Squatting in Serbia refers to the unauthorised occupation of land or buildings. Following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, shanty towns emerged in the mostly demolished capital

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

, the most notable example being

Jatagan Mala Jatagan Mala ( sr, Јатаган мала) is the former urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It existed from 1919 to 1961 and was located in the modern municipality of Savski Venac. Forgotten and unknown to the younger gene ...

. The population of Belgrade rose from 593,000 in 1953 to 1,470,000 in 1981. Between 1961 and 1971, 52% of all private construction of houses in Belgrade was illegal. The percentage was also high in other cities such as

Novi Sad Novi Sad ( sr-Cyrl, Нови Сад, ; hu, Újvidék, ; german: Neusatz; see below for other names) is the second largest city in Serbia and the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is located in the southern portion of the Pan ...

and

Smederevo Smederevo ( sr-Cyrl, Смедерево, ) is a city and the administrative center of the Podunavlje District in eastern Serbia. It is situated on the right bank of the Danube, about downstream of the Serbian capital, Belgrade. According to ...

. The reasons for squatting and illegal construction were the lack of affordable housing, bad governance and the bureaucracy involved in legalising land clams. Also the punishments were light. Squatting has come to refer to either

Romani people The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sig ...

occupying buildings or shacks built as second homes in suburban areas. A large Romani settlement called

Cardboard city Cardboard city (Serbian language, Serbian: Картон сити, ''Karton siti'') was an informal settlement, or locally classified as ''unhygienic settlement'', basically a slum in the capital of Serbia. It was located in Belgrade's municipalit ...

( Serbian: Картон сити, Karton siti) was evicted in 2009. In Belgrade there have also been explicitly political

self-managed social centre Self-managed social centers, also known as autonomous social centers, are self-organized community centers in which anti-authoritarians put on voluntary activities. These autonomous spaces, often in multi-purpose venues affiliated with anarchi ...

s such as Rebel House, AKC Akcija and KUDRUC. In 2014, the derelict Zvezda cinema was occupied by activists and reopened. The Belgrade authorities announced in 2017 that all migrants squatting in the city centre would be moved to official centres. A former military barracks housing around 1,200 refugees mainly from Afghanistan and Pakistan was then evicted to clear the ground for the

Belgrade Waterfront Belgrade Waterfront, known in Serbian as Belgrade on Water ( sr, / ), is an urban renewal development project headed by the Government of Serbia aimed at improving Belgrade's cityscape and economy by revitalizing the Sava amphitheater, a negle ...

project. In 2019,

UNHCR The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...

estimated there were 650 migrant squatters in Belgrade and near to the border with Croatia and Hungary.

References

{{Authority control Squatting in Serbia History of Serbia