This essay analyses the strategic practices adopted by social movement actors during the 2013 and 2014 mobilisations in Bosnia & Hercegovina. By bridging critical citizenship studies with literature on social movements, it classifies them as belonging to the realm of activist citizenship, but also as having a performative and prefigurative dimension. While the strategies adopted during the 2013 wave had a performative dimension, as they disrupted routines and created opportunities for social change, the 2014 practices are to be considered prefigurative, as they developed modes of interaction embodying a new model of citizenship at odds with the existing one based on the institutionalisation of ethno-national categories.IN THE LAST DECADE, THE COUNTRIES OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA witnessed a resurgence of contentious collective action. Several street protests were undertaken with the purpose of opposing the privatisation of public and common goods such as parks, urban spaces, and public utility infrastructures (

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The countries of former Yugoslavia have a long history of dealing with refugees. However, what had been termed in the media and in public discourse as the '2015-16 European migrant crisis' represented a phenomenon of unprecedented scale for the Western Balkan states. For the first time since the break-up of Yugoslavia, these countries found themselves handling a steep increase in arrivals of migrants who fled from the Middle East and Africa and crossed the Western Balkans migratory route in an attempt to reach Northern and Central Europe. To compensate for the lack of action on the part of their governments, since summer 2015 a number of individuals and domestic groups mobilized with the purpose of providing humanitarian assistance to migrants crossing their territory. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with key informants, this article explores the multiple solidarity initiatives organized at the local and transnational level along the Western Balkans route during the 2015-16 migrant crisis, taking Serbia and Macedonia as case studies. Specifically, the study examines the extent to which emotional resources and discursive opportunities increased the prospects for altruistic mobilization in a context characterized by a low level of grassroots civic activism.

Hit by the economic and political crisis, young people in Italy face increased labor precarity and the disillusionment derived from the disappearance of the radical Left from the parliamentary arena. In the Italian context, economic hardship, the decrease of resources available for collective action, and the weakened mobilizing capacity that traditional mass organizations (such as trade unions and political parties) retained in the first decade of the 2000s brought about a general decline in intensity and visibility of street protests, leading to an apparent retreat of activism to the local level of action. Although the crisis had a negative impact on collective action, evidence reveals that more creative and less visible forms of societal and political commitment were adopted by young generations in these years. This article explores how the Italian youth in times of crisis engaged actively in alternative and unconventional forms of political commitment aimed at re-appropriating space, free time, and access to leisure, mainly by means of mutualistic practices. Based on data from qualitative semistructured interviews with key informants and activists, this article sheds light on recreational activism, adopted as a political practice by the Italian youth active in counter-cultural spaces, nowadays at the forefront of the struggle to oppose the commodification of free time and leisure.