Establishing a place in the European cultural space Grassroots cultural action and practices of self-governance in Southeast Europe

Already, starting in the 1970s, the European Union (EU) has stressed the need for the creation of a European cultural space. It sees such a space of cultural diversity, dialogue, and mutual listening and learning as indispensable to establish new connections between people and instigate new forms of “belonging” to the European Community. Several programmes have been installed in which culture has been given multifaceted instrumental value to strengthen economic and political integration. The idea is that these programmes create spaces in which European values, standards, and technologies can freely flow, allowing for new forms of associations between diverse groups of people in Europe. This chapter scrutinizes this anticipated interconnection between European cultural initiatives and new forms of belonging to Europe. It does this from the specific viewpoint of grassroots cultural organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia, and Serbia. It will become clear that the spaces developed by these organizations stimulate new forms of belonging, but in different ways than anticipated by the EU. EU funding is tactically used to invest in local and post-Yugoslav spaces of belonging suppressed by the authorities. The European cultural space is therefore not an outcome, but the context in which these alternative forms of belonging are made possible.