The Long-Term Effects of Social Housing in the Former Yugoslavia

• In Event: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Violent Conflict

Abstract

What is the impact of living in "social housing" on intergroup attitudes and the conduct of conflict between them? This project exploits a natural experiment in the former Yugoslavia in which the allocation of "social housing" assigned individuals to housing in a manner plausibly exogenous to their attitudes towards non-coethnics. This assignment into treatment allows us to casually identify the impact of living in social housing on intergroup attitudes immediately before the collapse of Yugoslavia and national reconciliation after thirty years of relative peace in the region. We argue that assignment into social housing created a social context that made individuals more inclined towards pro-social intergroup attitudes through at least one of three mutually exclusive channels: shaping levels of neighborhood diversity, improving recipients’ socioeconomic status, or changing individual attitudes towards the state or life in general. We test our expectation in two studies conducted in the former Yugoslavia. Study 1 examines the effects of housing assignment on intergroup attitudes (ethnonationalism, social distance, ingroup attachment, and Yugoslav identification) prior to the conflict in 1989. Study 2 examines whether and how living in social housing shaped wartime experiences (victimization) and intergroup attitudes and attitudes towards national reconciliation (trust, cooperation, and common association) thirty years after conflict. Theoretical implications and practical utility of social housing as a conflict-preventing and reconciliation-promoting intervention are discussed.

Authors

• Marko Kljajic, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Nadav G. Shelef, University of Wisconsin, Madison