BOSNA I HERCEGOVINA KAO „CONTACT ZONE“: IZMEĐU EVROPSKE PERIFERIJE I MEDITERANSKOG NARATIVNOG ČVORIŠTA – STRATEŠKA KOMUNIKACIJA U POKRETU (1995–2025)
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA AS A “CONTACT ZONE”: BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN PERIPHERY AND A MEDITERRANEAN NARRATIVE NEXUS—STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION IN MOTION (1995–2025)

Summary/Abstract: Positioned within the fields of public diplomacy and strategic communication, this paper analyses the development of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) three decades after the Dayton Peace Agreement (1995–2025), proposing an epistemological shift from the approach of the “tutored periphery” towards the concept of the “Contact Zone”. Drawing on the framework of strategic narratives (Miskimmon et al., 2013), the paper examines how ambivalent historical narratives and “proxy” denialism have undermined BiH’s agency within the Euro-Mediterranean imaginary. Through an analysis of the Barcelona–Sarajevo axis and practices of citizen diplomacy as a form of bottom-up public diplomacy, it argues that civic resilience and the Mediterranean matrix of “Matrie” (Morin, 2019) constitute key foundations of stability in the face of security immobility and biopolitical ethno-nationalism. The paper advocates the application of the “Complicating the Narrative” framework (Hotz, 2023) as a tool for strengthening social cohesion, concluding that stability in the Balkans will not emerge from the technical management of borders, but from networks of civic civility.

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