relevant research to the
service of the U.S. Government.
2121 K STREET, NW, SUITE 700
WASHINGTON, DC 20037
T +1 202 628 8188 | F +1 202 628
Grants under this program are awarded
through an open, national competition
among
applicant
organizations.
Authority for this Program for Research
and Training on Eastern Europe and
Eurasia (Independent States of the
Former Soviet Union) is contained in
the Soviet-Eastern European Research
and Training Act of 1983 (22 U.S.C.
4501-4508, as amended).
WWW.IREX.ORG
7