This Brief provides a survey of key political, social, and economic issues affecting the Western Balkans region. Taking a two-pronged conceptual approach focusing on fragmentation and integration, the volume highlights commonalities and differences in a number of simultaneous dynamics currently characterizing the region: Europeanization and EU access, market integration, and migration and socio-demographic transformations. Stressing the interconnectedness of these issues, the volume synthesizes key questions for the future of the region, such as the relationship between socio-demographic trends and economic development, the effects of depopulation on further EU integration, and the economic and political repercussions of enhanced intra-regional trade. Explicitly interdisciplinary, this Brief will be useful for researchers and students specializing in the Balkans and Western Balkans, post-socialist countries, European affairs, enlargement, foreign policy, international relations, regional studies, economics, economic transition, and socio-demographics. 

Marco Zoppi is a Research Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna (Italy). He has a PhD in Histories and Dynamics of Globalization from Roskilde University (Denmark). His main research interests include: the study of migration phenomena in the European space, with particular attention to the Balkan area and the Central Mediterranean route; the analysis of integration processes and social safety nets in the diaspora; the study of Euro-African relations, their historical development and future prospects.