In this presentation I will explore how securitization of urban spaces is produced, imposed, and contested in present-day Serbia during student-led movement (2024-2026). Urban governance operates within an increasingly authoritarian political environment marked by generalized insecurity. The fatal collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad on November 1 2024 exposed deadly systemic coruption that led to deterioration of public infrastructure. The canopy tragedy triggered a broad student and popular movement and a simultaneous intensification of urban securitization. Repression has taken hybrid forms: coordinated masked attackers by regimes paramilitary formations, car assaults targeting demonstrations, the establishment of the paramilitary encampment “Ćacilend” in front of parliament as a device of intimidation and spatial control, and systematic police violence including excessive force, prohibited technologies such as acoustic weapons as well as surveillance technologies such as tapping into phones of people in rebellion. Parallel to repression, movements have also developed practical forms of collective self-defence based on mutual protection. Students in the blockade developed their own practices of self-defence. Rather than acting as guards, they function as collectively mandated coordinators whose legitimacy comes from the assembly. War veterans have appeared as protectors of demonstrators unsettling the moral economy built around the legacy of the wars in 1990s. Motorcyclists and farmers with tractors also contributed a spatial form of protection. Motorbike groups accompanied marches and warned about risks along routes, while tractors were positioned at the front or sides of demonstrations to reduce the danger of vehicles entering crowds. In parallel, local initiatives such as the Eastern Serbia Rangers in Homolje mountains organize community watch against destructive practices of corporate mining projects. These practices do not replace conflict but aim to reduce vulnerability. Self-defence here emerges from coordination, presence, and shared responsibility rather than centralized authority.
Ana Vilenica is an Associate Research Professor in Ethnology and Anthropology. She works at the University of Belgrade Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, and is affiliated with Södertörn University. Her work is about housing and urban struggles, extractivism and land grab and social movements and urban resistance.