Minority constituencies are discursively constructed through MPs’ claims about ethnicity and ethnic minority groups. One of the ways they do this is through naming the constituencies. As Butler argues, “being called a name is also one of the conditions by which a subject is constituted in language” (Butler, 1997, p. 2). Ethnic minority groups are constitutionally labelled as “national minorities” which positions them as minorities of national relevance, therefore favouring integration. On the other hand, minority MPs also bring together minority constituencies under the same term. Yet, in their claims, the term “national minorities” was
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used to suggest that different minority groups should behave politically as a group with collective consciousness. Grouping national minorities into one category derogates the political relevance of inter-group differences and creates them as a single agency in opposition to the majority. In addition, the term itself reflects existing power inequalities and their marginalised position in society (see Beltran, 2010).
These characteristics were more explicitly evoked in the representative claims of MPs from minority parties. These MPs referred to their constituencies not only as minorities in relation to the majority group, but also evoked their distinct ethnicity, culture and language as defining characteristics. While there were 32 MPs from twelve different ethnic minority groups14 in the 8th Serbian parliament, only those minorities descriptively represented by minority parties were discursively made present in the representative claims. By being invoked specifically as Albanians or Hungarians, it is suggested that these groups have a unique cultural identity and a common set of interests. This strategy facilitates the construction of intra-group unity by reproducing ethno-cultural boundaries.
For instance, the Albanian minority was portrayed in the speeches of the Albanian party representative as powerless and marginalised in society as a whole:
When it comes to Albanians of Preševo Valley, who have been ghettoised after the changes in 1999, it can be concluded that they are in a far worse situation than they were in any previous periods after the Second World War. Level of minority rights, gentlemen, is still lower than during the 1960s and 1970s based on the 1974 Constitution (Riza Halimi, PT, 26.07.2010).
Similarly, the Bosniak party representative discursively creates a unitary image of Bosniaks around issues of difference and discrimination. He argues that the rights of Bosniaks to education in their native language and official use of language and script are not implemented and that Bosniaks are discriminated against not only in relation to Serbs, but also other minority groups (Esad Džudžo, PT, 19.01.2009; 05.05.2011). In his claims, members of the Bosniak minority are invited to see themselves and their institutions as endangered in Serbia.
The same MP further claimed that the government is responsible for “serious manipulation and serious violations of human rights and the rights of minorities in central Serbia, especially in Sandzak, eastern and southern Serbia” (Esad Džudžo, PT, 21.07.2009; 28.12.2011) and is blocking the implementation of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the Bosniak national minority (Esad Džudžo, PT, 28.12.2011). In these and the following claims, ethnic unity is being constructed in opposition to government. The Albanian party’s MP claimed that the government “continues with authoritarian imposition and even anti-
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Albanian, Hungarian, Bosniak, Croat, Roma, Ruthenian, Romanian, Slovak, Bulgarian, Vlach, Muslim and Russian.
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civilizational solutions by providing privileges to only a part of population based on ethnic background” (Riza Halimi, PT, 12.12.2009). According to him, violation of the rights of Albanians contributes to “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians as a group (Riza Halimi, PT, 07.07.2008). By creating a cleavage between an endangered minority and the state constructed as the “Other”, representatives aim to naturalize their respective representations of ethnic groups. If members of minority groups are constantly discriminated against because of their ethnic identity, they will either assimilate or emigrate from the state. This implies that members of minority groups have to be united to protect their identity and right to existence.
The strongest claim about the government’s denial of the right to exist was made by the Bosniak party’s MP. In 2014 he changed his last name from Džudžević to Džudžo claiming that at the beginning of the twentieth century the state was violently adding the suffix ‘–vić’ to Bosniak last names with the goal of erasing Bosniak identities and assimilating them with Serbs (Aleksić, 2014). In this case, naming is seen as a political category, which works to found the society as Serbian and exclude the “Others”. By framing the Bosniak last names as an attempt at Serbisation, the MP aims to convince the Bosniak minority that through naming the Serbs constituted themselves as superior to Bosniaks and, in effect, effaced them. At the same time, he constitutes himself as someone reclaiming the Bosniak identity and resisting the effacement. Therefore, by changing his last name he does not resist the process of ethnicisation itself. He rather reinforces it by giving himself a “more Bosniak name”.
All of the above claims portray minorities in terms of power relations and oppression, thereby strengthening inter-ethnic boundaries and inter-ethnic distance. Therefore, as Hall argues, “the 'unities' which identities proclaim are, in fact, constructed within the play of power and exclusion, and are the result, not of a natural and inevitable or primordial totality but of the naturalized, overdetermined process of 'closure'” (Hall, 1996, p. 4-5). This process also includes the construction of minority interests, which representatives should act upon. Portraying minority groups as being denied the right to their own identity, representatives suggest that the most vital interests of minorities are the survival and protection of group identity. Such claims were often made implicitly in the plenary speeches because these interests have already been constructed as minority relevant through historical and cultural processes. Yet, MPs framed them more explicitly in interviews:
At the moment, the survival of the minority community is most important. We had population censuses from 2001 to 2012 and according to the latest information we now have only a little more than 250 thousand Hungarians left, which is around 10% less. For example, the situation is the same with other minorities and many young people go to work abroad. We have to work hard to secure a climate in which our people will want to stay here, so that the community could survive. We are trying to achieve this in every possible way (Fremond, Interview, 2014).
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In order to advance these interests MPs focused in their parliamentary work primarily on adopting guarantees and securing implementation of minority rights to the protection of their culture, minority media and the use of minority language in education and public institutions.
Even when they address socio-economic issues in parliament, they do it to protect minority culture because “every infrastructure, every investment, every employment in a particular way influences also the minority to use its minority collective rights in a more credible way” (Džudžo, Interview, 2014). In these claims, culture is depicted in terms of boundedness and homogeneity and portrayed more as a noun “than as a verb indicating process, intercommunication, and the ongoing construction and reconstruction of boundaries that are symbolic and not naturally given” (Handler, 1994, p. 29).