As the coronavirus pandemic intensifies existing socio-economic and political conflicts around the world, consequences of longstanding geographical cleavages among areas that are thriving and areas that are suffering in the context of globalization, and the importance of local development, are becoming alarmingly apparent. As the backdrop of these socio-economic trends, I will present empirical findings from my ongoing research project which draws on 60 interviews with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in two Western Balkan countries with weak and captured formal institutions - Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. My data shows a high level of interdependence between smaller economic agents and communities within which they operate. I also uncover innovative ways through which SMEs are leveraging communal resources in the context of growing labor shortages, the environmental crisis and other challenges of local development.

Dr. Sonja Avlijaš is a political economist. She is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Economics and a research associate at the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP) at Sciences Po, Paris. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Sonja is a member of the Executive Board of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies (EACES), following receipt of the 2018 EACES PhD Thesis Award. As an independent consultant, she conducts research for the European Commission. Sonja’s research mostly focuses on gender and welfare effects of modern capitalism as experienced in the European post-socialist periphery. She is devoted to supporting subalterns in their efforts to interpret the complexity of their experiences in today’s world. During her Wayne Vucinich fellowship at CREEES, she is writing a book on gender, labour and social reproduction in the post-1989 world.