The paper analyzes the specificities of Serbia's response to coronavirus. Two most important issues during the pandemic were the role of the State and the management of migration flows. Being placed in the China-Russia-EU triangle shaped the response on the crises but also the image of the country in the world.Two phenomena shaped mobility patterns. Citizens returning from abroad were caught between accusations of spreading the virus and a plea for healthcare and other key workers from the Serbian diaspora to help in Serbia. The issue of refugees and migrants attracted significant amounts of positive public attention, but in parallel with that xenophobia arose as a new attitude as part of aggressive campaigns against them.

This chapter reflects on the management of the “refugee crisis” along the Balkan Route on the part of the Serbian authorities by highlighting how, with the exception of the dramatic months of the second part of 2015, when over 800,000 refugees crossed with largely no opposition the entire region to reach the rest of Europe, the presence of refugees in Serbia and their related mobility has been somehow normalized. Serbia has been long prepared to provide humanitarian support to the refugees using the informal Balkan Route, since their presence is not considered contingent but rather constitutive of the mutated European geographies of irregular migrations. The “refugee crisis” also has put Serbia under a positive light internationally thanks to the relatively unconditional humanitarian support that guides its policy toward these families and individuals on the move. While this may place Serbia in a stronger position when negotiating its relationship with the European Union, the chapter also argues that the permanent presence of the refugees and related hospitality camps is important for the impact that they have on some local economies but also for the streams of funding coming from the rest of Europe. The chapter thus problematizes the idea of a permanent “refugee crisis” along the Balkan Route, and in Serbia in particular, and at the same time emphasizes how the role of Serbia in the new European geographies of humanitarian management of displaced people is increasingly important for its integration into the broader economic and political geographies of the continent.

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In many Eastern European countries, the standard of living increased as a result of the process of industrialization in the second half of the 20th Century. Consequently, the population in rural areas with small-scale farming decreased due to the availability of employment elsewhere. This directly impacted soil erosion (and thereby sustainability of the land), but the degree and direction are not well known. This study investigates two municipalities within Serbia, their change in population and its impact on land use changes and soil erosion. The standard of living increased after the industrialization process in the 1960s within these municipalities. The erosion potential model is used to calculate gross annual erosion. The changes related to population and arable land in rural settlements are analyzed according to proportional spatial changes. The results show an overall decrease of erosion intensity in the study area. In addition, two basic findings are derived: first, the highest level of human impact on soil is in rural settlements at the lowest elevation zones, where erosion intensity shows the least amount of decrease; and, second, the most intensive depopulation process, recorded in higher elevation zones, indicates a rapid decrease of erosion intensity.

This paper examines the problem of demographic transition of natural replacement of the Serbian population since the mid-nineteenth century to 2010. The special attention is given to analizing trends in birth rate, mortality and population growth through the historical periods in which started and in which the transformation of demographic trends was being done, from the model of extended natural replacement and population expansion to the depopulation model. The specific progress of transitional trends is shown in the natural replacement of population at the macro-regional levels in Serbia (Central Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija), especially at the meso-regional and local level in the geospace of Serbia (municipalities, districts, regions).[Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 176017