Prefigurative politics within the student movement in Serbia 2024/25 - qualitative research from a participant perspective

In this paper, we investigate the prefigurative politics manifested within the student movement in Serbia 2024/25, with particular attention to how participants conceptualise the constituent elements and defining characteristics of this politics. The empirical findings are derived from an analysis of interviews conducted in March 2025 with active participants in the student movement from six universities and one vocational college. The structures of the alternative order, which was established under the blockade regime of individual faculties around plenums and specialised working groups, were discussed - first as the foundational mechanisms of direct-democratic organization and decision-making, as well as of the newly emerging community (micropolitics of the movement), and then as strongholds for broader mobilisation, politicisation, diffusion and proleptic projections of the future society (macropolitical dimension). The analysis showed that students acknowledge the intrinsic qualities of the plenum model, while simultaneously engaging in reflexive consideration of the innovative and prefigurative characteristics of practices developed within self-organised bodies. This reflexivity is accompanied by insights into the potentially erosive effects of actions that depart from the ideal-typical vision of horizontal democracy. At the macro-political level, students see the potential of citizens’ assemblies to expand the organisation set up by plenums at universities. However, they also identify a range of logistical constraints that hinder its implementation in a manner analogous to that within the autonomous space of the blockade, even as they conceive of the model as a prospective corrective to representative institutions. The envisioned future society is not conceived as a replication of the plenary model; rather, the latter orients the trajectory of desired social transformation through its embodied ideals and values