Europe from Its Fringes¹

Pieter Troch

What does Europe mean from the perspective of its fringes? What does it mean to be European for people considered backward and not-quite European "Others" within the margins of the European cultural and political space?² This contribution looks for answers in the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo.³ The city serves as the emblematic fault-line city in the ongoing geopolitical and ethnopolitical dispute over the status of Kosovo.⁴ After the war of 1998-99 and riots in 2000 and 2004, the Ibër River developed into the natural dividing line between the Serb-dominated northern part of the city and the predominantly Albanian southern half. The northern part de facto falls under the authority of the Republic of Serbia and is the urban stronghold for continuing Serbian claims to Kosovo. Although Kosovar institutions are present in the North as well, these have been successfully usurped by local politicians faithful to Belgrade. The southern part of the city is firmly entrenched in the independent Republic of Kosovo. In the framework of the EU-mediated dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo, the physical barricades between both parts of the city have been removed, and ongoing reconstruction work at the central bridge aims to guarantee freedom of movement and goods and reopen the city centre as a place for social encounters.

Europe is a key determinant for many aspects of contemporary urban life in Mitrovica. The European Union invests heavily both financially and politically to establish political stability – under the banners of democracy and rule of law, but with no clarity on the ultimate status of Kosovo – and to promote transition from a worn-torn, socialist plan economy to a functioning market economy. The EU is an important political actor and arguably more than the ethnopolitical rival on the other side of the river the main sounding board for local and national politicians. Almost ritualised subscriptions to European values of democracy and rule of law – in combination with blaming the other for non-European ethnonational and/or religious extremism – help to secure political capital. EU development funding is the city’s economic motor, in addition to remittances from the diaspora working and living in Western Europe. Infrastructure projects by definition display the EU flag and the amount of funding. An astonishingly wide plethora of local NGOs compete for EU funding, providing some of the most sought-after opportunities for employment for local educated youth.

The European Union, to be sure, has achieved major results in Mitrovica and Kosovo more generally. It has succeeded in stabilising relations between Albanians and Serbs, and between Serbia and Kosovo. Crossing the Ibar in Mitrovica is no longer a risky act. However, it is an ethnopolitical act, and in this regard, the role of the EU should be critically looked at. European development politics consolidates and spatialises the ethnopolitical division that led to and crystallised during the war of the 1990s.⁵ Local government is divided along ethno-spatial lines, as Serbia and Kosovo provide parallel public services in healthcare, education, and social assistance. The EU talks with local politicians as ethnic representatives. The reconstruction of the area around the central bridge has, in fact, established two city centres. Local NGOs are overwhelmingly ethnically defined and receive funding and support as such, even if they implement projects aimed at fostering ethnic tolerance and dialogue. Obviously, you need clearly defined and delineated ethnic groups and actors to start promoting ethnic tolerance and dialogue. At the local level, the EU in Kosovo applies the rule that also determines its foreign policy: "Good borders make good friends". Of course, the EU does not carry the blame for the ethnic division in Kosovo, but its involvement keeps in place and consolidates some of the divisive patterns.

Alternative meanings of Europe are tucked away in urban layers beneath the divided city. When one stands at the central bridge, it is not only the barricades or flags that catch the eye. The residential buildings that look out over the bridge are typical examples of Socialist Yugoslavia’s modernist architecture. Bogdan Bogdanović’s monumental sculpture to the Partisan Miners feels remarkably a-national and out-of-place in the ethnically divided city, inscribing the city firmly and lastingly into the modernism of post-WWII Europe. These are landmarks of socialist urban planning, which took off from the late 1950s onwards and aimed to develop Mitrovica’s urban area into a compact, life-sized, orderly, and functional environment. It foresaw the complete transformation of the existing post-Ottoman trade town, which was criticised for being chaotic, backward, dysfunctional, and unhygienic – indeed, not-quite European. The new city would be characterised by order, advanced technical solutions to improve living conditions, and efficient zoning to guarantee industrial production, public life, residential functions, and recreation.⁶

To be sure, very little of these ambitions came true as anticipated. Massive rural-to-urban migration surpassed the urban capacities and led to urban sprawl and informal homebuilding. Limited political and financial resources as well as changes in urban development policy cut short the reconstruction of the pre-socialist city and the extension of typical socialist residential estates. Typical high-rise residential buildings soon lost their appeal among the population. Heavy lead industry threatened the quality of life in substantial ways. The ideal of socialist equality collided with socio-economic inequality and socio-spatial differentiation in the city. Yet, the socialist "scaffold" and the modernist temporalities of progress it carries with it continues to structure the city in fundamental ways and is remarkably flexible in obtaining new meanings under post-conflict and post-socialist conditions.⁷

Again, the Partisan Miners’ Monument can serve as a starting point. The monument’s original copper cover has not survived transformation. The park surrounding the monument is poorly maintained, although the EU has invested in a walking trail, and it takes a remarkably difficult and lonely hike to actually reach the monument. Its former grandeur is further challenged by the more recent Orthodox church, which towers over the Serbian northern part of the city to claim ethnoreligious ownership (Serbs are Orthodox, Albanians are mostly Muslim in Kosovo). And still, the monument – be it in a decayed state – continues to occupy a central position in the urban landscape and portrays some of the future-oriented faith of the 1960s and early 70s.

Similar ambiguous overlaps of progress and ruination define other built carriers of modernism in the city. Two huge industrial ruins prominently figure on the edges of the cityscape. In the north, an iconic smokestack towers above the valley. A vast dilapidated complex welcomes visitors who enter the city from the south. Both zones were part of the Trepça mining, metallurgical, and chemical industry enterprise, the catalyst behind the radical transformation of the city throughout the twentieth century. All inhabitants of Mitrovica, regardless of ethnicity, age, profession, and interests, put great stress on the magnificent role of Trepča for urban life. The social reach of Trepça went far beyond the gates of the enterprise. It financed housing, utilities, infrastructure, educational facilities, and health care in the city and supported sports and culture. Bogdanović’s monument indicates the symbolic centrality of mining in the city’s identity.

Once the spearheads of progress, these sites have relapsed into places of industrial ruination, which symbolise the despair of the deindustrialising society. They also suffered badly from destruction, damage, and armed conflict during the constant state of emergency and conflict in Kosovo in the 1990s. They are firmly inscribed in the dominant narrative of ethnopolitical division, as the ownership over Trepča is one of the major obstacles in the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia. The northern complex is the seat of the Serbian heir to the enterprise, the southern complex represents Kosovo-Albanian claims. Both sites do not officially communicate with each other, but aim to influence geopolitical decision-makers like the EU. As a part of this particular mode of industrial communication, the industrial sites in the city remain formally operating. The operations are, however, performative. Most of the work that is going on takes place at the management level. The little production work has the character of ritualised performances of productivity. Workers sweep dust and hold meetings without real agenda points. Most of the time, they are merely present.⁸

It would be misleading, however, to understand the industrial heritage of present-day Mitrovica – and that of the modernist city more broadly – exclusively in terms of loss and despair. The locals’ pride of the industrial city is not merely passive nostalgia for a lost age and an expression of their inability to master post-socialist transition. For one thing, the mining enterprise is still materially present. A large part of the population of Mitrovica continues to live in houses constructed and financed by Trepča. The education, healthcare, sports, and cultural facilities that are central to the urban identity of the city are all associated to the enterprise. Many of the urban inhabitants were first-generation rural-to-urban migrants, who intimately relate the built environment of the mining city to their own lived experience of normalcy and life cycle prospects.⁹

The continuing formal operation of the industrial sites, in spite of the obvious signs of industrial decline, symbolises the ambiguous interplay of progress and ruination in the city as a whole and in the minds of its people. Remaining workers are clearly struggling with feelings of devaluation and demoralisation as they have become actors of socialist productivity in a factory that produces not even a fraction of the millions of tons it used to produce in its heyday. However, at the same time, they share a strong sense of attachment to these very sites of industrial production, which still herald the unfulfilled expectations of urbanisation and progress. The post-conflict setting also brings additional national meaning to the performativity of keeping industrial sites in operation, as it supports Serbian and Kosovan claims to the heritage and assets of Trepça, and more broadly, the heritage of urban modernity and progress.

Beneath the surface of the divided city, the heritage of industrial production and accompanying urban development inscribes the city in an alternative Europe of progress and modernity. Indeed, socialist industrialisation was decisively modernist and European. Locals do not fail to tell me – of course guided by their assessment that I am European par excellence and thus well-placed to value such claims – that Trepča was a European and global industrial giant, trading all over the world (Socialist Yugoslavia was non-aligned between the Cold War blocks), and producing goods, experts, and culture of European esteem. Such visions of European modernity in the past contrast with the dominant contemporary perception of European integration as situated in the future and requiring transition and development, with assistance from outside. For many inhabitants, the current post-socialist transformation under EU auspices actually further distances the city from the Europe it firmly belonged to during the heyday of industrial growth.¹⁰ At the same time, both Europes interact, as becomes particularly clear from the seemingly contradictory fact that EU integration and conflict resolution actually consolidate the protracted performative functioning of socialist industry in the city.

Notes