Genta Abdiji*
For a generation growing up in a region still shaped by the legacy of conflict, borders are not only geographical. They can also exist in the form of inherited narratives, stereotypes and assumptions about people on the other side. Yet young people are increasingly finding ways to cross them – through studying, volunteering, professional networks, youth exchanges and regional initiatives.
What happens when people actually meet?
Stereotypes are often strongest where personal contact is weakest. Someone can know a country through news, politics or social media without ever having a meaningful conversation with someone from there.
That changed for Saimir Topuzi during an Erasmus+ project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a Legal Specialist at Albania’s Ministry of Justice working on justice policy, policymaking and EU integration, his professional life is closely connected to institutions and policy. Yet it was a youth exchange that challenged some of his assumptions most directly.
“I realized that I had been fighting a ghost army,” he says. Instead of the differences he expected, he found people dealing with familiar problems: limited opportunities, political polarization, corruption and uncertainty about the future. Mobility had replaced an abstract image of “the other” with actual people.
Silma Jahić, a Political Science and International Relations graduate from Bosnia and Herzegovina, currently pursuing a master’s in Democracy and Human Rights in South East Europe, experienced a similar shift. Regional and international mobility, including a scholarship that took her to the United States during high school, made her question perceptions shaped by misinformation, disinformation and local political narratives. Mobility, then, is not simply about moving from one place to another. It can change the framework through which people understand one another.
From contact to connection
The longer-term value of regional mobility lies in what happens afterwards. A conversation at an exchange can become a professional relationship; a relationship can become a collaboration; and those collaborations can gradually make regional cooperation part of everyday life.
Saimir sees young professionals as particularly well positioned to build these networks – sharing opportunities, connecting institutions and collaborating across borders.
Isidora Miličević from Serbia, a UN Volunteer and Project Coordinator and member of DANA Network of Young Women, approaches regional cooperation through peacebuilding and women’s meaningful participation. Her experiences have reinforced the importance of creating spaces where young people can engage with one another rather than simply inherit existing perceptions. Her first visit to Pristina offered a personal example. She was not afraid, but noticed uncertainty from some people after learning where she was from. The moment showed how quickly an inherited narrative can enter an interaction – before two people have even had the opportunity to know each other.
Why this matters for hate speech
This is where mobility becomes relevant beyond youth policy. Hate speech does not emerge in isolation. It can draw strength from stereotypes, misinformation, political narratives and the reduction of entire communities to a single identity. A 2025 regional monitoring report recorded 611 cases of hateful and harmful speech across the Western Balkans during its reporting period, with ethnicity accounting for 27.06% of documented cases.
Against this backdrop, creating opportunities for young people to encounter one another beyond inherited stereotypes becomes more than a matter of mobility. It becomes part of building the familiarity, critical thinking and trust needed to question divisive narratives. Contact alone cannot erase prejudice. But it can create the conditions for questioning simplified narratives.
Leila Arapi from Kosovo, an International Relations and Minority Policy Specialist, UNDP Regional Peacebuilding Fellow, and legal and research professional, argues that young people need precisely this capacity for critical reflection. She speaks of the need for “a generation free of nationalistic propaganda” and calls for more exchanges, educational change and spaces for uncomfortable conversations.
Leila also stresses the importance of changing educational systems and creating exchanges that reach beyond the same small circle of young people already engaged in international programmes. For her, the goal is not simply to produce young people who can speak the language of cooperation, but a generation genuinely equipped to question the narratives that shape their societies.
A region shaped by its young people
The Western Balkans does not need a generation without differences. It needs a generation capable of living with them without turning them into permanent divisions. For Saimir, that means being able to “inherit the history, but not necessarily the divisions.” For the others, it means remaining open to perspectives that challenge what they think they know and creating space for cooperation rather than allowing inherited narratives to define the future.
Mobility is one part of that process. It opens the door, but the real change happens when people walk through it, meet one another and carry those relationships back into their communities.
A generation on the move is therefore not simply crossing borders. It is also crossing the assumptions, stereotypes and narratives that have kept people apart – and building the relationships needed to imagine a different region.
