Statistical nationalization or enumeration
The population census in Montenegro, which was originally scheduled and later canceled, only reminded us that the area of Southeastern Europe is almost obsessively burdened by ethnic counting and the resulting political consequences.
The population census or census, even if in theory it does not seem like some big bogeyman, namely it is a periodic statistical survey that aims to collect data on the population of a certain territory. The state spies on us a little through the population census and invades our privacy, we agree, it is interested in how much we earn, whether we are educated or less, what kind of places we live in, whether we are happily married or unhappily divorced - some of the similar questions can perhaps activate some more painful ones life episodes - but they are of minor importance compared to the problem of all problems: questions of national, religious and linguistic affiliation.
That identity trio, in whatever regional variant it appears, always has priority over all other questions from the bureaucratically worded questionnaire by which the census itself is conducted. Everything seems to be politically less important than how we nationally and religiously declare ourselves, and then accordingly and in which heroic language we (un)successfully communicate with ourselves and the world around us.
However, statistical nationalization - which is the official term for the phenomenon we are talking about - was not invented by us. Ever since the middle of the 19th century, a period that coincides with the birth of nation-states in Europe, the population census serves as a fundamental insight into the famous "state on the ground" that almost every policy will later try to monopolize and use mostly for its own political goals. Slovenian historian Rok Stergar and his Austrian colleague Tamara Scheer analyzed the consequences of the population census in the heterogeneous Habsburg Monarchy, showing how the statistical classification of the population - quite normal in itself - very quickly translates into a political agenda. The Austrians, bureaucratically precise as they are, had, for example, a column for the mother tongue in the census forms, which the residents freely filled out. Bureaucrats later processed and meticulously classified it, and the census recorded a linguistic peculiarity from which religious and national ones could be determined, and it was related to certain populations in a certain part of the empire. The census therefore officially indicated different identity determinants, and this is always ideal material for later political association based on the same language, religion and nation.
The mentioned authors, observing the political implications of the population census, will easily state that the different classification of the population, according to the identity key, will later lead to "ethnic boxes" or the fact that for many, elections are nothing more than an opportunity to, by voting "for their own", simply count themselves nationally . The general population census served as the basis for further electoral engineering, representing the first step that anticipates the future political scene and its legitimacy, and when that is the case, it is quite predictable that it always awakens the ghosts of the past, which, as always, are not lacking.
The statistics we fear
In our opinion, there is another general problem with population censuses, and this is very obvious in the areas of Southeast Europe: they deny the vast majority of those small or big, benign or perfidious political lies that, at least sometimes, we like to hear.
As a rule, the censuses show, in addition to the large population change caused by the war, a real demographic catastrophe that countries from Croatia, through Bosnia and Herzegovina and all the way to Serbia are experiencing. Population loss is partly conditioned by wider global trends, but partly the result of almost no demographic policies, the devastating consequences of which become obvious by simply looking at the results of the population census. When faced with the reality expressed in cold numerical indicators, many perfidious political narratives - such as the one about protection and existential care for every human being - fall flat.
Also, censuses reveal critical points in society. For example, in North Macedonia, the political problem was related to the Albanian minority, which, depending on its representation in the total share of the population, which was 20% in the previous census, has a similar equivalent of political power. The relationship between the majority and the minority entertained their political arenas for some time. It was forgotten that good European practice consists in not reducing the acquired rights of minorities as a rule, regardless of the number of members of the minority.
It is similar in Montenegro, where topics about the quantitative increase in the number of these or those, including members of the Serbian nation, dominated, so that the said number could be politically capitalized. The pre-census caravans reminded people how to declare themselves, thus showing that they understand them exclusively as categories of people ready to represent certain political goals or simple ethnic boxes that need to be reminded how to correctly respond to the aforementioned identity trio - religion, nation and language.
So typical for a regional context whose politics is often clothed in national fetishism, but at the same time so tragicomic and distant from any meaningful census that serves mostly for public policy planning, not for cheap identity and national counting.
Bonus video: