ANTI-CORRUPTION FOUNDATIONS OF THE STUDENT MOVEMENT IN SERBIA 2024/2025

Abstract

The paper analyzes the student movement that emerged as a reaction to the death of 16 people in the collapse of a canopy at the Novi Sad railway station, on November 1st 2024. This movement is the response of the student population to lawlessness, social injustice and repression by the corrupt regime. The current student movement in Serbia is a social and political avant-garde, which has not existed in Europe since 1968. In terms of its character, duration, mobilization of citizens and pressure on the regime, this movement has no counterpart even on a planetary level since the beginning of the 21st century. The student movement is by its nature anti-corruption, sovereignist, focused on building legal identity and the rule of law as the supporting pillars of the new order. The author of the paper starts from the hypothesis that anti-corruption is a centripetal force of the student movement that mobilizes citizens in the fight to establish Serbia as a legal state in which the rule of law exists. Student movement influenced the construction of a student protest identity and the formation of a generation of critically thinking and socially engaged youth. The political awareness of Generation Z, the mobilization of citizens and the offering of alternative ways to resolve the institutional, political and social crisis is the legacy of the current student protests. The student movement is deeply rooted in anti-corruption foundations, which dictate a policy of discontinuity and the responsibility of high politics for the abuse of the public interest. The political activism of students in the blockade exposed the corrupt, blackmailing and repressive nature of the hybrid regime and gradually led to a change in the value and political pattern. The student movement has changed tactics and forms of manifestation since its inception, but the demand for a legal state and the rule of law has remained an unchanging variable. As the most credible social actor capable of mobilizing citizens to support its demands, the student movement is becoming a political actor oriented towards institutional changes and the redefinition of political and economic processes.