New open-access publication

Marek Mikuš's article 'New' but 'Squeezed': Middle Class and Mortgaged Homeownership in Croatia was just published as part of the special issue of Critique of Anthropology 'Engineering the Middle Classes: State Institutions and the Aspirations of Citizenship" co-edited by Maxim Bolt and Jon Schubert.

The open-access article traces the genealogy of the relationship between mortgage finance and the middle class in Croatia. While social groups identified as the middle class existed already in the socialist Yugoslavia, they were not yet associated with reliance on mortgages. It was only in the context of the postsocialist privatization and financialization of housing that institutions and policies regulating access to housing finance and state housing benefits created a strong material and ideological link between middleclassness and mortgaged homeownership. This evolving relationship contributed to the emergence of a Croatian postsocialist middle class that combines the attributes of 'new' middle classes in the Global South and "squeezed" middle classes in the Global North without fitting either category neatly.