engleski

Youth in Croatia before and after the postsocialist transition: from convergence to convergence?

This paper discusses values and lifestyles of Croatian youth after the period of postsocialist transition as compared with those expressed in the pre-transition context. The starting point for this discussion are the results of the all-Yugoslav survey of youth carried out in the late socialist period, a noted interpretation of which suggested that postmaterialist values were consistently present among youth in the northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia (Ule, 1989). Ecological concerns, lifestyle resemblances and even an entrepreneurial propensity could also be interpreted as the elements of convergence with their contemporary Western counterparts. In the period of postsocialist transition, marked at its beginning by the wars of Yugoslav succession, the social contexts of youth in the mentioned parts of Yugoslavia began to differ significantly. While in Slovenia a partial convergence with the West continued, in Croatia a post-war “skeptical generation” developed idiosyncratic lifestyles reflecting the complexities of their precarious social position (Tomić-Koludrović & Leburić, 2001). The results of recent empirical research (Ilišin et al, 2013 ; Zdravković, 2014) suggest a possible renewed convergence with the values and lifestyles of the Western “Generation Ego” (Heinzlmaier & Ikrath, 2013). However, the analyses presented in this paper show that the convergence is in the Croatian case at best partial. This is revealed by inconsistencies in value orientations when set against the framework posited in Inglehart-Welzel’s revised modernization theory, as well as in lifestyle divergences suggesting a model of “traditional youth” with even less autonomy than the usual Southern EU model entails.

Youth; Croatia; late socialism; postsocialism; values

nije evidentirano