The Balkans as a gate of nations – new challenges for political psychologists in the new era
The Balkans as a gate of nations – new challenges for political psychologists in the new era

Summary/Abstract: During the history the Balkans has been the seat of great civilizations, including Ancient Greece, Byzantium, and Ottoman Empire. Many different nations lived here, or just passed through: Illyrians, Romans, Slavs, Avars, western crusaders, Turks, and many others. One of the most important novel in whole Serbian literature is “Seobe” (Migrations), written by Miloš Crnjanski. Serbs have a long history of migrations, including 1915. when whole Serbian government, military forces, state administration and many ordinary people left the country through Albania to Greece. Therefore, in collective memories of all people in Serbia, migrations occupied important place. These days, we are facing with immigrants from other nations and different cultural background, who are now just passing through, but many of them could stay with us in near future. What kind of people’s reactions – emotions, attitudes, behavior, can be expected in that meeting of the different groups? Could it be possible to bypass potential conflicts and to provide mutual understanding and positive relations to the benefit of both sides? What can we learn from previous historical experience and how we can use and apply existing body of knowledge in political psychology? Recent pool studies have not shown optimistic results. We will propose large empirical study, both on the immigrants and in host societies, which will include many socio-psychological variables, like RWA, SDO, self-esteem, as potential predictors of people’s relevant attitudes and behavior toward new migrations. That is well known psychological procedure to mark potential obstacles in the situation and also to find space to establish new positive relations in the current immigrant’s crisis.

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