The everyday life of the Serbs in Northern Kosovska Mitrovica in the conditions of the undefined institutional status
Authors: Pavlović Aleksandar 
Published: October 2020

In this paper the author presents the results of the research of the everyday life of the Serbs in Northern Kosovska Mitrovica in the conditions of the altered socio-political context after the war on Kosovo and Metohija in 1999. The main attention is paid to the status and the functioning of institutions. The aim of the paper is to offer a contribution based on the conceptualization of the ethnographic field work material in order to give the account of the everyday experience of Serbs in Northern Kosovska Mitrovica in the conditions of the undefined institutional relations caused by the withdrawal of Serbian authorities from Kosovo and Metohija, the introduction of an international protectorate and the unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence. The results presented in this paper were obtained from the field research conducted several times from 2011 to 2015 in a total duration of over eight months. The change of social-political context after the war in 1999 led to major structural disruptions in Kosovo and Metohija. These disruptions were felt especially in the institutional sphere, where they reflected in almost all aspects of the everyday life of Serbs in this area. The undefined status of institutions, in this regard, has shown to be one of the key issues in the context of the everyday life of the Serb population in Northern Kosovska Mitrovica. The survival of the Serbian institutions for the Serbs in this town represented a confirmation of the presence of the Republic of Serbia in the North of Kosovo and Metohija, which was an important symbol of identification of the local Serbs with the state they considered their own. These institutions, on the other hand, have been under intense international and Albanian pressure since the war in 1999, i. e. under the constant threat of abolition, which caused a continuous feeling of insecurity among the Serbs in Northern Kosovska Mitrovica and the concerns regarding their own survival. In the conditions of contested legitimacy the Serbs did not accept the imposed instances of international and Kosovo administration, while the international regulatory bodies and Kosovo institutions did not recognize institutions of the Republic of Serbia, considering them "parallel", i. e. illegal. In Northern Kosovska Mitrovica this led to a social situation characterized by the absence of clearly defined authorities, especially in the domain of executive structures, in which the Serbs in this town led their everyday life in a gap between their needs for carrying out various daily practices on the one hand, and on the other the reality interwoven with intricate institutional relations. The Serbs in Northern Kosovska Mitrovica were forced to adapt to living in "parallel" realities, deprived of the "normalcy" of everyday life inherent in organized societies. Yet, even though they learned how to adapt to those circumstances and even how to take advantage of them, such a reality created a number of everyday problems which, in the conditions of general uncertainty, made their situation even more unfavorable.