Migrants of the Future – Serbian Youth between Imaginary and Real Migration
Migrants of the Future – Serbian Youth between Imaginary and Real Migration

Summary/Abstract: One of several opinion polls of the student population in Serbia, conducted in May 2008, revealed that about 78% of the interviewees is ready to leave Serbia immediately after they get their diploma. Although there are many who declare that they are ready to permanently return to their home country, and certainly a great majority is in one way or another engaged in a widespread public debate about the issue of emigration, the portion of those who have already made concrete plans and preparations for leaving is considerably smaller. Focussing on the wishes and plans of the young for leaving after 2000, I will try to formulate answers to two questions: first, what is the social and cultural context of this fervent debate, supposing that the various discourses on youth, at the particular moment centred on the migration issue, might in fact represent a part of the wider process of reconstruction of youth as a social category in postsocialist transformations; and second, what are the characteristics of the more shadowy process that, in the private arena of family life and family planning, accompanies this more exposed political debate. In short: what kind of home will Serbia become if the young people wish so strongly to escape from it?

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