This paper examines identity strategizing in the border region between Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria, focusing on the processes which affect the young generation’s decision-making. I first examine the case of the Bulgarian minority in Bosilegrad, Serbia, where citizens live in a constructed “own” heterotopic space, belonging neither to Serbia, nor Bulgaria; locals, and especially young people, create fluid identities for themselves which help them to inhabit the vague spaces “in-between” national and ethnic identities, state borders, internal and external “others”. Second, I look at young Macedonians in Kriva Palanka, Macedonia, where cross-border nation-making politics create a different heterotopia: of youth at the edge of the Balkan states, who live both here and now, but also elsewhere – in the imaginary and future “West”, a “promised land” that will remedy them from the disappointments of their reality. They live in a state of standby migration characterized by their latent state, guided by the decision and the first steps towards migration; a phenomenon I call placebo identity.

Keywords: young people, identity, standby migration, dual citizenship, Serbia, Macedonia