The devastation of the historical cities of the former Yugoslavia, perpetrated by the contending parties in the civil war, was regarded in Western Europe as an act of destruction against European cities. However, the cultural rhetoric of the European identity of cities, such as Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, and Vukovar displays a stark contrast with the European Union's lack of political engagement with the future of Bosnia and Croatia. This rhetoric is also diametrically opposed to the collective politics of exclusion of Bosnian and Croatian migrants from a United Europe. These ambiguous approaches to the notion of ‘Europe’ prompt an analytical focus on the concrete, localized and at times contradictory urban sites where Europeanization is taking place.