BLOKIRAM ZATO ŠTO... – MOTIVI STUDENATA ZA UČESTVOVANJE U STUDENTSKOM PROTESTU U SRBIJI 2024/2025. GODINE

Abstract

The current student (and civil) protest in Serbia started at the end of November 2024, as a reaction to the fall of the canopy of the Railway station in Novi Sad, during which sixteen people lost their lives. Blockades of higher education institutions became the focal point of aggregation of student protest activities. The focus of this paper is the analysis of the motives of student participation in protest activities, from the perspective of a structural-cognitive model that combines macro (social) and micro (individual) variables and the relevant typology of Walgrave and associates. The sample included 670 male and female students from all blocked state universities, one private university, as well as several blocked higher schools. The analysis of the collected answers identified seven main motives of students for joining the blockades of faculties/universities. The findings support the dominance of individual-instrumental motives, as well as the complex combination of motives underlying student activism and rebellion. Specifically, the obtained findings indicate a specific generational experience of growing up in a quasi-democratic regime and reflect the continuous structural limitations of Serbian society