Being Mainstream, Being Radical: How do Young People Understand Radicalism in Croatia

Motivated by the lack of theoretical concepts to grasp the shock of 9/11, social scientists put forward the concept of radicalisation. Since then, it has become one of the buzz concepts in social sciences, particularly in security and terrorist studies. However, recent critiques point out the need to reconceptualise radicalisation so that it can be used outside its dominant, Western home-grown violent terrorism context. Following those critiques, we adopt a relative approach to radicalisation and use it empirically in the context of South-Eastern Europe and youth studies. More concretely, the goal of this paper is to analyse how the terms "radical" and "mainstream" are understood by Croatian youth. To do this, we employed qualitative methodology, namely focus groups conducted in urban and rural settings on a sample of young people. We wanted to uncover where the line between the "radical" and "mainstream" is for young people. By answering these questions, we sought to confirm the assumption that in Croatia, although the term "radical" cannot be understood in the context of violence, it may have dangerous repercussions for social and individual development of young people and society as a whole. Our results show that young people in Croatia conceptualise radicalism as a relative, neutral, and context dependent term. At the same time, they describe both the mainstream and radical individuals in negative connotations.