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Mining Lithium in Europe’s(Semi)Periphery and The Making of an Extractivist Frontier

Note from LeftEast Editors: Originally published by Second Cold War Observatory on May 2, 2024. Perhaps more than any other material, lithium has, in recent years, been increasingly presented as the silver bullet for the so-called twin transition—the digital and the green transitions. Lithium is essential to most conventional batteries used in diverse technologies, from phones […]

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Racism, Islamophobia and Decoloniality on the Balkans. Interview with Piro Rexhepi

Note from LeftEast editors: We reprint Neda Genova’s interview with Piro Rexhepi about some of the motivations and main ideas behind his book “White Enclosures. Racial Capitalism and Coloniality Along the Balkan Route”. The Interview was originally published at Dversia, as part of a collaboration within ELMO – The Eastern European Left Media Outlet. Please note […]

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The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness in the Balkans

Piro Rexhepi’s book White Enclosures: Racial Capitalism and Coloniality along the Balkan Route (Duke University Press 2022) is a refreshing study that goes beyond current global queerphobic and racist tendencies and focuses on largely overlooked Bosnian, Albanian, and Roma Muslim lived experiences. In 2015, ‘Balkan route’ became a buzzword for war refugees predominantly from Syria […]

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The Witches of the Unwanted Colonies

This interview was initially published by Kohl Journal as part of its “Anticolonial Feminist Imaginaries” issue. What does it mean to be a feminist in an unwanted colony,[1] a place deemed unworthy of territorial conquest or even integration into a European polity, yet too dangerous or unstable to be left alone? I explore this question […]

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Local Communities, a Yugoslav Take on Direct Democracy

Over the last decade, the notion of participatory democracy has become increasingly fashionable in mainstream politics. The 2008 financial crisis brought out in the open the disconnect between political elites and their constituencies that plagues contemporary representative democracies. Across Europe and the Americas, the inability to overturn neo-liberal policies and austerity measures through the electoral […]

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Playing First League: Fuck the 1000 Euros

This article is part three of a series by Ivana Perić. The first article, about the bankruptcy of FC Inter from Zaprešić, can be found here. The second article, about the problems and perspectives in women’s football in Croatia, can be found here. This article originally appeared in Radnicka Prava. The English translation is published […]

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At the heart of Fortress Europe: A new study about Austria’s role in border externalization policies in the Balkans

On the 28th of September 2020, Ayoub N. and six of his friends were chain pushed back from Austria to Slovenia, Croatia, and eventually back to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), from where Ayoub had begun his journey to Austria a few weeks earlier. Ayoub, like many others, had been stuck for years in between the […]

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“Serbia is (not) for Sale”: On Lithium, Hunger and Other Betrayals

This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it. Last September, the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel made her farewell tour to the Balkans. In Belgrade, she was welcomed by Aleksandar Vučić, the Serbian president […]

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‘The fall of the last domino’: an overview of Levica’s departure from the government in Slovenia

The last couple of months have been turbulent for The Left party (in Slovenian, Levica). Firstly, the Left failed to cross the threshold in the EU parliamentary election. Even the fact that their candidate, Violeta Tomić, was also the Spitzenkandidat for the Party of the European Left did not help. And secondly and more importantly, its […]

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“Why I don’t recognize North Macedonia as my home country”

  Note from LeftEast editors: Last week, Macedonia’s Parliament approved a constitutional amendment to change the country’s name to the Republic of North Macedonia. Under the agreement, the country’s language will be called Macedonian and its people known as Macedonians/citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia. The new name will be used both internationally and bilaterally, […]