Students and Capitalism: For, Against, or Indifferent?

Student protests and movements have been always considered an important factor in the transformation of society. Serbia has witnessed several waves of student activism throughout 2000s and 2010s, although their claims over the time changed from concerns about the social problems linked to the establishment of a new capitalist system to more political ones, such as freedom of the press and lack of democracy. But did student movements in Serbia completely abandon the anti-capitalist narrative? Did they fully accept the new capitalist system in the country? This work focuses on two waves of contention and their rhetorics and claims: 2006-2007 that was the first post-Milošević student movement and 2024, the latest one. They are distant in time, even though students use the same repertoire of actions and part of their claims overlap. Some researchers state that with the student protests in 2017 there was a shift towards a more political agenda due to the socio-political context in the country and the changes in the class structure (Anđelković, Velisavljević 2024). However, I argue that anti-capitalist rhetoric is still present in the recent protests and occupations even if it is combined with wider scope of demands. Latter movements attract more participants and supporters by embracing a larger array of broadly felt cleavages while simultaneously advancing smaller-scale issues (such as university fees or discontent with the neoliberal educational model) compared to the 2006 movement. Nevertheless, the anti-capitalist narrative remains an important component of the Serbian student movements.