ABSTRACT
In the newly independent Kosovo, circulated notions of “womanhood” have become increasingly consistent with the statebuilding agenda. In much of the state discourses and representations associated with the new modalities of nationalism, the new national subject appears as a Europeanised young woman. This chapter explores the process of making gendered national subjects in Kosovo through a twofold analysis. The first concerns the complex ideological layers and temporal politics that animate notions of new national womanhood. I contend that the “new Kosovar woman” is built around the multiple axis of ethnonational identification, Europeanisation and neoliberalism, all of which cohere to the aspired, political future of the Kosovo state. The second analysis inquires ethnographically how these top-down discourses play out on the ground level for the young women. Drawing on long term ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter argues that on the ground this ideal is rarely rendered tangible as the means to achieve it often appear fragile and incomplete. Generally, young women encounter a disconnect between these discourses and the lived realities, with existing class and gender structures often determining one’s future trajectory.
