The Balkan Route: Hope, Migration and Europeanisation in Liminal Spaces (Southeast European Studies) [1 ed.] 9781032395432, 9781032395548, 9781003350262, 1032395435

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Southeast European Studies

THE BALKAN ROUTE HOPE, MIGRATION AND EUROPEANISATION IN LIMINAL SPACES Robert Rydzewski

The Balkan Route

This book is an ethnography of the people migrating through the Balkan route and the reaction of the local communities who witnessed their struggle to reach the European Union (EU). Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in North Macedonia and Serbia, it pays special attention to the “refugee crisis” that gave birth to a new border regime based on a permanent suspension of laws, normalisation of violence and the entrapment of migrants stranded in a liminal space at the gates to the EU, able to go neither further nor back. The book will appeal to an international audience of academics of migration studies, social and political science, and the wider public interested in migration and social and political changes in Southeast Europe. Robert Rydzewski defended his Ph.D. in Anthropology and Cultural Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, in 2020. Currently, he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at the same university.

Southeast European Studies Series Editor: Florian Bieber

The Balkans are a region of Europe widely associated over the past decades with violence and war. Beyond this violence, the region has experienced rapid change in recent times though, including democratization, economic and social transformation. New scholarship is emerging which seeks to move away from the focus on violence alone to an understanding of the region in a broader context drawing on new empirical research. The Southeast European Studies Series seeks to provide a forum for this new scholarship. Publishing cutting-edge, original research and contributing to a more profound understanding of Southeast Europe while focusing on contemporary perspectives the series aims to explain the past and seeks to examine how it shapes the present. Focusing on original empirical research and innovative theoretical perspectives on the region the series includes original monographs and edited collections. It is interdisciplinary in scope, publishing high-level research in political science, history, anthropology, sociology, law and economics and accessible to readers interested in Southeast Europe and beyond. Balkan Fighters in the Syrian War Tanja Dramac Jiries Peace and Security in the Western Balkans A Local Perspective Edited by Nemanja Džuverović and Věra Stojarová The Media as a Tool of International Intervention House of Cards Nidžara Ahmetašević The Balkan Route Hope, Migration and Europeanisation in Liminal Spaces Robert Rydzewski For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Southeast-EuropeanStudies/book-series/ASHSER1390

The Balkan Route

Hope, Migration and Europeanisation in Liminal Spaces

Robert Rydzewski

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Robert Rydzewski The right of Robert Rydzewski to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-39543-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-39554-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-35026-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

To Ida

Contents

List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgements Introduction

ix x 1

The Movement Before the Border Closure 1 New Border Regime 3 Doing Migration Research in Serbia 6 A Note on Terminology 8 Understanding Liminality 12 Book Structure 15

1 Chaos of Liminality

18

New Beginning 18 Contradicting Developments 21 Transformations 24 Self-Organisation in Disorder 26 Distrust and Naivety 28 Re-bordering 30 Synchronising Gate Closure 32 Liminal Hotspots 35 Facing Uncertainty 39 Conclusions 42

2 Solidarity in Abandonment Albanians as the Other 48 A Sense of Disenfranchisement 52 Europeanisation of the Borders 54 Paving the Balkan Route 58 Liminality as a Bonding Experience 61

45

viii  Contents The Goldmine 62 The Weight of Migrant Reception 65 State Abandonment 67 An Imperative for Solidarity 68 Conclusions 72

3 Europeanisation of Migration

74

Externalising Border Control 74 The Balkan Route 77 Migrations in the Shadow of the EU 83 Subjugation to the EU 85 The Migration Control Trade-off 88 State Exploitation of Welcoming Attitudes 92 Conclusions 93

4 Waiting: The Strain of Liminality

95

Creating Structuralised Waiting 95 Depicting Waiting Infrastructure 98 Subordinating Queuing 102 Delaying 104 Boredom 107 The Burden of Waiting 108 Seeking Asylum in Serbia 111 Conclusions 113

5 Migrant Movement as In-betweenness

115

Defining Migrant Movements 116 The Reaction to Uncertainty 119 Violence as Border Deterrence 122 New Constraints and Opportunities 126 In Search of Hope in Liminality 129 Conclusions 135

Summary: I Must Keep Going

137

References Index

143 159

Figures and Maps

Figures 0.1 The pontoon on which the migrants reached the rocky shores of the rayon from Turkey, Greece, Lesbos, 2016 4 1.1 An activist gives pre-medical aid to a chilled child who arrived on a dinghy from Turkey, Greece, Lesbos, 2016 19 1.2 A man sitting at the gate of the closed border crossing with Hungary, Serbia, Horgoš, 2015 29 2.1 Passengers brought by taxi to the Horgoš–Roszke border crossing area, Serbia, 2015 63 3.1 A Kurd looking towards the closed border between Turkey and Syria, Turkey, Suruc, 2014 80 4.1 Migrants washing themselves and their belongings surrounded by the closed Hungarian border, Serbia, Horgoš, 2015 103 5.1 A man jumping over the gate of the closed border crossing with Hungary, Serbia, Horgoš, 2015 129

Maps 1.1 The refugee transit and reception centres in Serbia as of March 2016 23 1.2 The reception centre in Preševo and its surroundings as of January 2016 25 3.1 The Eastern Mediterranean route 79 4.1 The waiting infrastructure as of June 2016 101 5.1 Migrant movement within Serbia as of June 2016 118

Acknowledgements

This book is a result of ethnographic research, the preliminary findings of which were presented and commented on at various seminars, conferences and talks at, amongst others, the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, the University of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom, at Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany and Centre for Southeast European Studies of the University of Graz. The accomplishment of this work would not have been possible without the support of my research partners and the broad academic community and this support is not to be overestimated. I wish to thank Michal Buchowski for indisputable trust in my work, and intellectual stimulation during both seminars and in the form of private correspondence. He was helpful not only in solving intellectual challenges, but also in the endless struggle of the bureaucratic machinery of academic life. I also ought to thank my academic instructor, and later colleague Natalia Bloch, whose work has always been inspiring and motivating towards a more engaged form of scholarship. I thank her for her comments on my work and especially the long discussion on my conceptual doubts. I must not omit my research partners who entrusted me with their life stories in a highly untrustworthy environment. Thanks to them I was able to understand the multidimensionality of migration and complete this work. Finally, I want to show gratitude to Florian Bieber who invited me to publish this book in the Southeast European Studies Book Series. I acknowledge the infrastructural and financial support of the Wirth Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada and Centre for Southeast European Studies of the University of Graz which ensured time, space and a friendly environment to write down my fractured thoughts and unconnected papers into one, hopefully cohesive work. I would also like to thank Sabine Hess, Marijana Hameršak, Izabela Wagner, Karolina Bielenin-Lenczowska, Aleksandra Turowska, Zbigniew Szmyt and two anonyms reviewers for their constructive comments at various stages of my work. No less important are people who polished, explained and indicated shortcomings in what is not my native language of writing. Those who went through highly unperfect draft versions of this work and helped me to linguistically improve it

Acknowledgements xi are Stephen Kuntz, Jakub Kahul and Sam Bennett. Finally, this project would not materialise without my beloved Żaneta Wełna, mother, sister and the Hirsch Pontes family who continue to show understanding towards my work and support me in the realisation of my life choices. Finally, it is great pleasure that I can showcase the photographs of Maciej Moskwa in this book, and I extend appreciation to him for his contribution to this project. His documentary photographic frames presented in these pages were captured during numerous journeys to various places in Europe and Asia, and as such, they represent a unique and remarkable artistic endeavour. Despite their varied origins, these photographs and my ethnography share a common thread – the fate of migrant people on the Balkan route. Through his lens, Maciej illuminates the experiences of those who have left their homes in search of a better life, showcasing their strength and determination in the face of immense challenges. Maciej’s photographic journey began in Syria, where he first began documenting the dramatic situation unfolding in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011. As his work progressed, he turned his attention to the centre of Europe, where he encountered individuals from diverse backgrounds who had all embarked on journeys in search of new beginnings. What started as a photographic focus on one country, revolution and war, has since evolved into a chronicle of the migration of people from all corners of the world, who often meet on the road.

Introduction

The Movement Before the Border Closure In September 2015, during the making of one of my radio productions, I followed a group of male Syrian migrants from Greece to Hungary. The main protagonist was Basel who I met at the North Macedonia Intercity Bus Station in Thessaloniki in northern Greece. He was not alone, and many like him at the time were fleeing war-torn Syria or Afghanistan, political repression in Iran, poverty or disenchantment with life, or simply chasing personal ambitions. From Greece, with a group of his co-travellers we moved together northward. First, we took regular public transport to the Greek–Macedonian1 border, less than a two-hour bus ride. The bus brought us to the Hotel Hara close to the border. After few hours in the full sun, the Greek police divided us into groups and directed us towards the border with Republic of North Macedonia (thereafter RN Macedonia) where the temporary reception centre was. However, it was not the official border crossing located several kilometres east, between villages Bogordica and Evzoni. Instead, the police led us along an unpaved road towards a green border near Gevgelija in RN Macedonia. This was a section of the just-emerging formalised Balkan corridor, created to transfer migrants from the south of Europe to the north through an improvised passages. Paradoxically, the reason for emergence of migrant movement from the darkness of illegality, at least at the beginning, was not a particular structure that facilitated migrant mobility, but rather the attempts to abruptly stop it, which resulted in suspending people in precarious conditions (Kasparek and Speer 2015). For a few months in the summer of 2015 and 2016, norms and laws were put on pause and previously concealed migrant flows came to public light. Interestingly, the corridor was enabled only to migrants from the global South; while following Basel and his friends, seeing my blond hairs and white skin the police stopped me and ordered me to go to the official border crossing. Despite this “reverse racial segregation”, we met again at the reception centre in Gevgelija where I snuck in, as it was a space solely for non-white border crossers. At that time, this centre was nothing more than an empty field next to the railway, haphazardly enclosed by a fence. In the provisionally organised space, there was a tent, six shipping containers from the International Organisation for Migration (thereafter IOM) and a few border guards. in a vast empty field, drenched in the scorching sun. In one of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262-1

2 Introduction containers border police were issuing chartiá – a temporary travel document. We stayed for a few hours in the field waiting for the state-organised train to take us to another reception centre in Miratovac on the RN Macedonian–Serbian border. The migrants were utterly desperate. Each whistle of the approaching train brought migrants to their feet. Finally, the train arrived but there was no train platform. The gap between the ground and train steps was so high that the majority of passengers were unable to board it. Elbowing and shouting, as well as mutual help, accompanied the frenzied boarding. Eventually, we ended up squeezed tightly in the old, roasting-hot train compartments without water for nine hours. Children were crying and a few elderly people fainted. Despite these horrifying conditions and the plodding speed of the train – even by the RN Macedonian railways’ usual standard – people did not complain, not only because it was free of charge, but also because they were moving north in a relatively safe way. Once we arrived at the Serbian border, we walked through the bumpy fields to the first Serbian village – Miratovac. From there we took a taxi to the reception centre, located 9 kilometres away from Preševo. From June 2015 to March 2016, Preševo, a town with a population just over 13,000, was a transit zone, with the number of migrants arriving per day reaching a peak of 10,000 on 18 October 2015. Migrants flocked to the main street in order to get another transit permits. Little or no assistance was extended to them and, exhausted by their journeys, they slept in the street. Along with other travellers, Basel and his co-travellers queued for nearly two days. After they had registered and purchased the tickets with the money provided by an international non-governmental organisation (thereafter INGO), they were allowed to take a state-organised bus to Belgrade. There, I took them to my favourite hostel where I was a regular visitor. Although group of Syrians had documents allowing them to cross the country, we faced a high degree of distrust from the receptionist and we ended up being denied access there and to several other hotels and hostels we subsequently tried. It took us a while to find one willing to accept migrants. On the morning of the second day, we went to the train station. The police officer directed us to a carriage designated only for migrants, which was separated from other migrants by closed doors. Again, the law enforcers racially profiled me and ordered me to move to another carriage. I persisted to stay with the group, and we managed to continue the journey to Hungary on this regular train together, through Kelebija on the Serbian–Hungarian border. In the aforementioned liminal period of the EU-border regime transition, nonwhite travellers who lacked travel documents but who had the strength and resources could reach Europe relatively feasibly: Crossing three borders between Greece and Hungary could take as little as a few days. Migrants walked across the borders between the Balkan countries with little or no assistance from NonGovernmental Organisations (thereafter NGOs) and volunteer groups. They were often forced to line up for several hours in the midday sun, rain or at night to get transit permits. Their journeys, although hectic, were safer and faster because of relatively open borders and state-supported means of transport. Nevertheless, crossing the Balkan Peninsula in that period had little in common with the migrant

Introduction 3 journeys that took place before the summer of 2015, and particularly after March 2016. During the latter, conditions were much more dangerous and slower due to the limited state support and the securitisation turn of the post-Yugoslav state. These journeys would take not just days, but months and, for some, became endless. New Border Regime This book is an ethnography of the Balkan route – a migratory passage, and part of larger events which in 2015 and 2016 became labelled as the “refugee crisis” or “long summer of migration” (Kasparek and Speer, 2015). Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in various tranches between 2013 and 2021 in RN Macedonia and Serbia, and supported by anthropological, historical, political science literature, the book discusses migration through the Balkan Peninsula and the reaction of local communities to it in the context of European Union (EU) enlargement. I pay special attention to the refugee crisis, which, I argue, was a liminal period of reshaping the border regime in Southeast Europe. Although it might be impossible to precisely indicate the beginning and the end of the refugee crisis, or as some migration scholars tend to name it long summer of migration, we can perhaps distinguish its sequences that resonated in public discourses and media globally. In early summer 2015, the front pages of newspapers showed pictures of the unprecedented number of migrants crossing the Aegean Sea to the Greek islands, and later of migrants traversing the Balkan Peninsula in columns (See Figure 0.1). Shortly after, on the 2nd September, the tragic news spread around the world about small child Alan Kurdi whose dead body had washed up on a Turkish beach, thus revealing the human cost of the deadly sea passage to Europe. A few weeks later, public attention turned to dramatic scenes of the clashes between migrants and law enforcement upon the (temporary) closure of the Greek–Macedonian and then the Serbian–Hungarian borders. In late August–early September, this sequence of events was supplemented by the Hungarian state’s prevention of refugees from boarding international trains bound for Austria, a decision which resulted in the spectacular migrant encampment in Keleti Station in Budapest and soon after the highly mediatised “March of Hope” towards the Austrian border, “the West”. The iconography of the drowned child on the Turkish coast, the migrants’ clashes with security forces upon closure of the borders, migrants occupying the train station and borderlands, or a journalist tripping migrants on the Serbian–Hungarian border all motivated grassroots groups to act for or against migration and border control. But probably the most momentous episode of the refugee crisis was Angela Merkel, the German chancellor’s assurance that “we can do it” – meaning that Germany can host and integrate all migrants who would make it there. Some migrants with the photos of, as they called the chancellor, the “angel”, literally walked through the Balkan Peninsula to get to Germany, their promised land. The words of the German leader in practice meant that Germany provisionally suspended the Dublin regulation

4 Introduction

Figure 0.1 The pontoon on which the migrants reached the rocky shores of the rayon from Turkey, Greece, Lesbos, 2016 Source: Photograph by Maciej Moskwa

that had come in for harsh criticism from the Visegrad Group countries’ leaders and their later refusal of the refugee quotas. After reaching its climax, the long summer of migration was defined by measures to funnel the migration through Southeast Europe. The EU–Turkish deal is wrongly seen as the end of the refugee crisis, since it resulted in the entrapment of migrants between the Balkan borders and the creation of unofficial camps along the Balkan route such as the one in Idomenii in Northern Greece. This chaotic sequence of occurrences does not explain a lot, but it shows that EU-rope2 had temporary collapsed, and what followed was an attempt to re-establish it. Looking at the long summer of migration as a sequence of occurrences, we can claim that it was an “historical event” in the sense of William H. Sewell’s (1996) understanding. He argues that a historical event is a ramified sequence of occurrences that are recognised as notable by contemporaries and result in a durable transformation of structure (Sewell 1996: 844). I suggest that the long summer of migration can be seen as a historical event not only because at least one million people from the so-called Global South, mostly Muslims, entered Europe and supposedly threatened its “Christian” values,3 but also because, and most importantly for me, it has changed the EU border regime structure in Southeast Europe; a structure that is a “medium and the outcome of the practices which constitute social system” (Giddens 1981: 21, as cited in Sewell 1996: 842). According to Sewell, the structure shapes practices, but also people’s practices constitute and reproduce

Introduction 5 structure. This dialectical process is not hierarchical but rather uneven, overlapping and relatively autonomous and “provides actors with meaning, motivations, and recipes for social actions” (Sewell 1996: 842). There are also opponents of the understanding of the refugee crisis as a turning point in EU migration policy. Virginie Guiraudon suggests that one cannot observe any reorientation of policy goals or means with the exception of a skyrocketing budget and widened scope of operations of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (2018: 151). She argues that EU-rope maintained its status quo regarding migration in spite of the rising death toll on the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and violence on the EU’s external border. The “refugee crisis” tautologically justified “crisis measures” that have failed to solve the crisis (2018: 158), she argues. However, others show that during the frenzy of 2015 and 2016, we could observe the creation of a new, often contradictory, border regime in Southeast Europe. In this respect, I find agreement with Bernd Kasparek (2016) in that the pretence of “crisis” allowed the new measures of the border management in Southeast Europe. The novelty of the EU-ropean border regime in this region lays in the filtering process of migrants that takes place in the “hotspots” at the EU external border. I describe this phenomenon in Chapter 1. In addition, a new feature of the border regimes in this region is the normalisation of EU member states’ border guards’ violence as a method of migration deterrence, which was not routinely practiced before 2015 there. An extreme example of such migration politics happened in autumn 2019, when Croatian police fired several shots at a group of people trying to cross the border in an “irregular”4 way. As a result, one man was shot multiple times in the stomach, spine and chest areas and was transported in a critical condition to hospital. Are you Syrious – an NGO – reported that such radical acts of violence towards unarmed children and adults have become regular and systematic in Croatia (Are you Syrious? 19.11.2019). A further new quality of the EU-ropean border regime, which I scrutinise in Chapter 5, is that in this ambiguous space of transit and containment migrants are “caught in mobility” (Hess 2012: 436), neither able to go further nor back. The exceptional period of the long summer of migration left quite a mark on EU-ropean border regimes, but also had long-lasting consequences on internal EU politics and local communities. Some researchers suggest the refugee crisis fuelled greater Islamophobia in the EU (for the Polish case see: Buchowski 2016; for wider EU perspective see: Kalmar 2018). Furthermore, the migrants, from predominantly Muslim countries, became a figure in the political discourse that was used to mobilise right-wing voters and opened the door of national and European parliaments to nationalist and xenophobic political groups such as Law and Justice in Poland, Alternative for Germany or the National Front in France (Lažetić 2018; Bennett 2019; Georgi 2019). Following the same line of thought, Emilio Cocco argues that the refugee crisis reinvigorated Euroscepticism – so far, its ultimate expression seems to have been Brexit – and worsened the relations of the Balkan countries with the EU countries (2017: 298). Thus, the refugee crisis affected both internal EU relations and EU cooperation Southeast European countries.

6 Introduction However, let me make it clear that these changes would most probably have taken place without the refugee crisis. This book instead suggests that the seeds for these changes did exist before 2015, but that the long summer of migration was a kind of catalyst in the process of reshaping the structure. I am highlighting the consequences of the long summer of migration here in order to stress the importance of this event. However, the scope of this work is more limited and modest, and I want to describe what actually happened during this liminal period: How come the EU-ropean border regime collapsed? How, and in what ways, was the new system of border control in Southeast Europe implemented? How were the migration route(s) shaped, and by whom? What was the local community response to it? To answer these questions, this work builds on substantial interdisciplinary literature and ethnographic observation, as well as interviews with migrants, NGO workers and local communities. Doing Migration Research in Serbia The inspiration for the research on the Balkan route was accidental. I travelled to Tetovo in north-western RN Macedonia in the autumn of 2015 within the framework of my initial PhD project about the transformation of a post-Yugoslav city.5 However, after three months in the field, filled with troubles regarding the legalisation of my stay, I received a warning from the border police that I had to leave RN Macedonia immediately due to overstaying my visa-free movement for EU citizens. Terrified by the prospects of the high fines and a potential court case, I left RN Macedonia immediately. Due to its complex ethnic relations and interesting political transition, for my temporary residency I chose Preševo, a town in southern Serbia, somehow similar to Tetovo in terms of ethnic composition and size. In hindsight, I also chose this provincial town in Serbia, inhabited mostly by Albanians, because of the attention Western media was paying at that time to the so-called Balkan route, on which Preševo is located. As one could foresee, it was virtually impossible to focus on the social nuances of local ethnic relations when thousands of people, seeking immediate help, were passing through the town every day. For compassionate and moral reasons, which later combined with my academic aspirations, I decided to join one of the grassroots movements which helped migrants and I eventually carried out research in Preševo, until I was able to return to RN Macedonia. I was engaged in a pro-migrant grassroots organisation in two border zones. I started in Preševo, a predominantly Albanian town located on the border of Serbia with RN Macedonia and Kosovo, where I volunteered for the Border Free Association. The organisation operated in an old tobacco factory, shut down during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, which had been transformed into a temporary reception centre in the summer of 2015. Its purpose was to register and provide temporary respite for those travelling through the Western Balkan countries. This centre offered accommodation and various kinds of support provided by (I)NGOs and to a much lesser extent by the Serbian state. For the second location for my research, I chose Subotica and its surroundings, on the Serbian–Hungarian border

Introduction 7 where, from June 2015 until the last few weeks of 2016, a grassroots group called Fresh Response operated. In contrast to the Border Free Association, this group had run operations along the border. Subotica was a kind of gateway to the EU, with poorly equipped government facilities for migrants and minimal NGO presence. Our work consisted of distributing food and non-food items (NFIs), providing psychological support and information about the current situation along the Balkan route. As such, my research turned into activist research, which presumes the acquisition of theoretical knowledge through action (Hale 2006; Goldstein 2014; Picozza 2017; Sandri 2017). It is also stemmed from my conviction that academic work might be based on activism since they both share the same set of values and can mutually enhance each other. Similarly, Bojan Bilić and Vesna Janković see this cooperation as follows: Instead of competition and exclusion, different kinds of knowledge produced in these communities, should cross-fertilise and enrich each other. Such a combination could yield new emancipatory visions and practices. (2012: 27) During my fieldwork, the activist research gave me access to migrants en route, who often stay far from the public eye (see Coutin 2005). Hence, this methodological approach let me gain information about my research partners’ whereabouts, their needs and emotional state, but also made me follow them in their movements. Besides the fieldwork conducted in these two locations, I also visited migrants in other government centres and unofficial settlements scattered around Serbia. Therefore, my research was combined with George Marcus’ (1998: 90–94) concept of multi-sited ethnography, which allows one to follow migrants’ histories in different parts of the globalised world and search for unexpected connections between places and contexts. I thus followed migrants on their journey through Greece, RN Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary in the summer of 2015. Apart from conducting my fieldwork in Preševo, Subotica and Horgoš I often visited the reception centres and migrant unofficial settlements Šid and Belgrade. Between 2016 and 2018, I visited some of my research partners, by which point they had either reached their destination of choice or were still on the way, as “Dubliners”6 (Picozza 2017). This helped me to understand their multidirectional journeys through Southeast Europe and its changing conditions. My fieldwork in Serbia was accidental and thus unplanned, therefore, the research group was not defined in the pre-fieldwork phase, but rather the field selected my research partners. The volunteer aid points of distributions were stop-over places, which were in themselves also a selection mechanism (Newhouse 2018: 88). The main recipients of the assistance of the grassroots organisations operating outside the government facilities were mostly single males, who automatically entered the scope of my interests. This group constitutes the majority7 of migrants who arrived to Europe by the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 (Shreeves 2016: 4). It is not surprising since, as de Genova writes, “deadly obstacle courses serve to sort out the most able-bodied, disproportionately favouring the younger, stronger and

8 Introduction healthier among prospective (labour) migrants, and disproportionately favouring men over women” (2016). The single male migrants whose access to state facilities was hindered were, therefore, both more visible in public spaces and more in need of assistance than families or single females, who were usually covered by the various protective programmes. Thus, single male migrants’ attachment to, and reliance on, grassroots operations was also due to being seen as in low priority of need by NGOs working in Serbia. However, this unexpected focus on migration was not a total novelty for me. Previously, I had had an opportunity to work on projects on immigration to Poznań in Poland and emigration from the post-Yugoslav states. Additionally, a significant part of my radio documentary production experience was dedicated to national and international migration issues. All this help me to better understand migration from and through the Balkan Peninsula. A Note on Terminology The public debate over the naming people on the move reached its epicentre on 20 August 2015, when Al Jazeera published an article entitled Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean migrants. The author of this article, Barry Malone, explained that the term “migrants” is a pejorative umbrella term that obscures the horrors of the Syrian people, as well as undermining the EU-ropean obligation to help them. By using the term “migrants”, the Al Jazeera journalist concludes, we give an advantage to those who want to see migrants only as economic migrants, that is, those who, seeking a better material existence, emigrate to a country where economic advancement is possible. This argument further extends Izabela Wagner-Saffray (2020), who claims that the labels we use to name people are important. The label matters because they stigmatise, and this can determine someone’s life. The term “migrants”, according to her stands for “a free choice and an individual decision” (Ibid: 113) motivated by bogus, perhaps economic, claims to stay in EU-rope. The call to avoid the word “migrants” was echoed not only in many global media and academic discourse – which decided either to add a note on terminology under the texts on migration related issues – but also locally, for example in the camps in Serbia. Soon after publication of the Al Jazeera piece, volunteers in the Preševo camp corrected me by saying that these people are refugees, not migrants. However, the following months showed that the emphasis on terminology did little to enforce the duty to protect people fleeing war, political terror, hunger or because of a desire to change the environment in which they live. In fact, their situation worsened month by month. Today, we witness dramatically overcrowded refugee (not migrant) camps at the EU’s external borders and the firing of live ammunition at people knocking on the EU gates even before they are asked why they are coming. And yet, under the Geneva Convention on the Status of Persons, anyone arriving at another national border has the right to claim asylum; and host authorities should lawfully consider the legitimacy of that claim. The states of the global North are doing their best to minimise their obligations under the Convention. Moreover, critics rightly condemn the incompatibility of the Convention, which was established more than half a century ago, with today’s

Introduction 9 reality. Among other things, opponents point out that the distinction between an economic migrant and a refugee is increasingly difficult. Let us consider for a moment the case of a young a Nigerian, who has left his village to seek work in Libya or EU-rope, but who has experienced unimaginable deprivation and suffering along the way? Does his experience on the road change his status upon arrival from migrant to refugee? Is this categorical fetishism, as named by Raia Apostolova (2015), not a dead end? The ambiguity in defining people on their way to EU-rope was present in Serbia throughout my entire fieldwork. I asked an UNHCR officer in the Preševo temporary centre how they categorised people who were stranded, since they rarely applied for asylum in Serbia and their transit documents expired. His response was that these people were “persons in need of international protection”. Such a group is defined by UNHCR as people who may not qualify as refugees but may, nevertheless, in certain circumstances require international protection (UNHCR 2018a: 138). This status did not have its equivalent in Serbian law, thus migranti – a common denominator for unregistered asylum seekers in Serbia – stranded in Serbia stayed there illegally but were tolerated by state authorities. Therefore, “persons in need of international protection” was a rather vague category in the Serbian context, which proves that there is still a conceptual and methodological problem in studying transit migration. The opacity of official categories had an enormous impact on migrants movement. During the summer of 2015, people passing along the Balkan route were allowed to move northwards. A few months later, the doors to the EU-rope started systematically shutting and as a consequence of the filtering process, only Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis were allowed to seek asylum in the EU; that is, only those from these three nations were recognised as refuges or asylum seekers by the state authorities and most (I)NGOs. A few weeks later, only Syrians and Afghans from a few regions of each country were recognised as “genuine refugees”. The rest were included in a group termed “economic migrants”. Soon after that, in spring 2016, everyone who tried to reach Europe in the search of a better life, security and justice, was hindered in seeking asylum, detained or/and pushed-back south. All of this shows how easy and fast labels – principles of justice and the practice of judgment regarding people on the move – can change. Therefore, I am reluctant towards categorising people travelling in an irregular way as “refugees”, “asylum seekers” or “economic migrants”, first of all, because the status of people traversing the Balkan Peninsula changed during the refugee crisis. They switched from legal to illegal migrants. Second, Serbian law had neither a special category for migrants who cross the border in an irregular way and do not apply for asylum, nor had a category such as “illegal migrants”.8 Thus, being a potential “asylum seeker” or an “economic immigrant” in the EU does not change the legal or social status of a person passing through Serbia (cf. Lažetić and Jovanović 2018: 7). As a result, this distinction does not enrich analysis but instead only reproduces bureaucratic categories. Third, the term “refugee”, as Natalia Bloch writes, is highly politicised: Refugee status is a political category created on the basis of international law, which labels its holders (Bloch 2011: 10)

10 Introduction and according to these labels, the right to protection is guaranteed. I suggest that categories such as “refugee” or “economic migrant” do not clarify anything, but serve as discriminatory and arbitrary selective mechanisms, adjusted to the current political and economic setting. Furthermore, the literature on refugees shows that the meaning of this term has had also changed. According to Marta Mitrović Stojić – who has extensively analysed Serbian migration law and the Serbian state’s response to migrants in the last decades – during existence of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (thereafter Yugoslavia) refugees were defined as people who in theory were persecuted abroad because of their democratic beliefs, but in practice were arbitrarily defined as such and this was used by the Yugoslav state for political purposes (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1108). Later, as I explain in more detail in Chapter 3, refugees in Serbia were mostly associated with displaced people fleeing the Yugoslav civil wars at the turn of the 21st century. In the postSecond World War period the dominant idea of migration was one based on a binary distinction between forced and voluntary migration, characterised respectively by political and economic reasons to move (Fontanari 2019: 20). Although the definition of a “refugee”, as a category defined in the Geneva Convention of 1951 and later harmonised at the international level by the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, agreed upon by the United Nations in 1967 has not been redefined, the connotations associated with it and the actual recognition of “refugees” in the last 50 years has changed not only locally, but also internationally. However, apart from distinction made on the basis of the motivation to migrate, there was also the Cold War affiliation of migrants: The ideological division into the communist Eastern Bloc and the democratic West, co-shaped in the latter by the image of refugees as anti-communist, white men. As Elena Fontanari explains, people who fled the global South but did not flee communist countries did not fit the “refugee” category and were treated as undocumented migrants (2019: 20). Importantly, undocumented migrants in the post-war economic boom were not treated as a problem and had an open door to legalisation of their stay and integration through the guest-worker system once they found employment. Elsewhere, Fontanari shows that the understanding of socially constructed categories such as “refugees” changed during the oil crisis in 1973 (2019: 21). After the oil shock, the only way to legalise a stay in Europe was through the asylum system, prompting applicants to invent stories about political persecution in order to fit the system, (Ibid.). In that period, she writes, “the cultural image of a refugee shifted from that of the ‘hero’, a single person, to that of an anonymous mass of people which created the “first cluster of undocumented migrants” (Ibid. 21). These facts reflect the praxis of the EU states that as long as migrants are needed, they are welcome. As soon as the spectre of economic decline appears on the horizon, the perception of migrants and their access to the labour market changes dramatically. More recently, Didier Fassin (2012) has shown this in the French context, pointing out that people fleeing political persecution and wars have a chance to be recognised as “refugees” only if their asylum case is built around a life-threatening illness for which care is not available in an applicant’s country of origin. In this sense “the logic of

Introduction 11 compassion prevailed over the right to asylum” (Fassin 2012: 145). A consequence of the humanitarian reasoning approach of international organisations and NGOs that have a mandate to protect asylum seekers’ rights is the growing group of migrants who fall outside the scope of interest of these institutions. This means that although some migrants fit the prototypical political refugee category, they cannot obtain it because they do not match the vulnerability criteria of the UNHCR (Heck and Hess 2017: 48). Finally, in their book Good Economics for Hard Times Nobel prize-winning economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo clearly show that people do not leave their homes due to economic incentive on their own. It is rather that they find life intolerable in their home country “because of the collapse of everyday normality: the unpredictability and violence” (2019: 18). Following this logic, all migrants are forced to leave their motherlands and thus should receive some sort of protection. In the same vein, sociologist Inka Stock (2019) suggests migration is often existential quest or challenge. She shows that migration might be triggered by separation or death of a partner, violent attacks on one’s home or possessions or simply a lack of other choices. It also can be a way to improve oneself as a person and by extension their community (Ibid: 43). It can be a way to actively try to control one’s fate. So, migration despite being a risky endeavour brings hope of social advancement. In the crowds of people trying to reach EU, I met Pakistani Christians escaping persecution, Syrian students fleeing war and dreaming about finishing their degree in the EU, Iranians running away from the yoke of Islamic Republic and hoping to live in a European secular state, but also an Algerian teenager from a deprived family who dreamed about joining a gang in Denmark, and many others. Acknowledging the variety of motivations to depart allow us to see the agency in/of migration. Bering this in mind, we can perhaps agree that defining those who are on the move has become a highly challenging element in the exploration of migration to Europe. However, it is necessary to agree on the terms that embrace the statuses of this diverse group. Being aware of the dangers of generalisation, I have decided to use the term “migrants” instead of “refugees”, “asylum seeker” or “illegal migrants”. Following Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, I understand migrants as a “subject who crosses or negotiates the world’s borderscapes, avoiding where possible the recourse to categories such as refugee, asylum seeker, or ‘illegal’ migrant invented by state bureaucracies or their international counterparts” (2013:142). Thus, the term “migrants” here refers to people who are often aware of the danger of politicised categories and try to cross certain space in defined time without being put in any of them. This, however, does not mean that upon reaching their destination, they would not apply for asylum or temporary protection. I use the term “migrants” in its most general and inclusive form. By doing so, I am opposing the reproduction of essentialising and exclusionary categories that are often instrumentalised to legitimise a politics of exclusion and control (Fiedler et al. 2017). The term “migrant” used here refers to the etymological origins of it; an ancient Greek word meaning “to change, go, move”. Thus, it suggests a positive attempt to change one’s life through movement (Hume 2015). Furthermore, I understand the term “migrants” as

12 Introduction one that embraces the multilinear and diverse character of migration and thus I will use it unless it is necessary to differentiate between migrants’ legal status. Understanding Liminality In her 1992 classic essay about the implication of the rooting of peoples and the territorialisation of national identity Liisa Malkki confronts the sedentarist thinking embedded in the “national order of things” (Ibid.: 25). She argues against such notions as transplantation and uprootedness of refugees and thus the transitional character of migration. According to Malkki, such a presentation of displacement fuels its understanding by policymakers and scholars as a politico-moral problem. One example she provides is Second World War refugees, whose “loss of bodily connection to their national homelands came to be treated as a loss of moral bearings. Rootless, they were no longer trustworthy as ‘honest citizens’” (1992: 32). Since this substantial publication, scholars have seemed to be reluctant in describing migration in transitory terms and looked for other concepts that would grasp the multidimensionality of migration and oppose binary divisions. An expression of this might be the proliferation of works in the spirit of the “mobility turn” that aims to conceptualise mobility as a normal social form of contemporary global society, in doing so criticising the sedentary and static paradigm (Papastergiadis 2000; Urry 2000). Such works emphasise the multi-directionality of the fragmented journeys, during which migrants are fixed to several places (Collyer 2007, 2010; Hess 2012; Picozza 2017; Fontanari 2019). These are just few examples of a vast critique of portraying migration as an unnatural phenomenon and migrants’ paths as linear, with strictly defined beginnings and ends to the journey. Scholars have argued against fixed definitions of who can be labelled as a transit migrant concerning time-space, location-direction, state perspective or cause of migration criteria as essential characteristics (Collyer and da Haas 2012: 470; İçduygu and Yükseker 2012: 452, Hess 2012: 429). They have shown that being in “transit” can be a years-long endeavour and it is not simply a spatial question of a linear crossing from country of origin to destination. Rather, being in transit can mean a protracted situation of criss-cross mobility (Hess 2012: 429), changing legal status (Collyer and da Haas 2012: 472), exploitation and stigmatisation (Bredeloup 2012: 464). Furthermore, the category of transit is a relatively new political invention that comes along with the definition of certain countries as transit countries (Hess 2012: 431). By deconstructing the category of “transit”, these researchers oppose the understanding of migrant journeys as linear, with a clearly defined country of origin and destination, and opt instead for the notions reflecting changing migration conditions, as well as migrants’ legal status, that help to understand the fluidity and dynamics of the migration process. Nevertheless, despite this critique, other researchers have shown that migration is actually a transition, albeit without a defined end. For example, Shahram Khosravi (2010), in his book “Illegal” Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders, writes about the displacement that leads to long-lasting separation, deterioration and physical pain and tears. Resonating with Arnold van Gennep’s rite of passage

Introduction 13 (1960), Khosravi indicates the phases of irregular migration as: Separation (2010: 22), transition (Ibid.: 3) or transitional being (Ibid.: 98) and integration (Ibid.: 76). Furthermore, geographers Michael Collyer (2010: 278) and Stock (2019: 39) suggest that journeys of migrants from West Africa are seen as an important rites of passage. Thus, displaced populations are often perceived as being in a liminal situation, but what is more important, the displaced population perceive themselves as “waiting and hoping for the return that will normalize their situation again”, thus they wait to finish the liminal phase (Horst and Grabska 2015: 6). In a similar way, Fontanari (2019) and Cathrine Brun (2015) show how protracted displacement and the impossibility of settling down contribute to migrants’ senses of suspension and mental distress. The suspension, being not here and not yet there, is typical for liminality. A number of scholars have already, more or less explicitly, used the concept of liminality to examine the situation of migrants (Donnan and Wilson 1999; Wilson and Donnan 2009; Cangià 2018; Mzayek 2019; Suter 2019; Stock 2019). Flavia Cangià writes that “migration is an experience of living in a limbo, as a journey that is never complete but repeatedly caught between moments of departure and arrival” (2021: 39). Migrants are trapped in space and time, unable to visit relatives, see their children growing, they are fixed in “eternal present” (Donnan and Wilson 1999: 12). Therefore, migration – and thus displacement – have a strong connotation with liminality and “in-betweenness”, which is not necessarily related to being uprooted and not yet at home in a new place, but rather, as argued by Brun, can take the form of “being attached to several places while simultaneously struggling to establish the right to a place” (2015: 21). Furthermore, Cecilia Menjívar (2006) writes about “liminal legality” defined as the grey area between legal categories in which Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants were kept in the United States. She argues that immigration law creates an excluded population and ensured its vulnerability and precariousness by blurring the boundaries between legality and illegality (2006: 1002). This kind of “liminal legality” was also experienced by migrants crossing Serbia. Those who officially expressed an intention to seek asylum in Serbia but did not go on to submit a formal asylum application, or whose transit documents expired, fell into a grey area of Serbian law. Even though their legal status often changed overnight, their stay in the country was tolerated. They were allowed to freely use public transportation and accommodation in the government-run centres, although there was technically no legal framework governing their status and rights. This book contributes to the aforementioned discussion in threefold way. First, I show that migrants’ legal as well as geographical position situate them in liminal space, that, in the original sense, is characterised by a dislocation from established structures and uncertainty about the outcome of the transition process (Wydra et al. 2018: 2). Liminal beings have no status: Migrants in Serbia are neither asylum seekers nor travellers. Second, I show that the in-betweenness that migrants found in Serbia was filled with the imposition of waiting, violence, uncertainty and hazardous living conditions. Furthermore, drawing on Bjorn Thomassen’s inspirations, I would like to briefly note potential features of liminality, including: Its dangerous character, that it can be routinised, and that persons involved in it are convinced that

14 Introduction there is always “a way out of it”, but at the same time can have “the experience of being stuck in liminality” (Thomassen 2009: 21–22). However, “stuckedness” does not impose geographical immobility. Since the liminality is supposed to be temporary position that eventually should come to an end, it generated movement, gave a glimpse of hope for a better future. Third, as liminality is also about new events and experiences, I scrutinise the social dynamics within heterogenous local communities. I suggest that in 2015 and 2016, the ethnonationalists elites of post-Yugoslav states were silenced, allowing the residents to ignore neighbourly animosities and bring sympathy with migrants to the forefront, giving space for new human interactions. Thus, analysing the refugee crisis as an unstructured situation gives the opportunity to link migrants’ experiences with local communities and the theory of hope and hence to understand the meaning of suspension and movement when the EU tried to re-establish control over its Southeastern external borders. I ought to stress that I distance myself from the term “transit country” that suggests a linear journey of migrants from sending to destination country. I do not, however, question the term “liminality” and thus “transition” in Victor Turner’s sense (1969) that emphasises moments of freedom of movement, but also the impossibility of settling; the state in which existing norms disappear and the outcome of actions is uncertain. Liminality in this work characterises a period when the structure of the EU border regime was suspended and then re-shaped. It also relates to the existential experience of being suspended in chaos that profoundly affects one’s personality. At a more general level, however, it opens up a space for subjectivity of various local communities. I would like to discuss in this book one more dimension of liminality where migrants found themselves. In the last two decades the Serbian state has balanced itself between alliances with Russia, China and the EU. The last one has kept Balkan states and their citizens in the transitory stage since the dissolution of Yugoslavia: Offering incentives to open new chapters in the integration process with the EU and simultaneously hindering the possibility of becoming a full member of the Union. This position of suspension is depicted well in the words of the Serbian novelist Dragan Velekić, who writes that post-Yugoslavian countries stay “outside of the walls surrounding the Schengen area”. Serbia as “the Other” within geographical Europe belongs to “the expanding balconies on which countries at the edge of Europe wait to one day descend to the promised [European] floor” (Velekić 2003: 337). Serbia, RN Macedonia and other Western Balkan countries are excluded from the elite (and elitist) EU due to an orientalisation and paternalisation of the Balkans. As such, they constitute a repository of negative characteristics upon which a positive image of the Western Europe has been built (Todorova 1997: 188). Therefore, liminality here is also related to the hegemonic power in which the politically and economically stronger EU keeps citizens of the post-Yugoslav region in a state of entrapment between ethnonationalists elites supported by the EU for keeping migrants in their territory and the selective European border regime which sucks a highly educated and cheap labour force from the region, creating a “damp ground” for unwanted at the EU margins. The sense of entrapment on the EU’s doorstep, combined with encountering masses of migrants in their towns and

Introduction 15 villages, disturbs their local community “normality” and exposes them to physical and psychological liminal experiences. Finally, this work contributes to the discussion on liminality by relating it to the changes in the border regime during the refugee crisis in Southeast Europe. Hence, the concept of liminality seems to be particularly interesting when analysing this period because, as Cangià argues, during rupturing event, a new pattern of thought and action take place (2021: 42) Lenses of liminality thus help us to see different shades of the refugee crisis; not only the collapse of an old structure, but also the development of new one. Thus, to paraphrase Stef Jansen’s (2015) writing on abnormality in liminality, much is undone but redone too. Abnormality creates productive and transformative social and political conditions and, as such, can be useful in the analysis of my ethnographic material. Following this discussion, I have decided to use the term migrants in a liminal space; a space which proved to be violent, uncertain, and legally undefined, but also filled with glimpses of hope, and trust between migrants and civil society. As a part of the Balkan route, Serbia could be understood as a threshold of the EU. In order to elaborate my ethnographic argument properly I utilise the concept of liminality, not only because of the obvious geopolitical position of Serbia on the migrant route – both real and imagined, Liminality serves here, first, to highlight the political circumstances that suspend migrant movement across borders. Second, it helps to understand how migrants tackle this hostile, uncertain and unpredictable situation. Third, it allows us to show new forms of interaction. Fourth, it aids scrutiny of the change of the EU-ropean border regime and reactions to it. Therefore, liminality is understood here not as an explanatory concept. Rather, it is meant to indicate that the outcome of the situation experienced by all parties – but migrants in particular – is uncertain and that much depends on contingencies. Understood this way, liminality “serves to conceptualize moments where the relationship between structure and agency is not easily resolved” since “the very distinction between structure and agency ceases to make meaning” (Thomassen 2009: 5). Book Structure Throughout following pages I reconstruct the Balkan route and occurrences that took place in Serbian, and to a lesser extent RN Macedonian sections of the Balkan corridor. In the first chapter, Chaos of Liminality, my aim is to provide an ethnographic description of what actually had happened in this liminal stage on the Serbian southern border crossing during the long summer of migration. I argue that this period was plunged into chaos which through dramatic non-linear, abrupt and often contradictory developments of law and civil society and law enforcement responses to the influx of migrants brought about a new border regime in Southeast Europe. The chapter shows how in the liminal period of the refugee crisis the changes in migrants’ management have left a mark on the ground and how these changes were integrated into ordinary modes of conduct during the period when the new border regime was incorporated.

16 Introduction In Chapter 2, Solidarity in Abandonment, I broaden the perspective of my work on liminal space beyond the refugee crisis and migration through the Balkan Peninsula and show the universalities of migrants’ histories and their journey’s trajectories in the metaphorical and physical liminal space: A space surrounded by EU members and kept by them endlessly in the position of candidate country, as well as a space where, during the liminal events of 2015 and 2016 new human interactions appeared. My main argument here is that the post-Yugoslav region in this limited period can be perceived as a liminal space, where the local population, building on their own experiences of marginalisation, exile, and extensive migration, felt compelled to support and show solidarity towards newcomers. Chapter 3, Europeanisation of Migration, is built mostly on anthropological, historical and political science scholarship, and uses the example of the adjustment of Serbian migration policy to the EU directives to explain how EU enlargement externalised border control and formed migration movement in Southeast Europe. I show that integration with the EU shaped not only migration through this region but also emigration from these states. I explain that the promise of the EU enlargement for post-Yugoslav states works as an incetive for the post-Yugoslav countries to subjugate their migration laws to the EU requirements that, on one had made the Balkan states halt “unwanted migrants” on their territories, and simultaneously facilitate emigration to the EU of educated young citizens from these states. Thus, EU polities create racist and exploitative regulations, dividing people into “undeserving irregular migrants” and “mobile professional workers”. I also show how, in trying to stop irregular migration the EU trades shortcomings in the rule of law and free speech in post-Yugoslav region for alleged political stability in the region which in fact is only illusionary. Chapter 4, Waiting: The Strain of Liminality, investigates the entrapment of migrating populations in structuralised waiting in the Serbian section of the Balkan route in the post-liminal phase, namely closure of the borders in Southeast Europe. Using the case study of temporary reception and transit centres, as well as unofficial settlements in Serbia, I conceptualise waiting as a method of control over migrants’ time in which people are deprived of state protection, the right to selfdetermination, and dignity. I argue that waiting involves disciplinary politics and power relations. Furthermore, I show that the psychological strain of entrapment between borders can cause disorientation and undermines self-confidence and motivation, which makes it harder to envisage a happy end to the journey and thus discourages migrants from attempting to cross the border. I show how the unbearable conditions of waiting and the lack of effective methods to resettle migrants in the EU countries pushed them to extreme solutions. Finally, Chapter 5, Migrant Movement as In-betweenness, analyses migrants’ movements on the fringes of the EU. Despite of the great efforts to militarize the external EU borders, externalize border control, the push-backs and violence of the border guards, and imposition of waiting, migrants persisted in their attempts to move forward. Focusing on the border crossers’ geographical movement around Serbia in the first year(s) after the closure of the Balkan corridor (before the change of transit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, starting in 2018),

Introduction 17 I explore the relationship between time, space, and the meaning of movement on the doorstep of the EU. I challenge the perception of unidirectional migrant movement and demonstrate that it is frequently interrupted, allowing migrants to move in reverse directions or even circularly. By framing a subjective narrative within an objective data framework, I emphasize the experiences of migrating populations and seek to understand human responses to geographical entrapment and uncertainty. I connect the concepts of hope, waiting, and mobility. Notes 1 Macedonia (FYROM) changed its name to the Republic of North Macedonia in February 2019. For the sake of consistency, "RN Macedonia" will be used throughout the text. 2 I understand border regimes as a set of legal systems and practices that define people’s ability to move and live, based on a person’s legal status. This legal status depends not only on the travel document that one possesses but also on the place of birth, education, wealth and the colour of skin. Analyses of border regimes, similarly to analyses of mobility regimes, help to highlight the complex interplay of national and international migration regulations and migrants’ practices. 3 Here I am referring to Victor Orbán’s words, published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2015). 4 By “irregular way” I mean in a way seen by the authorities as illegal. 5 This research was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (Grant No. 2015/17/N/ HS6/00694). 6 “Dubliners” are border crossers that are allowed to move but not to settle down in another EU state. 7 Migrants who arrived in the EU by sea in 2015, 58% were men, 17% women and 25% children (gender not specified) (Shreeves 2016). 8 Those who express the intent or apply for asylum are named asylum seekers (tražioci azila). Those who received asylum are called asylees (azilanti) (Lažetić and Jovanović 2018: 7).

1

Chaos of Liminality

New Beginning From May to the end of December 2015, migrants kept arriving by the thousands to Preševo in Serbia. In July 2015 alone, the temporary reception centre for migrants in this town registered nearly 30,000 migrants’ intentions to seek asylum (Beznec et al. 2016: 47). As a result, the area around the camp disintegrated into complete chaos. For nearly five months – from June to November – migrants lined up outside the camp for transit documents, blocking the main artery of the town. Exhausted by the journey, people slept, ate and talked on the street for a few days with little assistance. The police tried to manage people who were pushing towards the centre’s gate. Those who were in the middle of the suffocating crowd were screaming in pain. The view was distressing. Garbage was scattered everywhere; the two portable toilets were overloaded, the street turning into a drain. Because of the lack of sanitary facilities, newcomers defecated in the open. Used clothes, emergency reflective blankets and other waste covered the whole neighbourhood and contributed to the suffocating smell of decomposing garbage and excrement. The noise of children crying, people talking, calling or screaming, smugglers touting their services, policemen beating migrants and constantly scraping on the asphalt guard rails to control the crowd were overwhelming. Shops price-gouged, hotels enjoyed their heydays. To add to the maelstrom at the scene Clowns Without Borders arrived – a Spanish NGO, who, by spreading smiles and laughs, tried to support migrants emotionally and psychologically. Right in front of the queue to the camp, they performed shows which temporarily relaxed, entertained, and allowed for moments of forgetting and confusion. Somewhere between the migrants, police, volunteers, tents and waste, fumes rose from buses and taxies impatiently awaiting migrants to drive them northwards. In the spring and summer of 2015, chaos crept into the public spaces of cities, towns and villages and the lives of their residents in Southeast Europe. Some borders were suddenly closed, only to be opened a few days later, causing bewilderment and insecurity equally among the migrants and the local population. Hundreds of thousands of exhausted people gathered at the borders, train stations and unofficial settlements. They made their way through the local communities’ orchards, fields and streets. The psychological pressure on local communities and DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262-2

Chaos of Liminality 19

Figure 1.1 An activist gives pre-medical aid to a chilled child who arrived on a dinghy from Turkey, Greece, Lesbos, 2016 Source: Photograph by Maciej Moskwa

migrants themselves rose and fell. The flow of thousands of people was a challenge for underdeveloped local infrastructure. Some state limited access to public transportation for the citizens to enable migrants to cross their countries. Since the political developments were unclear, so too were the futures of local communities and migrants. Their lives stopped and accelerated intermittently, sinking further and further into chaos (see Figure 1.1). This vignette briefly shows the very moment of the collapse of the order of borders, the creation the Balkan corridor – an exceptional space that consisted of state-run camps, organised transportation and suspension of laws, which facilitated migration towards the EU. Mie Scott Georgsen and Bjørn Thomassen on example of Maidan protests in Ukraine write that setting up barricades “plays a crucial role in protest and might be an indicator of liminal thresholds” (2017: 203). A similar claim can be made with regard to the long summer of migration. After an initial suspension of the borders, new fences emerged as markers of the beginning of a new order. It also indicated the chaos and limits of comprehension that followed it. Traditional sociology, as pointed out by Bernhard Giesen (2018: 62), tends to look at chaos “as pathologies, disturbances, and crises that require stabilising repairs and counteracting restorations of order”, in other words as disorder, randomness and unpredictability. But scholars of transition and ambivalence have revealed that it might also be a generative force. From the structuralist analysis of the formula of

20  Chaos of Liminality myth by Claude Lévi-Strauss, to Marshall Sahlins’ understanding of history and Arjun Appadurai’s postmodernist approach to globalisation, research has demonstrated that disorder is not just a sudden departure from order but an integral component of a structured, sequential bifurcation process (Mosko 2005: 15). In contrast, reordering, as suggested by Sewell (1996), is nothing but a cluster of intense bursts, as opposed to smoothness and linearity that are characterised by stagnation and repetitiveness: Even the accumulation of incremental changes often results in a build-up of pressures and a dramatic crisis of existing practices rather than a gradual transition from one state of affairs to another (843) Therefore, chaos, comparably to liminality, is a process where the old constellation loses its attachment in favour of not yet crystallised new patterns. The playfulness of these two stages is based on ambiguity and uncertainty of the results. Underneath the process of creation of new structures, contradictory tendencies are always at work, as once put by Lévi-Strauss, “on the one hand towards homogenisation and on the other towards new distinctions” (1978: 20). In his rather convoluted analyses of chaos, Mark S. Mosko suggests that chaos exhibits six basic interrelated characteristics (2005: 7). Among those that are particularly important for my analysis is a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This quality assumes that two or more systems of similar beginning states will most probably reach “nearly but not identical future states”. As the butterfly effect theory explains, small differences in the initial state can have a dramatic effect at the end of the process of transformation. Thus, the systems that appear to be similar can behave unpredictably because minor differences at the beginning can produce large effects at the end (Ibid.: 9–10). An example that illustrates this are the developments at the external border of the European Union. Various countries located at the EU border faced the influx of migrants, but each of them, despite implementing similar measures to halt migration, achieved different results due to local variables. The second quality specified by Mosko relates to nonlinearity that opposes the linear development of systems and highlights the potential complex results of chaos. This trait was especially visible in the rise of new border regimes in Southeast Europe during the long summer of migration. During this period, the borders were interchangeably opened and closed, as if various social and political forces could not agree on the response to the migrant influx. In describing nonlinearity, Mosko refers to Edward N. Lorenz’s “strange attractors”, a sort of complex system of various variables that involves dynamic, recursive relations and a pattern of reversal. The nonlinear pattern of development never repeats themselves; thus, it “never returns to the same state that it has been in before” (Ibid.: 18). By bringing the chaos theory to liminality, Mosko claims that there are “no analogous moments of two distinct historical performances of the same rite” (19). Another element of chaos is the already mentioned attractors, which are non-repetitive portions of a system’s movement (Ibid.: 17). Attractors can bring conflict and contradictions – yet another feature of chaos. The last characteristic important for my analysis is self-organisation. During times of confusion and randomness, systems become

Chaos of Liminality 21 open to interactions with their environments. This will be particularly visible in the next chapter, where I describe a local communities response to migrant influx and the solidarity beyond ethnic lines. Although most liminal events are neutralised and reabsorbed into pre-existing structures (Sewell 1996: 843), I argue here that after the initial chaotic state, the long summer of migration was part of restructuring of the EU border regime in Southeast Europe. Therefore, this chapter shows, first, how in the initial chaos of liminality of the refugee crisis the changes of practices and policy impacted migrants’ movement, and second, how these changes were integrated into an ordinary mode of conduct. I emphasise that during the change from the liminal to post-liminal period, states supported re-bordering by a turn from humanitarianism to securitisation. The switch in refugee reception was introduced through violence, confinement and the installation of “hotspots” – like centres – an approach that imprecisely and arbitrarily filtered “unwanted migrants” from “genuine refugees” in the buffer zones at the entry points to the EU. Moreover, I demonstrate how the rebordering process led to, among other things, the creation of unofficial settlements along the Balkan route, high uncertainty among migrants, the rehabilitation of old clandestine routes and refugees’ dependence on smugglers services. I suggest that the new qualities of the border regime in Southeast Europe fit to the border EU’s migration policy which aims externalised border control further south, to legalise and rationalise the division into various categories of migrants and control their ability to move. Contradicting Developments On 20 August, RN Macedonia’s Internal Affairs Minister Mitko Chavkov declared a state of emergency and closed the country’s southern border. The deployment of the army, according to a government statement, sought to “increase the security of the local population” and stop a migrant influx (Radio Free Europe 2015). Despite the authorities’ attempts to regain order, the southern border reopened days later. RN Macedonia was not the only state which looked for the exceptional measures to halt migration. Just a few weeks later, on 15 September, Hungary too declared a “state of crisis” in two of its southern counties bordering Serbia, justified by “mass immigration” (Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office 2015). A “state of crisis”, a Hungarian Government Spokesperson explained, “may be declared if there is a threat to public safety and the maintenance of law and order in the settlement, or direct threat to public health” (Ibid.) Consequently, the southern border with Serbia, preceded by the erection of a fence, transit zones was closed. The echoing notion of exception during the refugee crisis, Sabina Hess and Bernard Kasparek write, made it possible “to systematically undermine the standards of international and European law without serious challenges” (2017: 63). The unprecedented number of migrants passing through the Balkan Peninsula during the long summer of migration resulted in highly contradictory and hybrid securitarian-humanitarian regimes (Hess and Kasparek 2017: 63). This period was

22  Chaos of Liminality interlaced, on the one hand, with the means to facilitate migrant movement and humanitarian outreach, while on the other hand, it was marked by militarisation of the borders, aimed at stopping the new “paradigm of mobility” that was beginning to emerge (Beznec et al. 2016: 16). It was like at least two forces, or better put, perspectives on migration, clashed with each other. The intertwined forms of humanitarianism and militarism characterise the state of exception, which Giorgio Agamben defines as a “threshold of indeterminacy”, “a suspension of juridical order”, as a space in-between “public law and political fact, and between the juridical order and life” (Agamben 2005: 23). In this sense, the corridor was a transitory space where a new border regime raised from the ashes of the old (Kasparek 2016: 8). The securitarian forces opposed humanitarian outreach, along with the notion of “emergency”, depicts the entire Balkan corridor, which was opened as a response of a large number of migrants entering the EU. In this liminal period and space, those who had the strength and resources could reach northern and western Europe somewhat feasibly: Crossing three borders between Greece and Hungary could take as little as a few days. It was possible thanks to 14 so-called temporary transit and reception1 (effectively refugee camps) – an important part of the corridor’s infrastructure – the Serbian government with the support of the EU and NGOs built in 2015 and 2016 (see Map 1.1). The purpose of most of them was to identify and provide quick relief for those travelling via the Balkan corridor. Therefore, migrant journeys, although hectic, were safer and faster because of relatively open borders and state-supported means of transport. However, at the beginning of 2016, two EU-third country agreements (see section: Facing Uncertainty in this chapter) introduced new rules of EU border control, which placed the Balkan states and migrants in a predicament. The sudden and progressive suspension of certain regulatory frameworks, as well as the use of repressive extra-legal mechanisms put in place by Balkan states, paved the way for the corridor along the Balkan route in the summer of 2015 (Santer and Wriedt 2017: 145). However, the stability of the corridor was endangered by Islamophobic and anti-migration rhetoric, which was gaining traction, particularly after the Paris terrorist attacks on 13 November 2015, and which enabled right-wing forces to associate refugees with Islamic terrorism (de Genova 2016). On the local level, however, the switch in national policies facilitated migrants’ movement. As realised researchers migration across the Balkan Peninsula, among the important political changes in Serbia was a turn from ignoring migrants to humanitarianism (Beznec et al. 2016: 6). The Serbian government followed this shift and introduced “welcoming policy” that facilitated migrants’ movement onward as quickly as possible and acknowledged local (I)NGOs and presence and their support for those on the move (Ibid.: 46). In the same period, INGOs forced RN Macedonia to prevent migrant fatalities while crossing the country and thus verify its policy line towards migrants (Ibid.: 2016: 16–17). The legislative changes in RN Macedonia from 18 June 20152 brought in a 72-hour travel permit, like the one already existing in Serbia since 2008, and secure migrants’ passages. However, for most of the migrants, the possibility of seeking asylum was not as important as the ability to legally use public or private transportation and housing, which the “transit” document guaranteed. In the first months of the formalised corridor in Serbia, migrants could

Chaos of Liminality 23

Map 1.1  The refugee transit and reception centres in Serbia as of March 2016 Source: Map created by Dawid Lesiak

travel almost unrestrictedly across the borders. To facilitate the movement, trains and coaches operated beyond the regular schedule, transferring a great number of migrants. Thus, in practice, the 72-hour permit served as a transit visa, with an often vague expiry date, for those on their journey to the EU (Ibid.: 2016: 17).

24  Chaos of Liminality The 72-hour permits were crucial parts of the formalised corridor. Among reception centre workers and migrants alike, the permit was known as chartiá. The word chartiá (χαρτιά) is Greek but is similar to Serbian hartije and Macedonian hartija (хартија) and means a piece of paper. As Greece was the first entry point issuing the registration document for migrants in the Balkan corridor, they incorporated it into their lexicon. Chartiá contained a person’s name and surname, place and date of birth and country of origin and sometimes fingerprints. All information included in the document were declaratory, thus incomplete and arbitrarily uploaded to EURODAC3 database. Despite these irregularities, obtaining this document was a key to pass through the Balkan gateway to Europe. Therefore, a migrant who did not obtain it from Greece could not enter RN Macedonia and later Serbia, and as a result was pushed back to the previous country or deprived of the possibility of using state-organised transportation, and was stranded. As a result of the legal changes and bilateral agreements, various Western Balkan states gave the previously unauthorised migration a legal framework, constantly readjusted in reaction to the situation or in coordination between states, building the rickety foundations of a formalised Balkan corridor (Hameršak and Pleše 2018: 20). In other words, what, just a few months before, European states had considered part of the clandestine Eastern Mediterranean route, was now supported by state authorities and allowed nearly a million4 migrants to reach the EU safely and swiftly. Transformations Preševo lies in southern Serbia on the border with RN Macedonia and Kosovo and on the edges of pan-European transport corridors connecting Salzburg in Austria and Thessaloniki in Greece: More precisely, the A1 highway, railway and a clandestine migratory passage. Thus, the placement of the reception centre was not accidental. Since the Roman and the Ottoman Empires, Preševo has been an important transit centre due to the intersection of roads and the local topology (Ejupi and Stiperski 2018: 227). However, the town itself has never developed into a big scale metropolitan city, probably because of its location at the disputed territories. Historically Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania or their previous forms of (pre) statehoods claimed their right to these territories because of it strategical position. According to the Serbian geographer, Jovan Cvijić the region between Serbia and RN Macedonia is crucial from the geopolitical perspective because communication passages cross there (Cvijić 1906: 47). The formation of the largest temporary reception centre5 (or simply a camp) in the Balkan corridor in Preševo injected vitality into neighbourhood. A calm, tedious vicinity located in the old industrial part of the town with a few fading businesses, dozens of modest houses and handful of few new ones, recently built by local emigrants to Western Europe went through radical transformation. At the central part of the neighbourhood towers a closed tobacco factory, which UNHCR and the Serbian commissariat6 turned into a reception camp financed by the EU and European Economic Area and Norway funds. Boarded up kiosks and bars surrounding the camp were revived almost overnight. The existing stores enriched

Chaos of Liminality 25

Map 1.2  The reception centre in Preševo and its surroundings as of January 2016 Source: Map created by Dawid Lesiak

their ranges and extended working hours. Cooks in the bars and restaurants included halal food on their menus and proudly announced it on their front doors. The signboards of restaurants, bars, shops and hotels communicated the available services in various languages. Suddenly, this sleepy and depopulated town became an epicentre for migrants, journalists, non-governmental organisations and volunteers (see the Map 1.2). In November 2015, migrants were still arriving by state-organised trains to Tabanovce, the northernmost RN Macedonian village. From there, they walked across the border, using a muddy path through the fields, to the town of Miratovac on the Serbian side, where mainly security checks and basic humanitarian support took place. Then, using buses organised by (I)NGOs, local taxis or walking 15 kilometres, migrants reached Preševo Once the Commissariat employees registered them in the camp, migrants received first aid, water and food, as well as referrals to medical, social or other public services and a one-time payment of 5,000 dinars – roughly $45 for every child, invalid, or elderly person in a single travelling group. Because the Preševo camp’s reputation preceded it, migrants often arrived knowing that amenities not available for them in Greece could be obtained there. However, the camp was a transit space which did not give opportunities to settle down. The Preševo camp was surrounded by a heavy, metal fence, protected in places by sandbags – similar to the ones used in war trenches. Those barriers separated migrants from local communities, trying to restrict cultural and economic

26  Chaos of Liminality exchange. Behind the gate stood a makeshift sentry box and an officer wearing white plastic gloves and a white sanitary mask. Maybe a few a dozen metres further down the road the Serbian army occupied a building that in better times functioned as a local youth centre (Dom mladih7 ). The whole scene had a grotesque hint of a B-movie with the epidemic outbreak as the main plot. Writing on migrant women in Johannesburg, Caroline Wanjiku Kihato suggests that a camp can serve as a short respite from predatory and discriminatory law enforcement, where migrants may obtain the right to shelter, food, medical services and other basic goods (2013: 104). However, in the case of the Balkan corridor, camps became part and parcel of an emerging new border regime in the region, serving as extensions of the EU border regime into Balkan states. The externalisation created nodes of migrant concentrations, which materialised in transit camps in the EU peripheries. These places, argues Danilo Mandić (2018) functioned as a “hot potato” system of migration, developing rules and institutional cultures aimed at urgently identifying and processing individuals on to the next station northwards, at the expense of any capacity to host and integrate them into the society. The Balkan corridor was a fast track, bypass all major cities and quickly deliver them to the EU countries avoiding any integration with local communities. Self-Organisation in Disorder The town of Preševo can be divided into three main neighbourhoods. The first one, in the upper Preševo Valley, contains the town hall, schools and police station in its central part. Driving through the valley, you come to the Industrial Zone, where most factories are closed and the remaining few are barely surviving. Finally, closer to the highway and railway, along Vase Smajvića street, stretches Preševo Železnička (Preševo Railway), with a few residential houses, the train station, a handful of shops and the temporary reception centre for migrants. When arriving in Preševo, the majority of migrants disembarked from the buses and taxis at the beginning of Vase Smajvića street, a few hundred metres from the camp and walked down the street towards the flickering lights of the NGO tents. The first belonged to a group of local and international volunteers who, together with a local NGO, Youth Office, from Preševo provided information on the current situation in the Balkan corridor. They explained to migrants where they are – piece of information which was not obvious for everyone during times of accelerated movement through the corridor and what is coming next: Wait in the line to the camp, registration and a further trip by bus or train northwards. Migrants throw names of destination places: Vienna, Germany, Sweden. Volunteers responded by indicating their location on the map. Despite war-like circumstances and uncertainty, volunteers welcomed migrants with smiles and human warmth. A few minutes’ walk down the street, towards the camp, spaced in a row, more improvised tents with food and other services were waiting for migrants. Different languages rang out there, sometimes single words in broken English, German, Arabic or French, other times neatly composed sentences. People from different places and cultures tried to find common words or communicate by gestures.

Chaos of Liminality 27 The initial phase of a rite of passage – the separation – involves an act of secession from the existing order. Mosko suggests that chaos and a disconnection with previous order opens the floor for bifurcation and a subsequent possibility to generate new structures of greater complexity and unpredictability. He writes: … [S]ociety in the state far from equilibrium and, hence, engaged in robust exchange with factors in its social and natural environment, leading to increasingly random activities and fluctuations, followed eventually by the imposition or emergency of entirely new structure for the system. (Mosko 2005: 34) What happened in Preševo at that time stood in stark contrast to everyday life. Quotidian routine stopped. Local communities suspended their social roles and professional obligations. The local and state authorities had disappeared. The monopoly of ethnopolitics which controlled social, economic and professional life in the region has been suspended. People’s individual and collective came to the forefront. They organised everything from below and worked across ethnic and national lines in a common goal. Residents opened doors to their homes and collected food and money. They cooked and served food all night long. Shop owners and assistants helped to choose the most nutritious food and sell them at discounted prices or sometimes gave them for free. Later, international volunteers and (I)NGO joined them. Civil society organised division of labour, communication channels and work shifts. Thanks to their financial independence, lack of institutional affiliation and non-compliance with national laws and local social norms, volunteers enjoyed a flexibility in the mode of conduct, which was also manifested by their readiness to use other (I)NGOs’ structures or build their own by setting up grassroots organisations and associations (Rydzewski 2022b). These qualities appeared highly effective in the times of chaos, where they had to adapt to a dynamically developing situation. The models of self-organisation of residents of Preševo and those who came there from all over Serbia and abroad were diverse in terms of their aims and styles. As well as the pro-migrant volunteers associated with more or less formalised groups, people with a wide range of complex motivations and behaviours appeared. But not everyone engaged in supporting migrant in non-profitable ways. For exmaple, the high demand for coaches and taxis created an opportunity for taking advantage of desperate people seeking transportation northwards. Thus, in the summer and fall of 2015, Preševo was a scene of intense negotiations between migrants and drivers in all available languages, as well as the departure of crammed cars and coaches heading towards Hungary and Croatia. Next to the camp, between taxis, buses, tents and stands with free food and information, people sold sim cards, tea, coffee and grilled sandwiches with ketchup, and provided other services, not always at a fair price. In the zone where refugees gathered, all the shops are taking advantage of the situation. They double their prices. We pay in Euros although the prices are displayed in Dinars, so we don’t know how much things actually cost.

28  Chaos of Liminality This was Basel, the Syrian student I mentioned in the Introduction. The arrival of migrants brought a long-awaited social and economic awakening. Among those who decided to profit from disorder and suspension of rules were two energetic teenagers from a nearby town. The first offered transportation services, while the second sold sim cards – migrants’ most needed item. In the meantime, they ogled a girl who sold socks and deliberated their various sexual fantasies. Peter had finished high school and was unemployed. “I would like to study criminology, but it costs” – he says. He tried to enrol at the state University in Belgrade free from tuition fee, but his score at the matriculation exam was insufficient to be accepted. “When I have money will get a degree from a private university”. He could not count on his parents’ support. “Mum, earns 200 euros. Father 300 euros. They fucked it up too” – he said, referring to his and his parents’ economic position. Peter explained to me in vulgar words which indicated his frustration with living in Serbia that his father had fled to Germany during the war, where he met his mother. Once his parents learned about their coming offspring, they decided to return to Serbia. Since Peter would like to live in Germany, he struggled to comprehend his parents’ decision. “This is how I ended up trying to make some money in Preševo” – he said with guilt. While people were packing the streets, the old tobacco factory was under reconstruction to enable the admission of the growing number of migrants. Work was being carried out on the sewage and heating system as well as adapting the factory premises for migrants’ accommodation and to separate migrants from the local communities. At the beginning of the winter, the centre could host around 1,000 people – though even this was insufficient, as between 2,000 and 8,000 migrants were arriving daily. Regardless of the better organisation of the temporary reception centre in Preševo at the beginning of 2016, chaos and a lack of information were still present. Neither (I)NGOs nor the Commissariat knew how long the formalised corridor would be open. Questions remained as to whether the centre’s authorities and (I)NGOs should expand the accommodation capacity and how long the incoming migrants would affect the local communities. Distrust and Naivety The seemingly formalised and organised corridor was actually mired in chaos, though. My stay at the reception centre in Preševo left me confused. My attempts to understand the constantly changing reality of the centre and the corridor(s) ended in failure. I was not alone. Migrants, along with camp (I)NGO, and UNHCR employees received contradictory information from each other and the Commissariat which cause confusion and uncertainty. As explained to me Basel, the Commissariat workers only transferred data from Greek chartiá to Serbian travel documents without photographing and fingerprinting him, which appeared to be necessary to continue the journey through the Balkan corridor. Consequently, he had to wait another two days in the line. Disorientation made people distrustful. Sometimes people refused to go to the camp, where they could get a bowl of hot soup and warm up in dormitories, instead preferring to stay on the train platform, maybe 200 metres from the camp, in temperatures close to freezing. I observed that their

Chaos of Liminality 29 physiological needs yielded to the uncertainty of the train schedule, carriage capacity and fear about the prospect of border closures. If Cindy Horst and Katarzyna Grabska (2015: 6) or Inka Stock (2019: 73) are correct, uncertainty can be employed as a deliberate governance strategy aimed at deterring migrant movement and shaping their future plans. Such an interpretation explains why, from the beginning to the end of my stay there, the role and the future of the temporary reception centres were unclear, and the movement of people was constantly interrupted, creating the feeling of insecurity and unpredictability among migrants, local communities and reception centre workers. In the RN Macedonia Macedonian and Hungarian cases, authorities mobilised security forces against migrants, resulting in brutal clashes between law enforcement agencies and migrants towards the end of August 2015. Regardless of efforts, gates in its newly erected in November 2015 RN Macedonian border fence financed by the EU groaned under the pressure of suddenly stopped migrants after just three days and the closure of the Serbian–Hungarian border caused the redirection of the corridor through Croatia (see Figure 1.2). I could notice the failed improvisation of police, Commissariat officers and (I) NGOs workers and volunteers while managing the line to the camp and later, when migrants were boarding the trains to Šid. Once or twice a day, at an unspecified time, trains arrived at the station in Preševo, where a few hundred tired migrants were waited expectantly in the biting cold. It seemed to me that they wanted to be sure that they would get a spot on the train and that family members and travelling companions would not lose each other. The enormous popularity of the trains

Figure 1.2 A man sitting at the gate of the closed border crossing with Hungary, Serbia, Horgoš, 2015 Source: Photograph by Maciej Moskwa

30  Chaos of Liminality caused desperation. At the moment of their arrival, the mob would become agitated. People filled the platform, rushing towards the doors, pushing each other. There was elbowing and cases of fistfights. Travellers in general ignored the pleas to keep calm and give priority to children and women. Only a few obeyed the instructions, as if they did not believe in the assurances that there would be a place for everyone, and no one would be separated from a co-traveller. Maybe it was naïve of me and other centre workers and vounteers to expect patience from people whose entire trip was based on the exceptionally opened borders. It was difficult to believe in the maintenance of the corridor since rumours were constantly circulating about the closure of borders and planned deportations of migrants to Turkey. Maybe it was equally naïve to expect people to follow the rules that were improvised and arbitrary. For instance, on 21 February 2016, Afghans were suddenly added to the group that were unlikely to be granted asylum in the EU. In such circumstances, putting trust in anything seemed irrational. Finally, maybe it was also naïve to expect the people to believe in the assurance that they would not be separated from their friend and families, because many of them had already lost someone on the journey. This was the case of Emad and Ashkan from Iran. During their long stopover in Preševo they shared their story of journey unpredictability with me. They arrived in Šid with their mother and sister and stayed together in the temporary reception centre there. One day, the brothers took a train to Belgrade to receive money with Western Union transfer. When they returned a couple of hours later, the camp was empty – migrants from the centre, including their mother and sister had begun to be pushed back to RN Macedonia and then to Greece. They had missed each other by an hour. Chaos enables some people to pass the border fast, while others are separated, lost or forced to return. Re-bordering Already from the inception of the corridor, the Western Balkan states, supported by the EU, took measures to shut it down, restore order and regain the control over the borders (Beznec et al. 2016: 21). Importantly, a switch from humanitarianism to securitisation took place against the background of the opening of Serbia’s accession negotiations with the EU on migration management, asylum system and police cooperation.8 Marta Stojić Mitrović speculates that in this period Serbia had to demonstrate its ability to protect its borders and fulfil all the demands of the Schengen acquis (2019: 21). Thus, the EU, using its asymmetrical power, was pushing for the closure of the “humanitarian corridor”, a structure “we cannot want” (Spivak 1991: 234, as cited in Santer and Wriedt 2017: 148). Another force which pushed towards closure of the corridor became vocal months before the implementation of the EU–Turkish deal on migrants, was mentioned above Islamophobic and antimigration rhetoric, which spread after attacks in Paris. Five days after the attack, Slovenia – following the example of Austria setting a limit on migrant arrivals to the country via the Balkan corridor – was the first to introduce migrant filtering based on nationality, which allowed only Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis to enter the EU and immobilising other migrants at whatever point in the corridor they found

Chaos of Liminality 31 themselves. This rule assumed that only migrants from the chosen countries were likely to be granted refugee status. In the wake of terrorist hysteria, the Austrian move started a cascade of tightening borders in the Balkan corridor that was accompanied not only by the deployment of massive security forces but also intensified cooperation between Frontex, Interpol and Western Balkan states.9 Consequently, Frontex Rapid Border Intervention Team troops were soon deployed in RN Macedonia, and additionally the agency started negotiating with Serbia over the possibility of operating on its territory with total immunity from Serbian law, which was later rejected (Statewatch 2017). The EU bodies also supported the shift to securitisation by introduction in February 2016 of PeDRA (Processing of Personal Data for Risk Analysis), which allowed Frontex and the EU police body Europol to exchange “personal data suspected of people smuggling, terrorism and other cross-border crimes collected” (Frontex 2016). The data include, among others, sexual orientation and social media profiles, which legal experts found intrusive and against EU law (Fotiadis et al. 2022). This measure shows the priority of the control rule over humanitarian outreach. As I explain in Chapter 5, closing borders along the corridor happened concurrently with the introduction of the filtering process that took place in the reception centres with an insufficient asylum infrastructure and ineffective asylum procedure, which led to an ever-increasing number of migrants being stranded in liminal space. With the implementation of the filtering process, Southeast European states introduced stricter control of the means of transportation, which, might be a strategy to control migrant movement and shut down the corridor. Gallya Lahav and Virginie Guiraudon (2000: 59) explain that the restriction of private transportation of migrants, but also the creation of the buffer zones beyond the national borders of receiving countries and cooperation with the so-called transit and sending countries, belong to what Aristide Zolberg calls the “remote control” of immigration policy (1999). These components enable the managing of migrant movement far from the destination country’s borders. Lahav and Guiraudon (2000: 63) argue that private transportation and carrier companies constitute the core of this policy. They suggest that for states it is relatively easy to impose sanctions and penalties on business identities that refuse to verify the validity of travel documents. Such a practice is not new and has been present since as early as the turn of the 20th century when governments of Europe pressed steamship companies into verifying travel permits. For example, according to Italian law, from 1901 a passenger had to own a passport before buying a steamship ticket (Torpey 2000: 36). In 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation established the guidelines for air carriers in the United States, which required travel companies to ensure that passengers possess the necessary travel document and transport back at their own expense for inadmissible migrants (Lahav and Guiraudon 2000: 63). Similarly today, in the EU member states, carriers serve as immigration officers, which represents the process of shifting responsibility for border control and migrant movement from central governments to third parties, like transportation companies, and has resulted in both a diffusion of the political and economic cost of border control and the ability of states’ to meet their goal of filtering migrants (Ibid.). The Serbian case is no

32  Chaos of Liminality different and depicts the process of seceding the obligation for the border control to private transportation companies. Serbia, as an immediate neighbour of the Schengen area, has adopted several laws that obliges professionals coming into contact with the illegalised persons to report them to the police (Stojić Mitrović and Meh 2015). Among these laws are the Aliens Act (2008), stipulating that any person residing illegally must be reported to state body without delay (Ibid.). Consequently, taxi drivers, hotel and hostel receptionists, doctors or workers of money transfer and exchange offices should, at least theoretically, conduct “document checks” when they make business transactions with foreigners. In the event of evading this duty, a service provider can be accused of facilitating illegal border crossing, meaning that coming in contact with someone who did not have valid documents can mean breaking the law, thereby creating the phenomenon, termed by Marta Stojić Mitrović and Ela Meh, as the contagiousness of illegalisation (Ibid.: 630). And it has proven to be the case. For example, in the first months of 2016, when taxi drivers who decided to transport migrants without a valid 72-hour travel permit, police often arrested and confiscated their cars, which led to further migrant immobilisation. In the atmosphere of illegalization of the “unwanted migrants” transportation people on the move looked for alternatives. Apart from taxis, a cargo train with yellow German shipping containers that stopped in front of the camp twice a day was the only possibility to leave Preševo. During the train’s layover, migrants pondered how and when to board it. One day Masud, around 30 years old Egyptian, and a friend of him decided to try their luck. They took some food and water from volunteers and under the cover of darkness climbed onto the train. On the one hand, I was happy to see them not giving up despite all the constraints arising from border sealing. But on the other hand, it was moving to bid goodbye to the migrants who stayed for weeks at the Border Free camp and simply became a part of the fabric of it. I believed that we managed to establish a friendship with mutual trust and respect. Additionally, he was not only a remarkably important research partner, but also helped when there was a need in the camp. I am aware that this reflection might sound like miserably inadequate in the circumstances when migrants are risking their life to reach their destination, but I am signalising this emotional attachment between migrants and volunteers and their role in camp life which I develop elsewhere (Rydzewski 2022b). I was sure that I would not see him again. But a day later, to my disbelief, I saw Masud and his friend walking towards the Border Free tents. Masud was hobbling and had dark circles under his eyes due to exhaustion. He told me later that they had been caught and removed from the train by railway workers but luckily not reported to the police. It had taken them one night and one day to reach Preševo on foot. Synchronising Gate Closure Initially, taxis were the primary transportation mode for migrants travelling from Miratovac to the reception centre in Preševo. By the end of 2015, the law enforcement agencies and NGOs cut them out of their prosperous occupation. The INGO, backed by Serbian police, provided free coaches as a means of transportation from the border to the reception centre for the sake of the migrants. In revenge, the taxi

Chaos of Liminality 33 drivers blocked the coaches’ access to the RN Macedonia–Serbian border crossing. Instead, the INGO drivers had to take migrants by vans and cars from the border to Miratovac located 5 kilometres away. There, the coaches waited to transport migrants to Preševo. The operation was restless and tense because when migrants waited for the INGOs’ vehicles, local taxi drivers had the opportunity to offer their services. In the end, it turned into a odd race between the two competing groups. Exclusion from the corridor and absence of organised transportation, along with the unpredictable results of catching the cargo train made many “unwanted migrants” look for private transportation services instead. But this last resort was first officially opposed and later criminalised. As a result, taxi drivers operated in a grey economy and struggled to compete with the authorised transportation providers. However, this stands in contrast with what Beznec et al. (2016) argue: They imply that the limitation imposed on taxi drivers started from the bottom-up and was recommended, at least officially, for the sake of migrants: “A local NGO asked the UNHCR for help to prevent taxi drivers and others taking advantage of migrants by overcharging them, and the UNHCR organised bus transports from the border to Preševo” (2016: 46). Consequently, (I)NGOs and volunteer organisations warned against untrustworthy taxi drivers, who allegedly deceived migrants, offered overpriced transport services or, in extreme cases, instead of taking them to agreed destinations left them in the nearest woods. This opinion opposes the accounts of taxi drivers, who claimed that state enterprises were monopolising migrant transportation and excluding them from this lucrative business. In Preševo, the taxi drivers usually roamed around the coaches and presented their offers to potential clients through the reception centre fence or through extensive contact with a local camp employee. At the beginning of January 2016,  had a chance to talk to a few Serbian taxi drivers. Among them a 40-year-old man dressed in a tracksuit, told me that they were all operating legally as self-employed taxi drivers. While we talked a migrant approached the drivers and started to negotiate the price of a ride to Belgrade. This ethnic Serbian driver from Belgrade, and a father of two, had come to Preševo because of the temporary possibility to make a living. He said that his car, as for many others, was his only source of income. He continued fuming that according to the law, migrants with a valid 72-hour travel permit were allowed to choose a mode of transportation. “We are no different from the bus drivers with the exception that they have 50 seats, and us four. But they say we are mafia. For that reason, we must wonder around and fight for customers”. The drivers became known between volunteers and (I)NGOs as “taxi mafia” or “smugglers” and ostracised. Another, Albanian, taxi driver named Shpirt, lived in a village 15 kilometres from Preševo. He added that there were migrants who had money and were ready to pay a premium for a faster and more comfortable ride to the temporary reception centre in Šid. The coaches – he explained – stopped 10 kilometres outside Šid camp, where the exit centre to Croatia was located, and waited for several hours until space becomes available for newly arrived migrants. In contrast, the taxi drivers drove straight to the reception centres, avoiding long waits and queues. Both drivers admitted that there could have been cases of migrants being cheated, but that these stories should not be generalised and applied to everyone.

34  Chaos of Liminality Their confession was often underpinned by pictures and videos of pleased migrants sitting in the back of their cars. The Serbian taxi driver concluded that the rumours spread about their dishonesty were unfair. “Here are around 200 taxi drivers, and maybe 200 buses. For sure, among all these people we will find swindlers just as among migrants you will find terrorists” (sic!). Taxi drivers requested the centre’s authorities to regulate taxi fees and indicate a parking lot for them, just as in the case of coaches, but nothing was done about it. On various occasions, I monitored and shared a taxi with migrants, which would take us safely and soundly to the destination. This trip was somewhat more convenient and faster than a bus trip that I also had a chance to take. Sometimes, the bus drivers forced their passengers to wait a few hours just to fill up all the seats, not to mention the trains that had no regular schedule at all. As I often acted as interpreter for migrants and taxi drivers, I have witnessed cases where taxi drivers overpriced their services. However, on other occasions, they showed empathy by lowering their prices for those who could not afford the full fare for the journey. In some extraordinary instances, they even offered hospitality to exhausted migrants by hosting them in their homes. The involvement of private drivers in migrant transportation may have resulted in opportunities for various abuses or price negotiations, but it certainly allowed for circumvention of the state-imposed regulations. The reluctance to accept private driver’s engagement in the migrant movement was also noticeable in other places along the Balkan route. On 11 February 2016, in the southernmost region of RN Macedonia, where another reception centre was located, the tensions between private and state-organised transportation services for migrants reached boiling point as private providers demanded the possibility to have a share in this endeavour. Regardless of the agreement between the two parties, which gave priority to private drivers during the day and to state-owned railway company during the night, the cab drivers were repeatedly excluded from the business. In protest, at first, they blocked the railway line and later the main border crossing between Greece and RN Macedonia (Meta.mk 2016). The deteriorating position of private drivers coincided with the state’s sudden control of passengers documents, which started with the implementation of the filtering process throughout the Balkan corridor. The Commissariat gave preferences to state-organised trains and coaches that rigorously checked migrants’ documents or enabled Commissariat officers to do so. In Serbia in February 2016 the responsibility for managing road transportation of migrants was taken over by Lasta – a state-owned company and monopoly on passenger transportation. Through one of the local Border Free employees, I met the manager of Lasta for the Preševo region. He told me that the company had taken control over migrant transportation but only partly. Its major role was quality checks of the coaches and coordination of their circulation. In practice, Lasta provided some vehicles but mostly subcontracted private ones that legally had to fulfil certain standards: Good technical condition, Wi-Fi and toilet on board – although, as far as I could see, the last two were the exception rather than the rule. For its management efforts, the enterprise took 20 per cent of the ticket price. However, despite the new

Chaos of Liminality 35 supervisory body, the coaches rarely worked in favour of the migrants. To give an example, one coach driver did not want to carry a Syrian migrant confined to a wheelchair and in need of intravenous infusions. In another case, a driver simply refused to depart when there were not enough migrants to fill the coach. To change his decision, 28 migrants had to pay for 50 tickets either from their own pockets or money given by (I)NGOs. Although logic points towards the greediness of the state-owned company that, by discrediting private drivers and taking control of the means of migrant transportation aimed at higher revenues, it was instead a more of a side effect of the state-level attempt to control migrant movement through the Balkan corridor. The border control based on migrant filtering would not be fully effective if migrants were allowed to move freely. Thus, excluding everyone but “genuine refugees” from state-organised transportation and pushing out taxi drivers enabled control of the migrant movement northwards. Moreover, it became possible to synchronise the rate of movement towards the systematically closing doors to the EU. Indeed, I would argue that such a strategy aimed for the total closure of the formalised corridor by early March 2016 without migrants congregating at one of the borders. Nevertheless, the domino effect of sealed borders, combined with the filtering process of migrants, contributed to the growth of stranded of “unwanted migrants” in Preševo with an expired 72-hour permit. In that period, the importance of private transportation for those who were rejected during the filtering process could not be overestimated. Essentially, it was the only way to get out from the isolated – geographically and transportation-wise – camp along the Balkan route. This observation suggests that sealing the external EU’s borders and limiting migrant access to government run reception centres was supplemented by the Serbian state’s effort to control the means of transportation for migrants. At the same time, the movement of migrants rejected in the filtering process was limited to clandestine ways and thus led to the revival of old “illegal” routes. Tightening borders pushes migrants into the illegal underground sphere, forces them to look for other – often more dangerous and expensive – routes, reconfigures the business of smuggling and reinforces the power of criminal smuggling networks. Rejection from the corridor often equated to being banned from entering temporary reception centres and exclusion from accessing humanitarian aid. Consequently, “unwanted migrants” were forced to look for an alternative mode of transportation and shelters, such as abandoned buildings, train or bus stations or, as already mentioned, unofficial settlements. Liminal Hotspots The camp in Preševo resembles the migratory “hotspot”, what the European Commission’s Agenda on Migration generally describe as “operational solutions for emergency situations” (Asylum in Europe n.d.). In such places, state administrative workers classify migrants as either asylum seekers or economic migrants on the basis of an assessment, mainly carried out either by using questionnaires filled

36  Chaos of Liminality in by migrants at disembarkation, or by directly questioning them about the reasons they came (Asylum in Europe n.d.). The classification is often solely based on migrants’ nationality, skin colour, country of transit and ethnic or religious affiliation (Sciurba 2016; Asylum in Europe n.d.) and then divided into genuine asylum seekers and economic migrants. The research shows that discourses surrounding the “refugee crisis” serve to remake social categories, “sorting people into undeserving trespassers versus those who deserve rights and care from the state” (Holmes and Castañeda 2016: 13). On the ground level, it translated into “identification” of “genuine asylum seekers” by local authorities supported by Frontex and then transferring them to other EU Members States, where their asylum application would be processed, with “unwanted migrants” receiving removal decisions (Statewatch 2015: 4). Officially, the “hotspots” are supposed to better coordinate EU agencies’ such as European Asylum Support Office (EASO), Frontex, Europol and Eurojust and national authorities’ efforts at the external borders of the EU, on initial reception, identification, registration and fingerprinting of asylum-seekers and migrants (Mentzelopoulou and Luyten 2018: 2). In practice, though, they have laid the foundation for discriminatory and rights-violatory procedures and practices that result in allowing the movement of chosen migrants and immobilising the unwanted ones (Sciurba 2016). Therefore, the “hotspot approach” draws on the idea of externalisation and thus there is a realisation of the European annihilation of the right to asylum that an individual can claim in any county regardless of their origin and condition is a right that is guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although in the official reports and documents I have not found any “hotspots” at the entry point (Preševo) and exit points (Šid or Subotica) in Serbia, the temporary reception centres functioned as such. The “hotspots” along the migratory routes to the EU, regardless of their highly improvised character, were closely planned as a part of the European Agenda on Migration in May 2015, which was created in response to the record numbers of migrants flocking to the EU. According to available documents, the “hotspots” were located in the southernmost parts of Greece and Italy and aimed to identify people in “need of international protection” arriving in frontline Member States that faced emergency situations due to the arrival of disproportionate numbers of migrants (Mentzelopoulou and Luyten 2018: 2). But the “hotspots” rarely work as designed. Consequently, instead of being transferred to the EU countries, even “genuine refugees” – in other words, migrants selected according to racialised hierarchy of temporal pettiness – often waited for months for their turn to cross the border through the transit zone. Later, even this possibility to cross the EU border was scrapped. Unwanted migrants, who did not find empathy among Europeans bureaucrats, were pushed back further south or left Balkan states’ soil by their own accord. Both groups were caught in an in-between phase of transition between states and legal statuses, in a liminal hotspot. Space where migrants found themselves Cangià would name “liminal hotspots” (2021: 44). She explains that despite the fact that this term derives from the EU

Chaos of Liminality 37 political language it highlights the physical construction of the systems of control. A liminal hotspot, she writes, “relate[s] to a larger political system that channels the movements and forced mobility of migrants” (Ibid.). This term does not describe migrants’ physical detention, but emotional and existential entrapment in uncertainty, ambivalence and lack of control over their lives. It is a state where migrants’ identity, professional experience and education loses its meaning and value, reducing them to zero. What defines them is suspension in time and space, a limbo where migrants wait for transit papers, asylum procedure or deportations. It is a state of migrant suspension; existence at the age of life and death (Turner 1970: 96–97). The hotspot centres – which apart from screening people also denied and expelled them – were in Greece and Italy (Sciurba 2017). However, those located in postYugoslav states did not function as such, perhaps because the lack of signed bilateral readmission agreements with so-called sending countries, but also, and more importantly, political will. The classification of migrants in reception centres in Serbia was a highly imprecise and arbitrary process – people who arrived camp in Šid by train or bus were hurriedly interviewed by translators working for the Croatian police and divided into economic migrants and those “in need of international protection” (Hameršak and Pleše 2018: 21). As one NGO worker and translator – a Syrian refugee in Serbia himself – told me, upon disembarking the train in Šid migrants were asked a few questions, such as: Where are you from? Which city do you come from? What is the biggest mosque, river or mountain in your city or country? Interrogators, often themselves under pressure of the situation and supervisors, interrogated migrants in run, in intimidating and humiliating way. The answers to these questions were supposed to verify the declared origins of the interviewees but, as its critics realised, effectively discriminated against uneducated people or simply those who were tired, confused or overwhelmed by a long and difficult journey. Those who “passed” the “test” could enter the EU, and those who failed it were taken to the reception centre in Adaševci or Principovac close to Šid, or pushed back to Preševo. Later, these unwanted migrants tried again to pass the interview or sought assistance from smugglers, which eventually led to what was then called “table tennis”: Migrants would be bounced back from the border southwards (in the opposite direction from the formalised corridor) and would then try to cross the border yet again. The classification of people in the “hotspot”-like centres along the corridor was also made on the basis of migrants’ dialects, but such a practice was deceptive because of the incompatibility of dialects with national borders. For example, people coming from northern Syria whose dialect was close to Iraqi were classified as Iraqi. The dialect-based selection also posed problems for people who had lived a part or the entire of their lives in exile, such as Afghans in Pakistan or Iran. The interviews stripped individuals of the right to a legitimate asylum procedure. Additionally, the interviewers, as highlighted by my research partner, were non-native speakers – such as Arabic language students from Belgrade or people from mixed marriages with a Farsi or Arabic speaking

38  Chaos of Liminality parent whose language proficiency and knowledge of the cultural, linguistic and political context of the Middle East was rudimentary. At the national level, Southeast Europe states feared that the introduction of filtering process would turn them into a bottleneck, and therefore they followed the same pattern, allowing only people with chartiá stating Syrian, Afghani or Iraqi nationality to enter their territory. The following vignette clearly depicts this. Once migrants got on the train in Preševo and the door slammed shut with a bang, a shiver of fear ran through the train. The law enforcement officers began the chartiá check. Those without it or with incomplete stamps had to leave the train. Those that remained on board either in a sweat or frozen – but certainly in tight squeeze and with insufficient water food and supplies – started their seven-hour journey northwards without the possibility to leave the train. The introduction of the filtering policy changed the character of migrant movement. The possibility to choose a means of transportation at resting points, and thus the tempo of the journey, was taken away from those who could be accepted to the EU. The unattainable rule of conduct in the winter 2015 and 2016 was to transfer “genuine refugees” by state-organised trains from Greece to the EU, bypassing queues and camps. This, however, was never achieved. Their journey was interrupted by forced stops and longer or shorter confinement, creating places of immobilisation of movement (Hameršak and Pleše 2018: 26). This proves the argument of Nina Glick-Schiller and Noel B. Salazara, who claim that mobility regimes are not only about mobility, but also about immobility as mutually constituting and linking phenomena (2012: 190). Effectively, each migrant’s chartiá were checked at every state border along the Balkan corridor and upon taking taxis or state-organised trains or coaches. Those without a valid chartiá were stopped, with few exceptions. After 10 pm, when Commissariat employees finished their work, there was chance to pass through the corridor without “papers”. There were cases when some “unwanted migrants” managed to avoid controls on trains due to the general crowding, chaos and turning of a blind eye by police. However, there were also people who, despite being Syrians – and thus “genuine refugees” – were excluded from the formalised corridor because of lack of the required documents or being wrongly recognised as one of the “unwanted”. Nevertheless, from the introduction of filtering process, the EU transposed the efforts to filter migrants and control their movement to the Southeast Europe states (Hameršak and Pleše 2018: 21; for the wider EU context see Picozza 2017: 78). As a consequence of the rising number of stranded migrants in the Balkan Peninsula who were not recognised as asylum seekers, enormous unofficial migrant settlements emerged in Idomeni on the Greek–Macedonian border in the first weeks of 2016 and, later, a smaller and less known settlement in Horgoš on the Serbian–Hungarian border. Both could be perceived as a by-product of the selective admission of migrants to the EU. During the next few months, the number of migrants camping in Idomeni in poor humanitarian conditions reached 12,000. These desperate people, who were prevented from crossing the border, protested for several days, demanding the border to be reopened. Some of them took dramatic measures, such as going on hunger strike and sewing their lips shut

Chaos of Liminality 39 (The Telegraph 2015). Their clashes with Macedonian security forces resulted in dozens of injured migrants. Facing Uncertainty From the very beginning of its existence, the temporary reception centre in Preševo was under (re)construction. At first it was designed to identify hundreds of people passing through every day who also received dehydrated and canned food, water, clothes, basic medical attention, and cash assistance, everything necessary to keep migrants moving across the corridor. However, the migrant admission limit to the EU and profiling policy caused a large rise in the number of people stranded in Serbia. Thus, the temporary reception centre quickly had to undergo changes to meet the needs of people waiting up to a few days for the next state-organised transportation. Subsequently, Preševo’s old tobacco factory premises were remodelled to accommodate offices, utility rooms and hundreds of migrants for longer stays. What was probably the biggest investment in the town for years elevated the old factory buildings to the best government centre for migrants in the entire country. As well as heated dormitories, a dining room, toilets and showers with hot water, there was a volleyball court, table tennis and a medical clinic. At its full occupancy around February 2016, the centre gave employment to around 200 people. Preševo became a sort of a showpiece for foreign visitors, including politicians, ambassadors, (I)NGO spokespersons and other VIPs. But what was not visible to visitors was the uncertainty and the lack of privacy. For example, reflective panels were installed on the ceilings of renovated dormitories, which inadvertently allowed people to see what others were doing. To ensure a bit of private space, families curtained off bunks using blankets, creating some sort of nook. At the beginning of February 2016, camp in Preševo was already better organised than it had been in November 2015. The entrance, and thus the queue to it was moved to a place that interfered less with the local communities life. Around nine NGOs and INGOs operated in the centre.10 The existing services were supplemented by the distribution of hot meals, access to translators, medical care, psychological care and childcare. The centre also had a Western Union branch, an exchange office, a small grocery shop and the railway ticket office. All (I)NGOs and even commercial businesses found their place in the rapidly and spontaneously changing structure of the centre. Local and foreign volunteers who, although complementary to the centre’s life, worked outside of it. The geographical location of the volunteers’ tents and their position in the power structure were undefined. The Border Free association was officially a foreign NGO and its tents were within the territory of Commissariat’s management, and thus the organisation had to obey directives issued by the centre authorities. Furthermore, until March 2016 the Border Free volunteers were rarely allowed to enter the centre, but were free to distribute aid outside – at the train station or onboard the trains. On the other hand, the organisation had a certain autonomy: It could provide assistance to everyone (as opposed to the centre which admitted only “genuine refugees”) and, according to unwritten rules, the law enforcers did not enter the organisation’s premises. The volunteers’ place was neither in nor out

40  Chaos of Liminality of the centre. Border Free was recognised by other (I)NGOs and some of them cooperated closely with its volunteers11 (for more see Rydzewski 2022b). The international volunteers gathered around the Border Free association had three vast tents next to the reception centre’s wall. One of the tents had tables and benches with round-the-clock distribution of hot tea, snacks and non-food items (NFIs). It functioned as a reception and day room for migrants who stayed outside the centre. Two other tents were equipped with around 30 bunk beds. On the edges of the volunteers’ enclave were two toilets and a medical clinic run by MSF (Doctors Without Borders). A bit further towards the main entrance to the centre stood a food stall where hot meals were cooked and distributed. The major impact shape and functioning of the camp had decision made on international level. In the beginning of 2016, two agreements sealed new rules for EU border control. The first, between the Austrian Interior Minister Johanna MiklLeitner and the representatives of the Western Balkan countries, excluding Greece from the decision-making process, launched a wave of border closures along the Balkan corridor in February 2016. This agreement was swiftly followed by a deal between Turkey and the EU. Less than a month later, the then President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, agreed to close the marine borders between the EU and Turkey and externalise migration control to Turkey. These arrangements suddenly significantly limited the admission to the EU of both “genuine refugees” and unwanted migrants, at the EU borders and created an atmosphere of uncertainty among them. The Preševo centre followed the filtering policy of the Balkan corridor. Thus, only Syrians, Iraqis, and a few other nationals – chosen using ambiguous rules – as well as minors, females and families could enter it and used organised transportation. The remainder, including those pushed back from the Croatian border, were pushed into clandestine paths and occasionally showed up in the Border Free tents and other non-discriminatory places along the route. The association’s significance for migrant protection grew as more people were excluded from the Balkan corridor and some (I)NGOs’ projects favoured only Syrians and Iraqis. I clearly remember that late evening, when a man collapsed right in the front of the Border Free reception tent. This exhausted Central African man in his mid-30s had been severely beaten and robbed. I could see fresh scars on his left leg from surgery. The MSF staff took him into the Border Free association tent and Masud, mentioned before migrant from Egypt staying in the camp translated the rest of his story of misfortune. But that was not all that the night had to bring. Sometime later, another man staggered to the tent with a swollen, probably broken, arm and a black eye. This Moroccan man, also in his mid-30s later told me that he had walked through RN Macedonia with a group of other migrants. They had scattered into bushes upon an attack by bandits, but he had been caught, robbed and beaten. Traversing RN Macedonia took migrants around three weeks of walking through dry and mountainous terrain. Some of those who decided to ease the hardships of the journey followed railway tracks. Some of them hit the train. Crossing RN Macedonia usually left a mark on migrants. When I asked about this phase of journey, they started to stutter, while others refused to talk about it.

Chaos of Liminality 41 There was a period at the beginning of 2016 when every night at the door of the Border Free reception tent migrants appeared who were barely conscious, and had been beaten, robbed, and often raped. The regularity of these arrivals proved that closure of the borders translated into unsafe migrant passages. It also proved the necessity of the existence of civil society groups that provided help to everyone in a space where selectively applied formal protection became a rule. Already months before agreements between the EU and Western Balkan countries and Turkey, the doubts about who would be able to use the Balkan corridor and for how long, combined with the looming possibility of deportation of “unwanted migrants”, increased the tension in the camps. Preševo was buzzing with fearful speculation, as well as unconfirmed and often contradictory information. The rumours – not only about deportations, but also about closing the borders even for those who came from “safe regions” of the war-torn countries – terrified migrants. Some of them hid from pushback in the camp toilets. In this atmosphere of fear and unpredictability, disoriented migrants incessantly monitored information about the future of the corridor and the decisions regarding migration taken on national and international levels. Their predicament stemmed from the impossibility of verifying information in view of the continuously changing situation: Information that was true one day would become obsolete the next. I understand this, often Sisyphean, search for credible information as an attempt to create some sense of certainty. Uncertainty, next to the dislocation of established structures and revers hierarchies are quintessential features of liminality. Uncertainty, as argued by Horst and Grabska (2015: 5), is a reflection of unpredictability of the future that consists of three aspects of the displacement reality: Imperfect knowledge about the past and the future; the speed at which dramatic, life-threatening occurrences take place; and, finally, the lack of control over life choices. Combined, these largely determine people’s ability and rights to build an alternative future. Uncertainty is interlaced with suspension, “trapped in a space where they [migrants] move neither forward nor backward” (Wanjiku Kihato 2013: 104), they move within liminal space. These elements of displaced life resonate in migrants’ narratives, which I present in Chapter 4. The feelings of being unwelcome created by filtering processes became heightened after the alleged sexual harassment and muggings of 1,252 women during 2015 New Year’s celebration in Cologne, by migrants who had supposedly arrived shortly before, via the Balkan corridor (Brenner and Ohlendorf 2016). These events made migrants even more aware of their fragile position. They knew that any misbehaviour, such as intrusive attention towards female volunteers or (I)NGO workers, could have far-reaching consequences, including a ban on staying at volunteer and government facilities or even pushbacks. Therefore, although no occurrences of this kind happened during my fieldwork, migrants watched each other carefully. In the event of any misdemeanour, like abuse of alcohol or smoking inside the tents, the wrongdoers were instantly reprimanded by other migrants. With tightening borders, the unfriendly gazes of law enforcers walking around the temporary reception area started to loom over the international volunteer

42  Chaos of Liminality tents, where migrants rejected in the filtering process found temporal sanctuary. Trying to avoid them, people on the move rarely left the tents. During their long period of immobilisation, they tried to kill their boredom somehow. One migrant from Morocco called “Italiano”, because of his chosen destination, laid on an improvised bed, listened to music and sang the lyrics of Cosi Celeste by the Italian singer Zucchero. Some sat with a cup of overly sweet tea served by volunteers and tried to figure out what to say at the interview in Šid or, if needed, where to cross the border in an unauthorised way. Others, with tiredness, pain and gloom written all over their faces, just stared in silence into space. Silence, writes Michael Jackson, is “sometimes the only way we can honour the ineffability and privacy of certain experiences” (Jackson 2008: 155). In this case it was an experience of violence and uncertainty. However, even in the state of uncertainty and displacement, people wanted to act as humans. People who stayed in the volunteer’s camp – which was not prepared to host people for long periods as there were no washing machines and no privacy, just a bed and a grey UNHCR blanket – tried to manage their unsettled lives in these precarious conditions. Masud who spent over a dozen days in the camp, told me that he simply felt dirty. For him – a man who paid attention to personal hygiene – using the same clothes for weeks was humiliating: “People think that this is how I dress back home. I look like a homeless person”. He felt the judgmental looks of locals. He felt unwanted. To tackle hygiene constraints, migrants occasionally turned the volunteer’s reception tent into a hairdresser’s salon. Inside, “Italiano”, an ex-hairdresser, cut and styled hair to the sounds of North African music. In other cases, those who could afford it rented a room for a few hours in the nearby motel, where they could enjoy privacy, silence and unlimited access to showers. The uncertainty grew further as begun to implement the provision from the political summit in Austria. Its direct result was a freezing the movement of “all sort of migrants”. At the beginning of March, on kamen – the border stone which marks symbolic no man’s land between the last exit centre in Tabanovce in northern RN Macedonia and the first reception centre in Miratovac in Serbia – around 400 migrants became stranded after they arrived there by what became known as “the last train to Europe” operating on the Balkan corridor. Its passengers became stuck between the borders at the very time the corridor was closed. The RN Macedonian authorities would no longer take migrants back after stamping “exit” on their chartiá, whereas the Serbian state refused to admit them due to the closure of the exceptional passage. Thus, migrants bounced from border to border for several days, like the aforementioned “table tennis” ball. They were stranded in a muddy limbo for several days in sub-zero temperatures and with limited humanitarian aid while their desire to continue the journey was ignored. Conclusions This chapter has shown that the long summer of migration was mired in chaos. The emergency of the Balkan corridor was a liminal phase of transformation of the EU border regime in Southeast Europe. Chaos proved to have a generative force,

Chaos of Liminality 43 which not only changed the border regime but, as I explain in the next chapter, simultaneously rearranged the social order in hosting communities. The developments along the Balkan route were non-linear and thus seemed to be confusing. They consisted of opening the EU-ropean gates, activating civil society and imposing control over migrant movement and means of transportation. All these were intermingled with the abrupt closure of the corridor and its subsequent reopening. The dynamics of the corridor were dictated by the inconsistent reception policy of Serbian authorities and EU states’ decisions, alike. The only constant elements of the formalised Balkan corridor were disorder, uncertainty and a suspension of laws, all of which indisputably characterise a liminal state. However, there’s a method to the EU’s madness – to use a clichéd phrase. The closure of the corridor supported by EU agencies was prompted by EU directives to securitise borders. This process was based on militarisation of the borders and the selective limiting of the right to move of a growing number of migrants. Consequently, Bulgaria, RN Macedonia, Croatia and Hungary all criminalised migrant movement and private transportation providers, and thus pushed migrants underground, into the sphere of violence and smugglers. Notes 1 The number of the camps is as of February 2016. The number changes as some were closed and other (re)opened. 2 Amendments to the Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection. 3 EURODAC is a European biometric database of fingerprint of asylum seekers and certain third-country nationals and stateless persons over 14 years old. The data stored in the EURODAC supposedly indicated the state responsible for asylum applications. 4 In 2015 alone, according to Frontex close to 800,000 migrants crossed the Balkan route (https://frontex.europa.eu/along-eu-borders/migratory-routes/western-balkan-route/) 5 The temporary reception centre was also known as a One Stop Centre or, among migrants, simply a camp. 6 The Commissariat for Refugees and Migration, in accordance with the Law on Refugees, performs tasks of recognition and cessation of refugee status; caring for refugees; registration of refugees; adjustment assistance to refugees from other agencies and organisations at home and abroad, and ensuring balanced and timely assistance, provision of accommodation or settlement of refugees in the areas of local self-governments; taking measures for the return of refugees; meeting the housing needs of persons in accordance with the law; keeping records of their responsibilities and the establishment of databases (KIRS 2017). 7 A local arts and culture centre that runs socio-cultural activates for young people. 8 I am referring here to the Chapter 23 of the Acquis – Judiciary and fundamental rights, and Chapter 24 – Justice, freedom, security. 9 The key summit was “The Meeting on the Western Balkans Migration Route” in Brussels on 25 October 2015, which built the foundations for a gradual closing of borders in Balkan countries and further multilateral collaboration in halting migration. The meeting aimed to respond to “the emergency situation along the Western Balkans route” and shaped the 17-point plan of action meant to improve cooperation between Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. The agreement proposed, among other measures, increasing reception capacities in Balkan countries and Greece, exchanging of intelligence regarding migration, finalising and implementing the EU-Turkey Action

44  Chaos of Liminality Plan for better border management, which effectively aimed to discourage the movement of migrants (European Commission 2015). 10 Among others: Adra, Atina, Philanthropy, Humedica, Mercy Corps, MSF, IOM, Remar, Save the Children. 11 This was the case of MSF, which financed, among others, the tents, heater and medical clinic in the volunteers’ enclave. The volunteers were entangled with (I)NGOs’ information exchange via internet platforms and received news from UNHCR – who acted as a link between (I)NGOs and the Commissariat – regarding the centre’s life, as well as updates about the number of expected arrivals to Preševo. Border Free representatives were also invited to the centre’s meetings, organised by UNHCR and the Commissariat. Therefore, the organisation was included in the formal exchange of information and could have a certain impact on developments in the centre.

2

Solidarity in Abandonment

A few years before “the refugee crisis” became a keyword of 2015, Jansen (2012) imagined post-Yugoslav states becoming part of the Schengen zone. He wondered whether Bosnians and Serbs will become exemplary Europeans, selfish and inhospitable, or alternatively whether the memory of their enforced immobility after the loss of their Yugoslav passport might one day provoke empathy with other border-crossers: As rows of other people, seeking to travel to Europe, are being treated as ‘idiots’ in the queues under the EU flags in front of some BiH or Serbian embassy, will anyone be able to turn the memory of their own humiliation into a source of solidarity? (2012) To put this another way, does the experience of migration to Western Europe give a space to build a politics which unites the postcolonial and post-socialist world? After the initial failure of recognition of the effect and the role of local community in migration through the Balkan Peninsula, local and international scholars, particularly after 2015, have started to acknowledge them (Stojić Mitrović 2014, 2019; Papataxiarchis 2016; Daskalaki and Leivaditi 2018; Savić-Bojanić and Jevtić 2022; Leutloff-Grandits 2022). They have shown that the human flow of “weary bodies and bruised souls” (Hromadžić 2020: 163) crossing through post-Yugoslav towns and cities caused confusion among the hosting communities devastated by ethnic conflicts, unemployment and the incompetence of their political leaders. In her ethnographic account from Bihać in Bosnia, Azar Hromadžić demonstrated that the people who had themselves experienced war, marginalisation and migration wanted to help out migrants but also strived to restore their fragile normalcy disturbed by the newcomers. More precisely, they struggled to handle the impact of migrants on their daily life, the devastation of public spaces, and the negligence of their predicament by the governmental institutions and NGOs. Hromadžić depicts a particularly touching moment of a migrant walking through the town with the inscription “Srebrenica—da se ne zaboravi genocide” (Srebrenica—never forget genocide) on his t-shirt “creating limits of the comprehensible and tolerable, and it DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262-3

46  Solidarity in Abandonment marked an excess of suffering” (2020: 168). Painful reminiscences of the war and stumbling attempts to acknowledge genocides were confronted with a new manifestation of the annihilation of bodies caused unbearable pain and anguish. Against the backdrop of the forced migration, a rough economic transition and ethnic conflicts, state abandonment and the local population’s engagement in migrant protection, I intend to “de-migranticize” (Dahinden 2016) the Balkan route and reorient the focus from the migration through the Balkan Peninsula to local communities residing along it. Janine Dahinden suggests that migration and integration studies might highlight differences between migrants and citizens, which run the risk of supporting the “national order of things” and the need for a nation state to manage and institutionalise the differences. This links to Gurminder Bhambra’s work which argues that in social science the unit of analysis is predominantly the nation states; through these lenses we tend to analyse administrative divisions and local social interactions (Ibid. 2022: 10). And thus, from a conceptual starting point, analyses are “bordered”. Let me stress that the difference between migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Europe created by nation states and the EU mainly lay in legal statuses and the right to move. To avoid drawing state-promoted divisions, Dahinden proposes to change the “focus of investigation away from ‘migrant populations’ towards ‘overall populations’” (2016: 2208). Thus, when we pull back the veil of migration in our analyses, we can see novel forms of inequality and the bases of new alliances. The encounter of local population with migrants, as suggested by El-Shaarawi and Razsa, activate or re-activate socialist internationalism and the Non-Aligned Movement, which resisted against the lack of – or insufficient – engagement of the state in migrant protection (2019: 106). Those grassroots organisations, suggest Jessica Greenberg and Ivana Spasić, created “new kinds of solidarity politics in the interstices of alternately securitized and absent states” (2017: 315). Perhaps the ground for the solidarity shaped the common experience of being part of the same global context that swept both groups into the same global migration processes and share as labour migrants in the EU “a peripheral fate as laboring bodies” (Majstorović, 2021: 194). Their racialised otherness and their precarious position in the EU labour market allow two parallels to be drawn between the two. Both groups search for better life because of structural injustice, authoritarianism, negligence, oppression or poverty. Except those who received education in highly demanded professions, they are a reservoir of cheap labour force for the EU economy in, for example, care work, construction and hospitality. In this chapter, by looking at the racialised power relations and mobility regimes which are at the heart of the EU border regime and often characterise the postYugoslav nation-states that emerged after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, I identify the similarities between these two groups. The thrust of my argument possibly becomes more compelling when we consider the fact that in 2015 alone, 40 per cent of the asylum applicants registered in Germany were from post-Yugoslav states, which surpassed the number of applications of Syrians and Afghans or Somalias1 (Brenner 2015; UNHCR 2015). Furthermore, by bringing up the local community

Solidarity in Abandonment 47 in the analysis of the Balkan route, I wish to broaden the perspective of my work on liminality beyond the refugee crisis and migration through the Balkan Peninsula and show the universalities of migrants’ stories and their journey trajectories in the physical and metaphorical liminal space. A space, on the one hand, surrounded by the EU member states and kept endlessly from them in the position of EU candidate country, and, on the other hand, kept by national and local ethno-nationalists elites on the brink of ethnic conflict. A space where, during the liminal events of 2015 and 2016, new human interactions appeared. In the following pages, in the context of migrant movement through the Balkan Peninsula, I explore the local Albanian community’s history, problematise the dichotomy between the two and show that there are common life experiences that allow us to better understand the forms of inequality created at the fringes of the EU. Thus, this chapter is not exclusively about how the EU shapes migration in the post-Yugoslav region, but also about the way the EU influences the everyday reality there by enforcing its migration policy through semi-authoritarian “stabilitocratic” regimes. I suggest that the local population’s own experiences of marginalisation, exile, and extensive migration build the imperative for the support of newcomers. In my analyses, I apply the concept of liminality which I find useful for a threefold reason: It helps to identify the relevance of the local residents’ life suspension caused by migrants’ influx, entrapment in the path of becoming Europeans and to understand how human beings experience abrupt changes and react to them. Cangià suggests that spontaneous liminal events throw us into an unpredictable and ambivalent situation (2021: 36). New agencies, creativity and the modulation of social arrangements are the outcomes of a rite of passage (Turner 1967). Liminality, as pointed out by Thomassen (2009: 14) “serve[s] not only to identify the importance of in-between periods, but also to understand the human reactions to liminal experiences: the way liminality shape[s] personality, the sudden foregrounding of agency, and the sometimes dramatic tying together of thought and experience”. Thus, the case of Preševo seems to be particularly interesting because it gives us a unique window into human experiences and behaviour in liminal situations. As such, the refugee crisis might be perceived as a laboratory for human reactions to the “expected unexpected” – meaning the events that are inevitably coming, but we do not want to admit it. Short meetings between roaming migrants and local residents at the edges of the fortress Europe are an inevitable effect of EU migration policy and the disparities between the global North and the global South. The resulting movement of people has a dramatic impact on those who move, but also on the hosting population. The sudden arrival of migrants disrupts the regular flow of things, changes roles or creates new ones and produces conditions of liminality and spontaneous communities (Turner 1982). These conditions of liminality, as argued by Cangià, “can involve the need for physical separation from habitual spaces to move to new ones” (2021: 37). They can provide the ground for deep social and political shifts, rearranging the preliminary state of affairs and creating unity in societies burdened by ethnic differences and wars.

48  Solidarity in Abandonment Albanians as the Other On one occasion, I sit with Gzim in a bar waiting for a football match between Albania and Poland to start. It should have kicked off a few minutes ago but the Albanian sport channel in the local cable TV did not work. As all the other channels work regularly, I ask if we can watch it on another channel. He replied: “Neither of them will ever broadcast the game of the Albanian national team” and add angrily: I don’t know if it is a coincidence that when the Albanian national team plays, the sport channel does not work. But it makes me furious. When we protest against such incidents, they call us terrorists, but we just want our basic rights. Preševo is a town in the Preševo Valley, which is the least developed region in Serbia. Its population of 34,000 is composed mostly of Albanians, who are Muslim (90 per cent), and Serbs, who are Orthodox (9 per cent) (Popis 2002). Both groups called the region the red zone, where the endless conflict between Kosovar and Serbian state simmers and keeps the region on the brink of yet another war. Now and then, a new flash point in the relationship between the local Albanian community and the Serbian or Kosovan state sparks up. Just as I am writing this chapter, at the turn of the 2022/2023, the Serbian state is sending its army to its border with Kosovo. The Albanians in Preševo Valley, however neglected, keep close ties with the Albanians in Kosovo and RN Macedonia and previously fought together for their rights in socialist and post-socialist times. This conflicted with the Yugoslav state, and, later independent post-Yugoslav republics, which were adamant in their efforts to preserve the integrity of their territory. According to my research participants, persistent tensions between Albanians in Preševo Valley with Serbian state and the disputes about territory exchanges between Serbia and Kosovo, are the reason for the uncertain fate of the region, lack of local and foreign investment and consequently further negligence and abandonment of the local population. Historically, Albanians in the region constituted a significant political force, which was in conflict with Belgrade.2 Albanians persistently demanded their rights, autonomy and their own republic. Mark Mazower suggests that “[i]rredentism seemed stronger among Albanians than most other peoples in the post-Yugoslav region, perhaps because they had been deprived of their freedom for so long” (2000: 142). This struggle reached its peak in the Kosovo war of 1999, which later led to Albanian insurrection throughout RN Macedonia in 2001 and Preševo in 2002. In Preševo, memories of the conflicts are brought back due to the presence of the Serbian Army battalion at the top of Preševo Valley, on the border with Kosovo, which routinely drives fully armed through the town. Similarly, while physically absent, the monument commemorating veterans of the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medjvedja and Bujanovac is still present in community memory.3 Roughly 200 masked and heavily armed Serbian special police forces removed the commemorative stone from the main square 20 January 2013, causing protests in the town.

Solidarity in Abandonment 49 While I talk with Gzim and his friend over a beer, the bar manager called the cable customer services line to fix the channel interruption. As much as Gzim sought to enjoy the game with a visit of his Polish friend, he wanted to watch the match because to see the Albanian flag displayed – a red flag with a black eagle. This is the flag with which Albanians identify with, as opposed to the Serbian or Kosovar ones, the latter, blue with yellow stars, was imposed by the EU. We left for another bar hoping that someone else had managed to find a solution, but with no success. When we talk about Albanian–Serbian relations while weaving between cars randomly parked on the run-down sidewalks and the narrow potholed streets of Preševo, his frustrations and feeling of injustice intensify. Gzim recalled the nervy football match between Albania and Serbia in 2014, during which a drone carrying a map of Greater Albania appeared on the playing field causing, a fight between the players over the flag. He said, “in Preševo it was calm, no one wanted to provoke a conflict because Serbian authorities penalised even symbolic gestures”. Like one of the bar owners who displayed three flags during the match and consequently received a fine of a few thousand euros. Serbian law prohibits the exposure of images of national minorities that are identical to the flags, symbols, or emblems of another state. Serbian–Albanian relations are marked by their Ottoman past, mutual distrust, war atrocities and historical claims to the same territory that, as such, characterises the national building process of the Balkan states more widely (Poulton 2000: 46). Dorde Stefanović (2005) suggests that creation of utopian, homogeneous nation states in the post-Ottoman Balkans was accompanied by stigmatisation, coercive assimilation, deportation and even extermination of the local Muslims by Serbs who associate them with former Ottoman oppressors. In socialist Yugoslavia – the political and social contract dominated by Serbs – Albanians were classified as a “national minority” with its “own” Albanian state, ruled by Enver Halil Hoxha. They were thus viewed as subversive minority and, consequently, did not get their own republic (Conversi 2002: 274). The Albanian minority were also faced with a ban on the wearing of face veils in public, had limited possibilities of obtaining higher education in the Albanian language and limited access to public sector employment. The result of discrimination along identification lines caused poverty and social immobility. Added to this exclusion was the fact that the Yugoslav regions inhabited mostly by Albanians4 lagged behind the rest of the country economically (Ivković et al. 2019: 65) and the economic reforms of 1964/1965 only deepened the gap between the regions (Ibid.: 64). The marginalisation of Albanians in socialist Yugoslavia, and later in the independent post-Yugoslav republics, was also compounded by ethno-linguistic differences and a Muslim religious confession that stood out from the majority Christian Slavic culture, which was used by Serbian and Macedonian nationalist media to portray them as fundamentalist and which defined Albanian “otherness”. The tensions between political representations of the Albanian minority in Serbia remained tense and marked by mutual distrust and victimisation. The conflict between Albanians in Kosovo and the Serbian state was never ended by peace agreement but an international intervention, and the UN and NATO imposed their own victory and administration for an undefined

50  Solidarity in Abandonment period that stretched to various international missions. Consequently, unresolved, frozen conflicts and war crimes loom large in the relations between the Serbian state and Albanian community in Serbia (Ejupi and Stiperski 2018: 232). As Cveta Koneska (2014: 25) explains, conflicts solidify groups more than political elites’ efforts to mobilise masses behind ethno-nationalist projects. Others argue that these interethnic reservations are not merely based on hatred but that in times of conflict the aim to maintain social boundaries supporting peaceful coexistence between different social groups in the same territory (Lubaś 2011). On the ground level, the ethnic relations between the local Albanian and Serbian residents of Preševo Valley are calm but restrained, limited to mostly professional or neighbourly contact, which is sometimes interrupted by national(ist) nostalgia. In more ethnically mixed neighbourhoods, more intense social relations are common. Mutual visits for family celebrations on religious holidays are common, as are multi-ethnic enduring friendships. Through the trauma of having lived through a war, the memory of violence and atrocities damages communities and weakens social ties (Milan 2020: 16), yet even during the turmoil of the 1990s and 2000s, although people were more aloof to each other, they were never hostile or violent. However, Catherin Baker in her book “Race and the Yugoslav Region” (2018) opposes explanations of the “oddness” of the Albanian community through a juxtaposition against the Slavic and Christian majority based on ethno-linguistic differences. She suggests that ethnic and national lenses employed by scholars to analyse the socio-political reality in the post-Yugoslav region occluded the impact of race and racism, and an understanding of the semi-racialised division within the post-Yugoslav society. She explained that Albanians are placed at bottom of a racialised hierarchy and labelled as savages, lazy and criminal, which makes them different from Serbs, Macedonians, Croatian or Slovenes (2018: 72). Hence, the anti-Albanian attitude in the post-Yugoslav region stems from the intersection of ethnicity, language, social class, religion and racism, which all shape Albanians’ relationships with post-Yugoslav states, as well as their otherness and the feeling of abandonment. A negative image of Albanians is spread by anti-Albanian, Serbian or RN Macedonia nationalist propaganda and popular culture that attributes them to an “oriental heritage” and therefore makes life in EU countries difficult for them. The pejorative term Shiptar5 or other derogatory terms like selačko pleme (peasant tribe) is widely used by ethnic Serbs and ethnic Macedonians to highlight the negative features of Albanians as uneducated, corrupt, violent, dirty and poor, ignorant of the state and religious laws of their country of residence, open to bribery and prone to alcoholism, theft and murder. Stephanie Schwandner-Sivers names these stereotypes Albanism, a subcategory of Balkanism, which in contrast with the latter is not shaped by hegemonic discourse and power relations but rather a complete lack of knowledge about their culture and home country(ies) (2008: 60). The negative features of Albanians circulate in Southeast states as well as outside of its borders. Nejat, an Albanian construction material shop owner in Preševo, told me that Belgrade constantly emphasises the criminal inclinations of Albanians. Serbs spread rumours that Albanians buy houses with money earned from drug

Solidarity in Abandonment 51 trafficking. He explains: “Albanians work hard abroad and support each other, just like the Jews. Without solidarity we would not survive”. Albanism hinders emigration and integration. Gzim said that many people from Preševo hold a fear against leaving because they are afraid of being recognised as Albanians. You know in UK they call us “hellalbanian”. Albanian in the UK means criminal. They make a lot of problems for us. Wherever we go we are afraid of being recognized as Albanians. We fear the gazes of people …. Baker (2018) explains that racial politics shape young Albanians’ experiences of living in multicultural cities in the EU. For example, Albanians in London encountered the first wave of racialisation of “east European” migrants, which negatively affected their self-esteem. Negative stereotypes spread by racist and nationalist actors force many Albanians to hide their nationality while travelling abroad. This shame and sacrifice was reflected on by an Albanian car mechanic from RN Macedonia who had worked for eight years in several cities in Germany. Despite the sacrifice of working long additional hours, he barely managed to cover his living expenses in Germany and sent 500 EUR home. But worse than not making enough money was his illegality, he overstayed three months long visa free stay in the EU. He only walked on side streets and only during night, humiliated and hunched over, avoiding calling attention to himself. He hid his emigration background and, more importantly, Albanian identity, to circumvent structural social exclusion resulting from negative essentialisation (Schwandner-Sievers 2008). Eventually, he was caught, accused of using falsified documents, detained, and later deported, along with a ban on entering the EU. The Albanian stereotypes are found in numerous posts in social media, as well as fiction and documentary films, which all depict the exotic value of the reemergence of vendetta killings, prostitution and other informal practices. One example of such cultural production is the successful French action-thriller film written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen entitled Taken (2008). On the back of its success, the film was followed by two sequels and a television series based on it. The plot tells the story of former CIA agent whose daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian sex trafficking ring. Under the innocent cloak of such culturalist constructions stereotypes are spread internationally. Mariella Pandolfi suggests that by exoticising and folkorising the Albanian culture, European experts are blind to the reality before them. Albanian customary law became the master template for understanding the emergence of anti-state parallel power structures, the naïve cruelty of financial pyramids, the wide-spread local violence and other criminal activities. (Pandolfi 2002: 205) Pandolfi argues that essentialist antagonistic representations of Albanianism serve structures of exclusion, both at home and abroad. During the disarray of 1990s, as well as during the war in Kosovo, Albanians were imagined as pitiable

52  Solidarity in Abandonment victims, calling for help and intervention. However, sympathy quickly evaporated in Greece, Italy or Germany (2008:58). To illustrate her claim, she refers to Nicola Mai, who writes: The first Albanians arriving in Italy immediately after the collapse of the communist regime in March 1991 were greeted by local and national media as ‘deserving’ political refugees, by the end of August of the same year these same people were treated as illegal ‘economic migrants’, and sent back to Albania after a period of detention in specially prepared camps. Those who remained had to endure media coverage that in large measure contributed to, indeed was responsible for, the pervasive stigmatisation and criminalisation of Albanian migrants, which has persisted and in fact worsened over the past ten years. (Mai 2001) Racists and essentialist rhetoric about Albanians is not that different, if at all, from that spread about migrants from global South. They are portrayed as a homogenised group, whose only distinctive feature is the Muslim religion, completely ignoring their national, linguistic or political characteristics (Modood 2009: 194). The stereotypical perception of the Muslim community in Europe is that it is in some way “fundamentalist” and opposed the freedom of speech (Ibid: 221). Politically active Muslims in Britain, like Albanians in Serbia, claim that they are disfranchised in educational and economic sphere and lack political representation (Ibid.: 203). Additionally, similarly to Albanians fleeing from Yugoslavia or Albania, empathy towards migrants travelling throughout the Balkan Peninsula evaporated after few months. A Sense of Disenfranchisement It was in the cafe next to a blank spot marking the absence of the monument commemorating veterans of the Liberation Army, where a political activist for Albanian minority rights in Serbia and a member of the Kosovar political party Vetevedosje persuaded me in spring 2015: Albanians in Serbia are marginalised. Despite having autonomy in the region of Preševo, Medjvedja and Bujanovac, an Albanian mayor, and primary school and secondary schools in Albanian, they do not have their representatives in state institutions and consequently they don’t have influence in the crucial aspects of politics, like health, police or juridical system. Furthermore, the Albanian inhabited areas are militarised. Serbians advance in EU integration without respecting and improving the Albanian minority rights. European Serbia has even more discriminatory policies towards Albanian than socialist Yugoslavia. In 2021, during my conversation with Ragim Mustafi, the Head of the Albanian National Council in Serbia, we discussed the situation of Albanians in

Solidarity in Abandonment 53 southern Serbia. Mustafi emphasized the persistent and unfriendly political environment that Albanians continue to face in the Republic of Serbia. He shed light on a broad range of struggles experienced by Albanians in Serbia, starting from difficulties in obtaining recognition of school handbooks by Serbian authorities to facing obstacles when pursuing higher education in Albanian. Moreover, Mustafi pointed out the lack of adequate representation of Albanians in crucial local state institutions such as courts, police, and postal services. Adding to their challenges, Albanians are denied the opportunity to establish their own regional politics. These discriminatory practices have, unfortunately, led many Albanians to consider emigration from the region, as Mustafi concluded. At the lower level, Albanian residents recall a discrete act of discrimination during the Serbian officers’ police road control, which tend to be stricter and more violent. However, they told me that tension between Serbian authorities and the Albanian community stem from an unwillingness to find a common language on both sides and the desire to perpetuate the interethnic tensions for the sake of remaining in power. Residents openly criticised the local mayor government for nepotism and a disinclination to find conflict solutions with Belgrade. They also complained about town’s offcials disengagement with burden caused by arriving migrants’ to the town. Consequently, in March 2016, the Mayor of Preševo, after more than a decade of rule, lost the election to a returning migrant who has worked in Germany. When I talked to both local Serbs and Albanians about their regular worries, they hardly commented on ethnic relations but rather on economic hardship. Milena, a nurse, and mother of two, lives in privatised failed local industry housing. While her husband was fixing the roof of the building, she welcomed me to a table near the stairwell, since her two-room flat did not provide enough privacy for a conversation. In an economic sense, it is a total catastrophe – to put in gentle words. Equally on the Serbian and Albanian side. Huge, beautiful new houses are deceptive - [Albanian] guest workers in Europe built them. There is a lot of young people who can’t afford for studies or after their 50s are unemployed. People blame post-socialist transformation and corrupt politicians for the poor economic situation, transforming the working class into lumpenproletariat (Čabaravdić 2009). The slow, decline of factories, which first were privatised and then closed, is echoed in conversations with residents. Electro-Contact, Grafofleks - the printing house, July 7 - the plastic factory, and the biggest one, Tuton - tobacco factory … they all have been closed for 15–20 years. They [political elites] devastated everything. The dissolution of Yugoslavia, followed by sanctions imposed on the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro due to the war in Bosnia and later in Kosovo resulted in the collapse of the nationalised economy and remaining industries post-war ethnonational ruling class shadily privatised the irresponsibly sold off natural wealth such

54  Solidarity in Abandonment as forests, waters and energy (Majstorović 2021: 52). The international sanctions brought supply chain cut, factories boomed, local industry collapsed and unemployment and the poverty level rose significantly. In her book on woman engineering professionals entering into the labour market during the Yugoslav dissolution and subsequent move to a free-market economy, Ilka Thiessen (2006) realised that the independent republics, previously tidily connected to each other, did not have the capacity to build independent infrastructure. Consequently, particularly the young citizens of the Yugoslav republics all of a sudden found themselves in a reality where chasing an education and professional development became tougher than it had been for their parents. Work opportunities, traveling, internships inside and outside the country and wages all drastically shrank (Thiessen 2006). The wars, the collapse of Yugoslavia and ethnopolitics all resulted in cutting Albanian–Serbian community bounds. Out of fear of fights between pupils of different ethnicity, school principals introduced double-shift schooling teaching – one for Albanians, another for Serbs. With the rise of unemployment, the possibility for building interethnic contacts in the workplace disappeared. People largely stopped sharing spaces and lives, deepening the gap between the two. The Albanians turned their eyes towards Kosovo or RN Macedonia, where some of them studied and where their relatives lived. But maintaining close contact with fellow Albanians on the other side of the border became expensive, longer and emotionally exhausting because of emerging national borders and integration with the EU. Europeanisation of the Borders The social problems caused by the ethnic divisions and economic privation bothered a 60-year-old taxi driver mentioned in previous chapter, with whom I built a relation of trust in 2015 and 2016. I drove with Shpirt to various directions in his car, bought used from Austria thanks to money gained in recently intensified border traffic. I crossed the Serbian–Kosovar border with him a couple of times, which is an emblematic “permanent state of exception”, where the constant threat of mobility is justified by law (Salter 2008: 173). When driving his 15-year-old Volkswagen Passat up the steep and curvy road stretching up the hill with a reddish hue, dividing Serbia from Kosovo, Shpirt tells me that the burden of the conflict between two countries backfires on Albanian border transgressors, who commute from Preševo to Gjilan or Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, and the opposite direction to run their errands. The Albanian communities in Serbia, RN Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo have long-standing relations that usher in transborder and transnational ties. These relations can be characterised by family bonds on both sides of the border and student migration to Pristina, during the former Yugoslav period, and later also to Tetovo in RN Macedonia (Rydzewski 2015, 2022a), as well as the previously mentioned transnational struggle of Albanians for autonomy and minority right (Neofotistos 2012: 18). Also Shpirt divides his life between Preševo and Gjilan, travelling back and forth for family and business purposes. Every day, he crosses the border several times transporting good and people. But closed border crossings, or border bureaucracy in those which remain in operation hinder movement.

Solidarity in Abandonment 55 Just after we crossed the border post with Kosovo, Shpirt, stopped, irritatedly got out of the car, and stuck a sticker on the car with the prescribed licence plate number, handed to him by the border guards. Drivers must cover the country’s emblem on the car plates with a white sticker while entering from Kosovo to Serbia and vice versa. “This supposed to be hard-won agreement between Kosovo and Serbia over the conflict of car plates”, he shouted. Border paperwork also burdened passengers of taxis and buses. Each and every time, Kosovar passport holders must fill in documents at entry to Serbia. Soon, Serbs will have to do the same as politicians in Pristina are developing a new reciprocal policy. Robert Pichler argues that Albanians create trans-territorial communities, meaning that ethnic loyalty is not limited to the country of residence but also include Albanians in other countries like Kosovo or Serbia and those who emigrated (2009: 215). Thus, for them trans-border contact and mobility are crucial for everyday existence and identity. Members of this community are bonded by trans-territorial practices and forms of belonging which presuppose conscious identification with a particular group within transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 1010) and spaces (Faist 2000: 197). The breakup of Yugoslavia and approximation of the Balkan states with the EU resulted in the transformation of the border regime and cutting the transnational social spaces of the community in the region where migration and border control are subjected to ethno-politics and well as integration with the EU. The transnational community ties, despite the raising of fences and border posts, were also maintained by contraband activities during the international embargo on Serbia, and later by human smuggling, which was facilitated by ethnic transborder bonds. Danilo Mandić – perhaps building on stereotypes of Albanians as open to crime and omitting structural consequences as injustice, the cruelty of border regimes, an ignorance of countries of residence, and poverty – suggests that smugglers based in Kosovo, Preševo and other Albanian sites in the Balkans used private transportation companies, “many of them transitioning from the extensive drug trade”, that offered quasi legal trips Northern Serbia and EU countries (2018: 6). The breakup of Yugoslavia and the Balkan states alignment with the EU have brought about significant changes in migration regimes within the region. Migration and border control have now become subordinate to both EU integration and ethno-politics. The Albanian community in Preševo finds itself caught in a complex web of global and regional politics, specifically dealing with the external borders of the EU and the border dispute between Kosovo and Serbia. In the past, the internal borders of Socialist Yugoslavia and later the international borders of independent republics were merely symbolic lines on the map, easily accessible to citizens with their ID cards. However, with the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the process of EU integration, these borders have transformed into heavily secured and militarised “hard borders,” becoming more tangible and visible. The hardening of borders has had various adverse effects on local communities. For instance, the closure and militarisation of the border crossing between two sister

56  Solidarity in Abandonment villages, Miratovac in Serbia, and Lojane in RN Macedonia, have separated families and increased the distance between them. Instead of a 3-kilometer trip, the Albanian community in both villages now has to make a nearly 50-kilometer detour through a main transit border crossing, requiring passports for travel. This geographical distancing creates hardships for education, work, shopping, and healthcare visits. Similar challenges can be observed in the towns of Preševo in Serbia and Gjilian in Kosovo, which were separated by a 50-kilometer mountainous road. Although the border crossing between these towns remains open, political and economic ties were disrupted with the establishment of the Kosovar state and the ongoing conflict between Kosovar and Serbian elites. Administrative requirements, such as the sealing of the emblem on registration plates, have become constant sources of humiliation for Albanians on both sides. The Western Balkans’ integration with the EU defines emigration patterns from and through the region. Throughout two decades of integration with the EU, post-Yugoslav states have been encouraged to tighten their border control to protect the EU’s external borders. As Marta Stojić Mitrović (2014) shows, among these was Serbia, which “harmonised” its policies with those existing in the EU legislative, institutional and official practices in key areas, such as security and migration, resulting in a curb on movement of goods and people within the postYugoslav region (see also Cooper 2015: 452–455). I call this process the Europeanisation of borders, and in the context of the EU external borders I define it a process through which the EU seek to harmonize their border management policies and practices in line with the standards set by the EU. It is a part of the broader concept of European integration, where EU militarizes its external borders with the aim of creating a unified and integrated European space at its core. The Europeanisation of borders does not merely refer to borders of the EU, but is strongly connected with the offshoring of migration control to third countries, made possible thanks to an asymmetry of power. In this sense, Europeanisation of borders is a compound of what I call the Europeanisation of migration (see Chapter 3). The paradox of this process lies in the alleged ultimate aim of this process consisting of strengthening borders in for example candidate countries to become, in the future, part of the EU’s borderless Schengen area. Europeanisation of the borders strengthens control over some and smoothens it for others. Let’s have a look at how it works in practice in Southeast Europe. In the course of EU integration. Serbia and other Balkan states signed an agreement on the admission of failed asylum seekers. As a result, many failed Albanian asylum applicants, irregular workers – such as the car mechanic I mentioned earlier – and those whose residence permit had expired were deported to their hometowns and villages, some with a five-year entry ban to the EU. In 2015, when Germany was praised for its humanitarian approach towards refugees from Middle East, it stopped accepting asylum applications from citizens of Western Balkans states and deported them back home. Therefore, the refugee crisis significantly affected Serbian citizens’ prospects of staying in the EU. On the subject of the Bosnian–Croatian border, Carolin Leutloff-Grandits (2022) shows that with EU integration, the external border of the Union hardens, and local

Solidarity in Abandonment 57 inhabitants are integrated into the border securitisation. This process particularly affects minorities who have their ethnic fellows on the other side of the border or who have long traditions of trans-border movement or cooperation. She argues that sealing borders bring a double peripherisation of border communities, since people are forced to limit or withdraw from cooperation with institutions on the other side of the border due to incompatibility of the educational systems, billing and administrative formalities. The lack of cooperation and exchange contributes to the further decline of social and economic life and reinforces the peripheral status with the country. Europeanisation of the borders translates into the separation of communities divided by national borders. The reward for the hard control of their states’ borders and the readmission agreements is visa liberalisation for the Western Balkans. Despite being a significant improvement for many citizens of the EU candidate states, Gezim said that it did not fully lift the obstacles of movement. Many people from Preševo work in the Europe. Some of them work illegally, some legally through work and travel programs. But usually, they work at McDonald’s or this sort of place. At McDonald’s you can’t push our professional carriers forward. What kind of promotion you can get in McDonald’s. […] The money we earn there, we can do nothing. Everything is getting expensive here. With this money one can’t pay for apartments and bills here in Preševo, and there, in Germany, or wherever in the EU. The situation will get worse because work and travel programs do not satisfy our needs, and we don’t have a chance for better work there. The EU is killing us. Gezim himself worked in Switzerland but fees related to the employment of third nationals did not pay off and he was pushed into the informal economy. The transformation of the border regime, on the one hand, eases their mobility to the Schengen countries without granting full access to the labor market; on the other hand, it hinders movement between the ex-republics of Yugoslavia, which are required, by the accession procedure, to introduce stricter control of their borders. The emigration experience in various aspects is alike to the one held by migrants from the global South. They experience marginalisation and conflicts in their homes, which in the moments of their mediatisation induce short-term solidarity among. However, soon the uplift of solidarity was overshadowed by stereotyping and racism. Albanians, like other nations from the region and migrants from global South, have been subjected to filtering processes aimed at selecting only the best skilled and most useful migrants and only when needed for a neoliberal economy. Finally, Albanians and migrants from global South are racialised. Baker claims that traces of race and post-coloniality should not be dismissed because: The “Yugoslav region is not ‘outside’ race, but is deeply embedded in transnational racialised imaginations and therefore a global history of coloniality …”. Baker provides tangible connections between nations from former European colonies and Albanians. She suggests that Albanians in Serbian and Yugoslav states were spatially

58  Solidarity in Abandonment and ideologically colonised. Serbian elites, like the politician and historian called Albanians both “European Indians” and “lazy savages” and in the same vein likened Serbs in the Balkans to white Europeans in America and Africa in their sense of superiority and “civilising mission” (Baker 2018: 64). Paving the Balkan Route Albanians in the post-Yugoslav region, apart from a common struggle for their rights or business activities, also have a long-lasting common migration history, which occurred in three waves.6 Historically, the emigration of Albanians and other Muslim communities in the region was known as kurbet or pečalba, and it took the shape of seasonal migration to various provinces of the Ottoman empire. Each year, pečalbari return to their homes to get married and complete family and social obligations (Bielenin-Lenczowska 2015: 97). More recently, Albanians started to leave the Yugoslav republics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when unskilled young men with little education emigrated to Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland as guest workers (Ejupi 2017). This emigration was enabled by bilateral agreements between, on the one hand, the Yugoslav state striving for the technological knowhow and, on the other hand, devastated by the Second World War Western European countries in need of cheap labour. In the narratives of my research partners, emigration was a means to fight against discrimination and structural obstructions like large households, economic hardship and a lack of education. Rozita Dimova argues that only by emigration from Yugoslavia could they become a part of mainstream, consumerist Yugoslav society (2007: 6). Shpirt’s father’s life history well illustrates emigration from that period. He left Preševo in 1967 to work in the German car industry. He was employed there until the end of his life. He spent his summers in Preševo, where he built a house and sent back remittances to. His money provided substantial support for the rest of the family who stayed behind. The strong ties of emigrees with those who stayed behind, and the temporary returns during the summer period are what distinguish Albanian emigration (Dimova 2007). The returnees have an important impact on the local community due to their knowhow, transnational connections and economic resources that help them acquire higher economic and social positions than fellow citizens of other ethnicities, such as Macedonians or Serbs (Rydzewski 2015, 2022a). The second wave begun in 1989 and lasted until 1997. It started with the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy and the mass removal of Albanians from state institutions. Then, in the war-torn ex-Yugoslav republics, Albanians escaped civil conflicts in their home states and continue to migrate as refugees or “undocumented migrants”, mostly to Western Europe (Brunnbauer 2004: 579). In other parts of the post-Yugoslav countries, Albanians were fleeing military drafts, poverty caused by war and harsh economic transformations. It was a time when existing bilateral agreements were cancelled, meaning that the Yugoslav red passport – considered at the time to be the most useful in the world as it allowed travel to both the West and Eastern bloc – became valueless, making emigration even less accessible. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 2009, the citizens of Serbia could travel visa-free to only about

Solidarity in Abandonment 59 one-tenth of the world’s 200 states (Jansen 2009: 819). In Europe, this was restricted to Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia and Turkey. The travel opportunities dramatically shrank since the citizens of Serbia had to use their degraded passports to even travel to ex-Yugoslav republics (Jansen 2009: 819). Asylum seeking or overstaying visas were virtually the only options at hand to stay in the EU. That was the time when Shpirt left Preševo. In 1995, he run away to Austria, escaping Yugoslav military service. The journey was facilitated by various smugglers. He travelled from Preševo to Belgrade, and from Belgrade to Subotica, where he hid in a house for a couple of days. Next, with the help of smugglers who bribed the border guard and, using fake Hungarian documents, he reached Austria. “Today, nothing has changed in this matter” – he said referring to current migration through Southeast Europe. “People have made the same journey for years”. In Austria, he applied for refugee status, but received a rejection. He did not give up and appealed against the decision and waited. When, in 1998, the Yugoslav state ended conscription, he applied for a voluntary return. I asked him why he did not stay there, he answered doubtfully, I fled because of the military draft and, moreover, I could not work legally full-time since the application was still in process, and […] one has only one home. Here is my field, here is my place. Now he seems to regret his decision, as a year later, when the war in Kosovo started, the Austrian government granted asylum to all Albanians seeking it. The third wave started after conflicts at the turn of centuries, as the exYugoslav republics formed political stability. Atdhe Hetemi explains that in this period Albanians emigrated mostly for family reunification purposes, as well as illegal migration of unskilled and undereducated youth and (temporary) legal migration of skilled and highly educated individuals through study or work arrangements (2019: 94). The prevailing migration direction of Serbia at the time was that of emigration, and the country’s presence on the “black” list of states whose citizens did not qualify for visa-free travel to the Schengen Zone was of high public preoccupation (Jansen 2009, 2015). Generally, legal emigration was possible only with a visa, which required hours of waiting in the long queues in front of Western EU states’ embassies, a host of documents and payment of fees, non-refundable even for failed applications. Jansen explains that the visa requirements for citizens of ex-Yugoslav republics were seen as institutional materialisations of a wider experience of humiliating entrapment, that only heightened their peripheral position in global structures and intensified the feeling of isolation and drifting apart from the “West” (Jansen 2009: 818). The position of citizens of Yugoslav region in the racialised hierarchy of global mobility was not that different from migrants from global South, who were seen as asylum-seekers and overstayers – with racialised suspicions of being “bogus” asylum-seeker (Baker 2018: 157). In 2007, the Western Balkans countries, except Kosovo, benefited from visa a liberalisation program which enabled, among others

60  Solidarity in Abandonment Albanians from Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro for a three-month-long stay in a 12-month period in EU countries. The citizens of Kosovo became isolated and hurt and thus open to clandestine journeys to the EU, which reached their peak in 2014–2015, when around 75,000 left Kosovo via Preševo to Subotica, joined migrants from the Middle East and Africa and unofficially crossed the border, seeking asylum in the EU. The lifting of the visa regime for the selected countries brought a reorientation among those who had moved earlier from Serbia to Kosovo. Puzzlingly, old and new citizens of Kosovo sought residence in hated Serbia, as well as Serbian passports, to enable them to work or visit their relatives in the EU. The most recent wave(s) is different from the earlier one though, said Shpirt, since now people emigrate for good. They do not plan to return or contribute to their community. Now that emigration, for his 17-year-old son, is the only prospect, it preoccupies him a great deal: “Here we try to keep at least one child by the parents’ side, to have someone who can pass you a glass of water in old age”. His son’s emigration is very probable. Like many Albanians educated in the postYugoslav period, he does not know the Serbian language, which effectively limits his chances of finding a job in Serbia. The nearest Albanian-speaking universities are in Kosovo and RN Macedonia. But diplomas from the former are not recognised in Serbia and thus worthless on the local labour market, while the fees for the private university in RN Macedonia is only within the reach of emigrants or local elites. The remedy would be studying in Albania because diplomas from there can be validated in Serbia, but this option is financially and prestige-wise unattractive compared with studying in the EU. Thus, the only reasonable solution seems emigration there. Almost everyone I talked to had considered emigration, and for many it seems to be the first and last resort. When I stared with Gezim at the departing buses full of migrants from the Preševo reception camp to Šid, he said: “I envy refugees because they go to Germany, and we stay here”. A lack of investment, and the prospect of employment only through “vrski” – political and social connections – motivated those who have skills, education or relatives abroad to migrate. As a result, the town has become a “ghostly zone of abandonment” (Majstorović 2021). Shpirt, believes that investments in the region could keep young people in Preševo. If only one factory had been opened here, young people would have stayed. Serbia could have created a special industrial zone with reduced taxes but instead they say that it is dangerous here and discourage foreigners from investing. In Belgrade, no one cares what is going on from Niš, southwards. Despite social and political struggle and differences in access to employment in post-Yugoslav countries, researchers have identified a common feeling of disenchantment with economic transition, unresponsive political representation and agonising social and geographical immobilisation, not only in Serbia but also in RN Macedonia (Rydzewski 2019) and Bosnia (Jansen 2015, Majstorović 2021). The sense of powerlessness and impotence against the ruling elites have resulted, on the one hand, in massive protests in the last decade and contributed to the fall of

Solidarity in Abandonment 61 governments in some Southeast European countries (Bieber and Brentin 2019), and on the other hand, forced many people to migrate, locating them somewhere between exile and voluntary migrants (Majstorović 2021:7). Liminality as a Bonding Experience Migrants’ movement throughout the Balkan route was an act of disobedience, unwillingness to stay still (see Chapter 5). It was an attempt to regain dignity, a demonstration of agency, hope and a protest at the immobilisation caused by the EU border regime, or, as Nicolas de Genova once put it, “manifestations of the autonomous subjectivity of human mobility itself” (2017:13). At the same time, I could observe another protest; the local communities’ objection against the state indolence of migrants’ management. It was a manifestation of unity beyond ethnic lines and opposition against the sedentary versus migrant population dichotomy present in the nationalistic rhetoric. People acted to manifest their empathy with those in dangerous predicaments and confront abandonment by the local and state authorities. Giving the example of the Maidan social movement in Ukraine, Scott Georgsen and Thomassen (2017: 199) argue that protests have an essential feature of liminality: “suspension of ordinary rules; questioning of power structures and political legitimacy; an order turned upside-down; volatility, ambivalence, and potentiality”. Researchers such as Charia Milan (2020) and Johanna Paul (2021) show how in the post-Yugoslav, in times of protest, ethnic identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina might dissolve and transcend institutionalised ethno-nationalist boundaries. Thus, if we agree that protest is a liminal stage of any social transition, we can hypothesise that in liminality power relations as ethnic boundaries can blow into air, creating conditions for new interactions, order and solidarity. In the liminal period, local Albanians as well as Serbians in Preševo were left by themselves. Demurring to stay passive, local inhabitants, of different ethnic backgrounds decided to act. Using their own means or cooperating within local initiatives, and later working as employees in international NGOs, they supported migrants in their difficult journey. The liminal period suspends divisions and ethnic categories which, as argues Milan, have been institutionalised, cemented and reproduced in everyday life through political, social, cultural and psychological processes (2020: 3). Residents’ unity with migrants suggests that solidarity might distorts ethnic categorisations and extends solidarity beyond them (Touquet 2012: 205). Migrants have been passing through the Preševo Valley from Miratovac to Bujanovac, a town located 30 kilometres north, for at least decade. Miratovac is an Albanian-populated village on the Serbian– RN Macedonian border. Many residents crossed this area in a rush and despair during the Yugoslav army’s invasion of Kosovo and the subsequent NATO bombing. In the last decade, migrants fleeing war, persecution and seeking a better life in the EU travelled through it in the opposite direction. People on the move typically walked along the hills separating Kosovo from Serbia under the cover of darkness, in small groups from 5 to 20 people. They rarely emerged out of shed of the illegality. If they did, they sought sanctuary in the mosques of the local Albanian community, abandoned buildings or cellars.

62  Solidarity in Abandonment Residents of the valley commonly acknowledged that migrants usually passed clandestinely through the border around Miratovac, walked towards Preševo, and then took a taxi to the Bujanovac train station. From there, they continued by train to Belgrade. As explained to me by Nejat whose house was on the migrants’ path, their presence evoked fear combined with the need to act. The local community helped by providing food and wood. However, they could not do much more because migrants did not have valid travel papers. In Nejat’s words: “They were illegal here. If the police caught us, we would have problems and refugees would be sent back to Macedonia”. The local communities had to be cautious since, as I explained in Chapter 1, the law7 forced Serbian citizens to report undocumented migrants under pain of criminal liability. The Goldmine The increasing visibility of migrants in the Preševo Valley brought bewilderment, equally among the Albanian and Serbian community. Katia, a Serbian student from the town of Preševo, who lived near the railway tracks, told me about a petrified migrant she had found hiding in her cellar: “This person only wanted to sleep over. He was tired. It was winter. He probably wanted to hide from the police”. The residents of Preševo did not know who these people were. Although the imam from the mosque in Miratovac, who had done his theological training in Syria, informed the local Muslim community about the war there and the subsequent exodus of Syrians, non-practicing Muslims and Orthodox Christians in the village were largely uninformed of the impact of the revolutions in the Middle East on Europe. In May 2015, the steady but limited clandestine migration through the Balkan Peninsula changed to en masse arrivals in Preševo. Suddenly, migrants were everywhere. As recalled by Katia, the local community was shocked: For us it was, boom! Literally, boom! Wow! Refugees arrived! So many people! In the beginning, we were afraid of them, and they were afraid of us. I think it was normal because no one knew what was going on. But later on, I thought to myself: why should I be afraid? So we gave them water, food, let them rest, left the tap water running in the yard so they could cool down or clean. At first, refugees congregated at the local police station in the centre of the town, where they registered to gain travel permission. However, soon there were too many people arriving, so the state authorities decided to move the migrant reception point 3 kilometres further away, to the neighbourhood called Preševo Železnička. Since, at the time, this was the only infrastructure created for migrants in the area, the next couple of months left quite a mark on local residents. One of them was Milena, who recalled her presumptions about the camp: We were informed that the camp would be opened two months beforehand. Personally, I had nothing against it. They would come here to register and go further. We all knew that Serbia is just part of the route. It means that it

Solidarity in Abandonment 63 is not their chosen destination but rather a country they only pass through. The camp was opened around June 2015. The day they opened it around a thousand people arrived. Neither the persons who came nor those who were supposed to issue the travel permits, knew what to do. We ended up in the ghetto. The residents of Preševo perceived the appearance of migrants as a “flooding” (poplava) not only of people but also their stories, worries and hopes; it was an emotional challenge. The flood also included NGO workers, taxi and bus drivers and spontaneous entrepreneurs (Figure 2.1). The long summer of migration was an overwhelming experience without a life belt on the horizon. Some critics, following anthropologist Edward Sapir’s (1929) argument that the language determines thought and action of its speakers, would condemn the residents’ expression used to depict their experiences and called it dehumanising and ridiculously simplistic (Shariatmadari 2015). However, such criticism somehow undermines personal perceptions of this event and does not consider it from the perspective of the local communities. Both they and the migrants were victims of the same indolent state and local authorities responsible for mismanagement, which caused the sense of “flooding”. The thousands of people passing through the least developed region of Serbia, where unemployment rates in 2015 were estimated at around 49 per cent (UNDP 2015), attracted those who tried to exercise their entrepreneurial skills. Both Albanians and Serbs from all over Serbia roamed around the camp offering their

Figure 2.1 Passengers brought by taxi to the Horgoš–Roszke border crossing area, Serbia, 2015 Source: Photograph by Maciej Moskwa

64  Solidarity in Abandonment taxi services, selling goods or purchasing humanitarian aid. In the midst of this mayhem were people from Preševo and Miratovac. Some helped spontaneously, others provided mobile phone charging services for 100 dinars or sold overpriced phone SIM cards. The competition between state-organised trains, private coaches and taxi drivers was fierce. Seven coaches waited in front of the camp and the rest of them – I lost count at 170 coaches – lined up on the outskirts of the city. Some claimed that there were more than 200 waiting for a chance to earn some money. As Gzim admitted, certain groups enriched themselves by transporting migrants northwards or by providing other services: The camp was a goldmine for us. […] Finally, people got work. All these guys worked as taxi drivers. A lot of people took advantage of poor refugees. They stole their money; for example, they promised to drive refugees to Belgrade, but instead they drove them to Bujanovac. This way they earned a lot. In the bar where I worked, they usually had a shot of vodka with their morning coffee. They behaved like rich wannabes. But fast money goes fast. Soon these people spent all the money on lap dances and parties. Now, they are unemployed. Only a few did something useful. The withdrawal of the state left a space that was filled by supporters of migrants, freelancers, spontaneous entrepreneurs and criminals. Albi and Ambra lived with their two kids right next to the main street leading to the camp; they hosted me for an interview in their recently refurbished flat in spring 2016. I talked to them about the trading I observed in the area. Albi claimed: “From this street no one made any money! No one!” Ambra disagreed with her husband, which indicates the existence of disagreement in the community about examples of benefiting from migrants and eventual moral justification of these acts. She added: “No, there were some minor things such as charging phones”. Albi interrupted her: But this is nothing! This was not robbery, it was service. People also sold tea and coffee for 50 cents or 1 euro. But I’m telling you, people needed sandwiches, drinks and so on, and if the state allowed to do this, then people found a way to benefit from it. But in my opinion, it was not a big business. From what we suffered, we gained nothing (Nešto smo pretrpeli, ništa nismo zaradili). By now, we should have everything made of gold here. But we just lost nerves. Milena commented in a similar vein: “Everyone talked about the people who enriched themselves on migrants, but no one talked about the people who had to deal with the situation”. She reminded me that the people who lived in the vicinity of the camp were the most affected and suggested that the “entrepreneurs” came from surrounding villages and town. As work opportunities were sparse in the region, employment in the camp was an aspiration of many. For those who found work there, it was an enriching life experience. They met people “literally from around the word”, as Katia commented

Solidarity in Abandonment 65 enthusiastically about working in the camp. “Not only refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria, but also NGO workers from Canada, Israel or Mexico”. It was an eye-opening experience, which some used to develop their professional careers. The Weight of Migrant Reception When I asked my research participants about the summer and autumn of 2015, they vividly recounted the time and showed the pictures of their neighbourhood full of people: Queuing for the camp, sleeping, eating, groaning or chatting. In one of the pictures, I saw people sleeping on the floor at the entrance to their building. Albi, the husband, commented: We gave them everything we had. […] In the end, we did not have any more stuff to give away. To the point that, one time, when I was so tired that I fell asleep early, my wife grabbed my duvet and gave it to a child shivering from cold. Ambra, his wife, continued: Listen to me, I said [to migrants], let me take the child up to my flat. I took only females and children, prepared coffee, and promised them to find a room for next day. The couple showed me a Facebook message from the mother and child who stayed in their flat. The Syrian family, who after a month or so eventually settled down in Norway, wrote that they had travelled through most of the countries of the EU and former Yugoslavia, but they did not meet anyone so caring and welcoming as Albi and Ambra. It was a message of thankfulness. Different residents of Preševo showed me several such messages whenever I asked them about the migrants’ reception in their town. Certainly, in 2015, many people opened doors to their homes, shops or other business premises, often completely suspending their own daily life and responsibilities. But despite their efforts, they were powerless in the face of the sheer number of migrants and their needs. The food they brought to people disappeared in a flash. The means at their disposal were insufficient, and the impossibility of satisfying the needs was frustrating. Later, in the autumn of 2015, the situation deteriorated further. Before the Preševo Valley was covered in snow, persistent rains turned its roads into muddy streams. The weather became cold and humid, but people kept coming in their thousands. Albi recalled the intense emotions felt by his family during that period: We cried the whole day because of the pressure from the refugees; we cried because we felt sorry for them; we cried because we couldn’t stand the situation here anymore. My wife couldn’t go to work; my daughter couldn’t go to school… Everything was blocked. We gave them everything that we could, not only us but all the residents of Preševo Železnička.

66  Solidarity in Abandonment Albi works as an electrician, Ambra as a private entrepreneur. Both had to partly suspend their professional duties. From June to November 2015, their lives were turned upside down. These changes came with a human cost; people genuinely suffered. But they tried to find a way to live through these difficult times and to resolve their dramatic experiences and psychological conflicts. By day, they were involved in self-organised groups supporting migrants. By night, they listened to the disturbing sounds of the streets and processed stories they had heard and scenes they had seen. Insomnia was prevalent among the residents of the area. When describing those times, they complained about many things: The buses whirring 24 hours a day in front of their homes, the people groaning and arguing, the trash scattered around, the mess and odour caused by people defecating in the staircases or under the balconies, the crowd control barriers scraping against the asphalt, or the police roadblocks. These disturbing sounds, rank smells and the limitation of movement hindered business activities and disrupted daily routine for months. But not only that, on a number of occasions the locals were entirely cut off from the rest of the town and various public services, such as post office, ambulatory care or train station. The normality, which, according to the state representatives, should have been restored within 15 days, was barely re-established within six months. Along the queue to the camp, there were few portable toilets, which instantly became overloaded and therefore unusable. The entire area around the camp soon turned into a public loo, which caused high hygienic concerns. The lack of proper sanitary infrastructure around the camp added to the generally difficult situation of the residents and the migrants who waited for travel permits in Preševo. Giorgio Agamben, in his contention on “the camp” as a “state of exception”, realised that its subjection to law is not accompanied by any rights (1998: 159). Milena from Preševo expected that after everything that had happened, the public services would disinfect the streets, as she had seen in a media report from “more European” Slovenia. But no one ever came to clean anything. Neither international NGOs nor the local municipality responded to the residents’ plea to manage the situation in the neighbourhood. Research from Bosnia shows that lack of political action in migrant protection may trigger violence (Savić-Bojanić and Jevtić 2022: 514). Ambra reflected on her own negative feelings. When she requested bin bags from one of the NGOs to collect the garbage left behind by migrants, she was told that they were for migrants, not for the locals. The NGOs lack of recognition of residents’ needs produced a powerlessness, which turned into aggression, resentment and desperate attempts to return to some sort of “normality” “Ambra continues”: I shouted to them: please go away! Let me clean here! Don’t start a fire on the lawn! A few months before we had sowed the lawn. They destroyed and burned everything, it was like an invasion. It was impossible to sleep. People screamed all day and night. Public services did nothing. The local community was full of contradictory feelings: Tired of the chaos, but rarely ambivalent. Many people’s bewilderment turned into violence, fear into

Solidarity in Abandonment 67 anger, powerlessness into action or compassion into solidarity. But above all, they impatiently awaited the moment when the migrants would be gone, and they could return to their previous lives. State Abandonment The sentiment of being forgotten was present among both local Serbians and Albanians. They recalled the lack of employment of the local communities in the camp, the absence of local business involvement in its transformation or the criminalisation of private taxi drivers transporting migrants. However, Albanians usually blamed the Serbian state for such developments. They tended to say: “migrants are coming from the south and workers from the north [of Serbia]”. From what I understood, employment in the camp might have been some gesture of acknowledgement of their suffering, but even this was impeded. The local people felt angry and abandoned. “No one paid attention to our anguish”, said Ambra. The Albanian couple commented repeatedly on their bewilderment during the migrants’ presence in the town. Ambra told me: “Sometimes we laughed, sometimes we cried because of nerves and anguish”. Albi continued: “We cried because of them [migrants], and because of our state authorities and the local government that left us by ourselves”. The abandonment was threefold: By the Serbian state, local Albanian authorities and NGOs. The couple recalled the exceptional day when the public services cleaned the neighbourhood for the Serbian Prime Minister’s visit to Preševo, which showed the cynical approach of the authorities. Hromadžić has written that the feeling of being neglected, abandoned and betrayed equally by state and NGOs was also present in other migrants and local communities’ places of encounters. The residents of Bihać in Bosnia demanded a systematic and organised plan for management of the public spaces and services that were strained by the migration influx. However, their protests were “misunderstood and misinterpreted as anti-immigrant, even racist, and once again they felt abandoned” (Hromadžić 2020: 175). Leaving behind daily routines to engage in activities to counteract the chaos and human pain brings its own psychological strain. Affectivity involves something we do, we are influenced via that act, and this opens-up chances of intersubjectivity and subject–object relations: “We affect and are affected”, Scott Georgsen and Thomassen (2017: 200) rightly claim. The local residents were vicariously traumatised by images and stories that the long summer of migration brought to Preševo. Milena believed that people living near the camp suffered “psycho-physical torture”: We had no freedom of movement, as women we were afraid of walking among hundreds of men. We had to jump over migrants sleeping on the street and their backpacks. I was afraid I would step on someone’s head, not to mention a baby. We could not wait for all this to be over… Once, at 3 am, I saw a girl with shoes too big for her walking with an enormous bag. I could feel her pain. And I thought: sweet god, why? Even though you tried to keep

68  Solidarity in Abandonment a normal life and your daily routine, go to work, feed your children, you still felt the pain, the pain of all these people, this energy was in the air. Some of my research partners complained about a psychological disorder caused by the unreasonable amount of stress, being out of tune with the daily rhythm they had had, as well as observing and experiencing other people’s suffering, which affected their souls and affected the atmosphere. Subsequently, they had to seek medical assistance. Gzim, one of the locals, paid for his emotional engagement in the refugee protection in anguish. All that happened here affected me a lot. There was a psychologist here – a volunteer from Norway. He told me to not take it all personally. He gave me weed. He said that my work in the bar helped me. In the mornings, I was in the camp with migrants, and in the evenings in the bar meeting regular people. If not for this, I would go crazy. I had to rest afterwards. The state authorities, media, international NGOs and volunteers widely ignored the negative impact of the migrant influx on the local communities. The residents claimed that opinions about them were tarnished by a few taxi drivers who cheated migrants and those who sold overpriced goods and services. I believe that my conversation with the transnational NGO employee, who, along with state authorities, supervised the camp depicts it. I reported to her that the migration influx deeply affected the local residents and at the same time they were the first ones who responded to the migrants’ needs. However, no one had really acknowledged their intensive work and often traumatic experiences. She admitted that perhaps they overlooked the local community in Preševo and expressed her certainty that this issue would be raised in their project evaluation. Nevertheless, she went on to say that “there were a lot of opportunities to earn money in these months, but maybe not everyone was smart enough”. She has heard about the people who bought two houses and two cars from the money made on the refugee crisis, repeating the unfair opinion of the locals. An Imperative for Solidarity If suspension of the laws and norms, derailment from everyday obligations, uncertainty of results are key features of liminality, than residents of Preševo found themselves in the middle state a rite the passage. Observing the local community’s responses during the refugee crisis allows us to better understand social reactions to a dramatic event. Liminality prompts transformations and has a generative character. New agencies, creativity and the modulation of social arrangements are the outcomes of a rite of passage (Turner 1967). Looking at a local community’s liminal experiences, including war and the refugee crisis, we can learn which characteristics are activated in times of a suspension of ordinariness. As mentioned earlier, the empathy and need to act among Albanian and Serbian local communities materialised in various ad hoc private acts of solidarity. One of them was that organised by the local NGO Youth Office, which set up its own tent,

Solidarity in Abandonment 69 from which in late November 2015 loud Albanian hip-hop music could be heard. I approached it and talked to a group of men in their early 20s who were softly bouncing to the music. When I asked one of them what he was serving, he answered: “We are local Volunteers from Serbia, we are serving Indian chai with cinnamon and sugar. They like it a lot”. I wanted to know why they had dedicated their time to migrants. Among these volunteers was Gzim, who replied: “We like it. The smile on their faces is something we like. We were refugees once ourselves. We went to Macedonia”. His friend added: “We had war here in 1999”. Another one went on: “I graduated in economics last year, but we have unemployment here, so what else can I do? So, I just help people. It is better to help people than to stay home. Don’t you think?” And then he offered another cup of tea to a passing migrant. I helped as I could. I opened the shop for people and let them stay in; we brought a heater. I brought them stuff from home to use as a cover. I did it for free. I did not take any money. […] We did the best we could. Of course, there were various organizations helping people around, but we, on our own, gave them bread and milk, and other essentials. Of course, not to everyone, but to those most in need, children, women. You know, it was like a war. These were Nejat’s words, the already-mentioned entrepreneur who supported clandestine migrants passing through his village. He suggested that the influx of migrants turned Preševo into a “war zone” without a war. The long summer of migration evoked among the local inhabitants memories of the NATO bombing in 1999. But, as underlined by Albi, there was one major difference: “Back then it was a matter of life and death, now it was a matter of mental wellbeing”. When describing the situation in Preševo in 2015 and 2016, a powerful reference point for the locals were the previous wars in the region – both events halted their lives, caused violence, created distress and left long-lasting emotional strains. In her narrative, Milena highlighted this shared experience of war as a ground for action: I do not know if you have ever experienced a war, but we have. Once you have this lived through, you know that these people were exposed to danger from all sides… You identify with these people, as you have experienced something similar; you connect their experience with yours. Mothers in the war region will be mothers everywhere; they will always be worried for their children. It’s always the same, a mother in Serbia and Syria, America, or Scandinavia. Her love for a child will be the same everywhere. Based on their research on local responses to migrants’ arrivals in Bosnia, Maja Savić-Bojanić and Jana Jevtić (2022) suggest that more important than living through a war is an experience of exile, migration and experience they might instigate. Milena’s narrative also matches this claim: In our community, we know what it means to be a refugee. I had to flee my home on a number of occasions. I know how difficult it is. We also did not

70  Solidarity in Abandonment feel safe in our homes. […] I had to hide my child and find someone to look after her. I understand the feeling when you must leave your home. I indeed understood these people. You must live through something to understand it. The common experience of exile, but also hunger, illness and abandonment, established a connection with migrants and a moral imperative for residents of Preševo to show solidarity with migrants from global South. This was in stark contrast with foreign volunteers, who came there exclusively to support migrants. I have argued elsewhere that foreign volunteers’ motivations were based on reflexivity, in other words on reciprocally beneficial relations with aid receivers (Rydzewski 2022b). My research partners from Preševo emphasised empathy and identification with migrants as the main factors prompting their voluntary support, which tallies with the Bosnia and Herzegovina, case indicating that “solidarity [of residents of the post-Yugoslav states] does not rely on reciprocity, but on emotional responses elicited through similar personal experiences” (Savić-Bojanić and Jevtić 2022: 511). Personal experience and empathy for a fellow person in a difficult predicament transcended the legal categories imposed on migrants by Southeast European states and the EU. After the introduction of the filtering process and the division of migrants into “genuine refugees” and “economic migrants”, which I explained in the previous chapter, camps’ authorities and some (I)NGOs followed these labels, allowing “genuine refugees” to use state facilities, get NFIs and cross the borders, but in doing so they consolidated hierarchy of deservingness. When I asked a 56-year-old Serbian woman who worked as a cleaner for an international (I)NGO in the camp about her maternalistic relations with all sorts of migrants, she shared with me a story about her son who at the age of 18 had served in Kosovo as a soldier in the Yugoslav Army. She sent him a letter, but it was returned with a note that such a person did not exist. When she almost lost her faith in his return, he unexpectedly came back. It turned out that he deserted and had hidden with an Albanian family in Kosovo. She said: “These children here are not mine, but I treat them like mine. I look after them. I do not care why they flee”. The cruelties of war and the generosity of supposed enemies taught her not to differentiate people according to official labels. In their narratives, the residents of Preševo did not distinguish between migrant categories. One could speculate that their unwillingness to reproduce these legal labels might have emerged form their own experiences of being classified first as “genuine refugees” and a few months later as “economic migrants”, or other way around, as had been the case in the 1990s, during the decomposition of the postHoxha Albanian state or the conflict in Kosovo. The exceptional humanitarian outreach became a distinguishing quality of the local community in Preševo, which they explained as being motivated by empathy with/for the newcomers. Many of the locals, among them Milena, criticised those who showed distaste for migrants. “The replenished understand not the pain of the starving” (sit gladnog ne razume), was a proverb I heard repeatedly during my fieldwork. In Preševo, I observed also another sort of solidarity. It refers to the sense of togetherness in a predicament which bounded Serbian and Albanian communities

Solidarity in Abandonment 71 in the town. In times of betwixt and between, when the existing social structure is suspended, differences suddenly evaporate and social roles are swapped. Turner writes that in liminality, “[a]mong themselves, the neophytes tend to develop an intense comradeship and egalitarianism. Secular distinctions of rank and status disappear or are homogenized” (1969: 360). The equality inspires the feeling of unity, which opens room for more intense interethnic relations than before, creating communitas. These spontaneous and immediate – yet uninstitutionalised – groups generate egalitarian ties with other people, creating a special bond between them. It resembles the close connection between members of a family, albeit without the hierarchy associated with family structures (Scott Georgsen and Thomassen 2017: 207). The work undertaken in the camp in Preševo integrated local Albanians and Serbs through “helping people”. The common goal and non-aligned ground brought together members of the community previously harmed and divided by ethnic conflicts. Additionally, the neutrality of the English language, which functioned in the camp as a lingua franca, also helped to bring people together. On top of all of this, the minimal, or sometimes complete lack of the state’s presence allowed local residents to re-establish communication that had been lost due to the antagonisms perpetuated by ethno-politics in the region after the war. When Katia pondered over the impact of the refugee crisis on Preševo, she concluded: People [in Preševo] started to cooperate with each other, Albanians and Serbs. They did it before, but not to this extent. Now, it is so visible, people started to talk to each other, hang out together. People got closer. Some became friends, they invite each other to their homes. We eat and drink together. It is better this way. For many, it was their first professional contact with a fellow citizen of a different ethnicity. On one occasion, the erasure of differences took a form of symbolic manifestation: A local activist, a camp worker, employees and the vice director of the camp took a picture with the Serbian and Albanian flags held together to “highlight unity”, which caused confusion across the Serbia. This unity, in practice and in the symbolic sphere, fought against the preexisting distinctions and as a result ordinary spatial figurations gave way, even if only temporarily, to “new forms of sociability and communication, breaking down boundaries of self and other” (Scott Georgsen and Thomassen 2017: 203). By leading to the elimination of prejudices and fear, common experiences undermined the power structure and ethnopolitics in the region. During the long summer of migration having a name tag with the logo of an international agency gave power to the marginalised residents of Preševo. After months of volunteering in a local pro-refugee initiative, Gzim was recruited by the UNHCR. As a field officer, among other things he was responsible for assessing and reporting migrants’ mistreatment by public functionaries or other individuals, who in various aspects supervised the camp, gave drivers access to refugees and, thus, to potential customers. Gzim, and other local Albanians,

72  Solidarity in Abandonment were empowered by their professional obligations to rebuke railway workers, bus drivers, and even police: I looked if they treated refugees well. I made sure the police didn’t mistreat them. Once I saw a drunk policeman beating a refugee. I shouted a few words in Serbian and then switched to English to show my authority. The policeman was afraid of me. He started to say sorry and followed my orders. In liminal periods8 social statuses not only disappear or homogenise (Turner 1969: 360) but are also swapped. Those who were at the bottom, harassed and intimidated, start to command, which enables a provisional shift in the balance of local power structures. As Turner explains, “liminality implies that the high could not be high unless the low existed and he who is high must experience what it is like to be low” (1969: 360). In liminal periods, the ethno-national category of identification does not entirely disappear, and therefore neither its power, nor the tendency to give it great weight, should be ignored (Milan 2020: 36). I asked one Serbian NGO worker who flirted with an Albanian, why he did not ask her on a date and take their relationship to a more private space, outside the camp. He answered that there were too many differences between them to meet beyond the camp. Among them was religion, which did not allow them to spend time together. He was afraid of the hostile gazes of friends and the potential pressure from his family to stop the relationship. Importantly, to grasp the time and space limits of liminality, one must consider the revival of ethnicity and vrski after a temporary suspension. This resurgence occurred when the number of migrants began to decrease, and the competition for work in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) intensified. In other words, the old structures tried to break through the margin of the liminal, to the discontent of the local Albanian population. They complained about Serbs coming from Belgrade, Vranje or Niś to work in the camp, instead of the local population, and explained it by discriminatory politics of the state and the (I)NGO sector in Serbia mimicked it. Conclusions Applying lenses of liminality in a “de-migrantised” analysis of the long summer of migration help us to understand reaction of people whose everyday lives have been derailed by the influx of migrants. It also shows a blurring of the differences between migration from and through the Balkan Peninsula. There are at least two lessons we can learn from this. Common life experience led to empathy and solidarity movements, as well as allowed for better understanding of forms of inequality. However, this empathy towards people in similar predicaments is not limitless, as people’s emotional and financial resources are finite. Thus, as gradually more fences are raised along the external EU border and a growing number of migrants are stranded there, more attention and support should be given to the local

Solidarity in Abandonment 73 communities along migratory routes because maintaining their positive attitude towards migrant might be crucial in improving the safety of people on move. Second, the case of Preševo confirms the argument of Leutloff-Grandits (2022), who claims that mobility and immobility can function at the same time and in the same space. The two border regimes work separately from each other but can nonetheless reinforce each other (Leutloff-Grandits 2022: 11–12). What my study adds to this is that during periods of liminality, the hierarchy of mobility can change. Migrants traversing the Balkan route temporarily enjoyed the abolition of the EU border regime and, consequently, could suddenly move faster and easier than the local population. This emphasised the local population’s immobility and their regression in the hierarchy of mobility. Third, the partial absence of the state in humanitarian outreach, left the local communities on their own, struggling to satisfy the needs of newcomers and their own need for normalcy. The long-awaited arrival of international donors to Preševo brought normalisation in local communities life. However, implementation of humanitarian projects translated into the removal of the migrants from the streets and cut the bond between local inhabitants and newcomers, creating disparities and ushering in a space for competition for resources. Notes 1 In the first nine months of 2015, the combined total of asylum applicants from Albania and Kosovo (79,848) surpassed the number of applications from Syrians (73,615), while there were more applications by Serbs (22,958) than by Afghans (16,360). 2 The Albanian population reached up to 8 per cent of the population socialist Yugoslavia by the 1980s: 85 per cent of the total Kosovo population, 20 per cent of Republic of Macedonian population and 14 per cent of Serbia and Montenegro population. 3 In 2002, these soldiers stood against the Yugoslav army and requested recognition and Albanian rights in what today is the Republic of Serbia. 4 North-western Socialist Republic of Macedonia and autonomous socialist Province of Kosovo and southern parts Socialist Republic of Serbia. 5 Shiptar – derives from the ethnonym of Albanians Skipetar. 6 Atdhe Hetemi writes that literature on Albanian migration from Kosovo region distinguishes four emigration waves since 1960s and onwards (2019: 94). These waves overlap with Albanian and other nations, which emigrated from all the Yugoslav regions in large numbers in three waves: 1970s, 1990s and a current wave (Dahinden 2005, Lubaś 2011, Majstorović 2021:185–212). 7 Aliens Act (article 45). 8 A rite of passage has its own master of ceremonies, which is not drawn from any preexisting official hierarchy (Scott Georgsen and Thomassen 2017:207). The master is a person to whom the local population submit the general authority of ritual elders. The master of ceremonies could be a new town mayor or a migrant himself, however his presence and role in managing the camp was invisible.

3

Europeanisation of Migration

Externalising Border Control The rising number of arrivals to the EU in 2015 and 2016 strengthened the contradictory public discourses related to immigration and refugeeness in the EU. The battles between humanitarianism and securitisation, on the one hand, and neoliberals and neo-nationalists on the other hand, gained in importance. The disagreement about quotas when relocating refugees from the Mediterranean states created a new dividing line between Central European countries (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary) and the majority of the EU during the period. Gregory Feldman argues that proponents of the economic right (neo-liberals) would generally accept migrants, while proponents of a national right (neo-nationalists) would try to restrict their stays on the grounds that their presence jeopardises the nation (Feldman 2011: 9–10). However, such binary divisions can be misleading because there are also leftist groups whose political spectre range from a fight for respecting the right to seek asylum to the total abolition of borders. Importantly for my analyses, neo-nationalist states can have neo-liberal economic policies. In other cases, neo-nationalists are often backed by neo-liberals as they share a common interest in having a cheap labour force that do not speak for themselves, or at least not in the way that could substantially change migration and integration policies (Feldman 2011: 25–26). Example of Poland is a good case in point here. It could be claimed that the neo-nationalist Polish government, which refused to accept its share of migrants under a relocation programme agreed by the European Council in 2015, has one of the most liberal migration policies in the EU (see Klaus 2020). Citizens of some ex-Soviet countries1 enjoy a fast-track procedure to legal work in Poland and with the start of the war in February 2022 Ukrainians have unlimited access to the Polish labour market. According to the data presented by the Office for Foreigners in Poland, the number of migrants in Poland in recent years has skyrocketed from 83,505 in 2010 (migracje.gov.pl) to 1.3 million of just Ukrainians who resided in Poland in 2020. We can add to this number another 900,000 who have fled their homes after Russian aggression in Ukraine from February 2022 (Duszczyk 2022), and as of August 2022, there are approximately 3 million foreigners, accounting for around 8 per cent of the total population (Ibid.). Although the influx of Ukrainians to Poland has (finally) forced the Polish state DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262-4

Europeanisation of Migration 75 to introduce some integration programs, it has still little done to tackle the strong anti-immigration and racist discourse promoted by the same authorities. Indeed, widening our view again to the EU-level, the European openness to people fleeing from Ukraine stands in stark contrast to the attitudes of EU states’ border authorities, which impedes access to the asylum procedure of non-white asylum seekers. It is hard to think of a more striking example of such a racist practice than at the eastern EU margins, where Ukrainians freely cross the border and while citizens of other nations are stopped, mistreated, denied asylum procedures and left, often to die, in the primeval forests on the Polish–Belarusian or Lithuanian–Belorussian border. From the wider EU perspective, one could even argue that there is a battle for migrants who could fill the gap in the labour market and build EU-ropean wealth. It thus follows that most of the EU countries pursue a “neo-liberal migration logic” causing an “inescapable dilemma”. This predicament, Peter Andreas explains in the introduction to the book The Wall Around the West, is how to make “Western World’s” borders impenetrable for unwanted migrants but porous enough to allow goods to circulate without constraints, in other words how to secure the borders while simultaneously making them business-friendly (2000: 4). It means that EU migration discourse can see the benefits of migration in economic terms, but it does not see the potential draw-backs in both economic (“drain on resources”, welfare etc.) and cultural terms (not like “us”, terrorism, Islam etc.) (see Bennett 2019). More recently, this dilemma manifests itself in the EU by conflicting interests: Some countries want to minimise immigration in the hopes of protecting their cultural identity or/and welfare state and others encourage immigration in order to address their growing demographic imbalance and work force shortage (Hansen 2017). The EU solution rests on securing the external EU border, which is supposed to function as a filter rather than a wall. Therefore, the role of border control is not protecting the territory per se, but instead ordering the movement of goods, people and their different racialised hierarchical positioning. These borders are usually not physical, wall-like constructions that create a clear-cut division,2 but they are composed of political arrangements, emigration programs, high-tech, invisible structures, diffused into territories of the national states. EU countries’ emigration programmes, like the German Workers Immigration Act, sift out well-educated citizens of ex-Yugoslavia, causing great economic and social loss for countries of origin. Such a programme integrates even the most peripheral region into global markets and mobilities that requires borders to act as bridges for cross-border economic exchange (Andreas 2000: 4) and allow for the flow of desirable people: White, skilled, educated and easily integrated migrants, and keeping the unwanted, usually of colour, far away from the EU and more broadly, the Western World’s borders. The borders thus function as “disciplining entities that produce both mobility and immobility” (Grassiani and Swinkels 2014: 9); namely, allowing certain groups to move, while immobilising others. The crucial role in the process of filtering is played by the migration apparatus – the term coined by Feldman to describe migration management, comprising disparate migration policy agendas, generic regulatory mechanisms and policy implementation actors, who are connected with

76  Europeanisation of Migration each other via internet platforms or databases, but disconnected from the reality that migrants have to deal with during their journeys (Feldman 2011: 4–5). As well as embassies, consulates and airports, another important element of the selective reception policy of migrants and, I would argue, a part of the migration apparatus are buffer zones, where the filtration process takes place. In the case of Southeast Europe, the buffer zones were created as a result of agreements between the EU and candidates states and exemplify EU states’ efforts to regulate global human circulation. These political arrangements with often semi-authoritarian countries lie at the heart of the externalisation of the EU-ropean border management that can be defined as shifting certain responsibilities for border control beyond the territorial edges or, in the EU’s bureaucratic language “third countries” in exchange for benefits (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1115; Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 185). In practice, as Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson argue, it consists of establishment of offshore detention facilities, the interception and diversion of vessels, cooperation in deportation procedure, the surveillance of routes and so-called carriers of migration, or the use of digital database in surveying migrant population. (2013: 172) As I show throughout this chapter, the politics of externalisation is a keystone in the Europeanisation of migration, which is a process of imposition of laws and migration infrastructure that the infrastructure that in case of Southeast European states EU demands through pre-accession negotiations or by bilateral agreements. The European way to managing migration is based on control and selective human mobility, both from and through the territories of third countries. The externalisation is sealed by asymmetrical bilateral agreements that aim to expand the walls of “fortress Europe” further south, often beyond the EU’s borders. Thus far, the EU has had more success in reaching agreements and using high-tech deterrent measures when trying to separate itself from migrants, rather than address the causes of migration. The EU–Turkish deal, signed in 2016, is probably the most “successful” such attempt, but not the only one and certainly not the last. Among other features of integration into EU-ropean migration standards in the Balkan context, researchers have identified fortification and militarisation of borders, restriction of access to asylum claims procedures, ignorance of push backs and criminalisation of prorefugee initiatives (Hameršak et al.. 2022). To illustrate my argument, I will show that the prerequisites for the awakening of the Balkan route in 2015 we can find at other European migratory paths and foreign policies of EU neighbour countries. Simultaneously, I analyse EU state’s policies aimed at counteracting the possibility of migrant arrival in their territory. Next, by describing the Europeanisation of migration in Southeast Europe, I aim to describe the adjustment of Serbian migration policy to the EU directives that paved the way for the externalisation of border control to Serbia and created a buffer zone, which allowed for taming migration in 2016. Finally, I reveal how EU-ropean migration policies actually cement semi-authoritarian regimes in the post-Yugoslav region

Europeanisation of Migration 77 and thus undermine European values. I argue here that the EU migration strategy helped to stabilise semi-authoritarian regimes in the Balkan states and gave them legitimacy and authority. The case of Serbia, supplemented with the events from RN Macedonia illustrates that the semi-authoritarian leaders of the region understood the meaning and importance of their role in the EU border regime and learned to use migration as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the EU over the enlargement process and access to development funds. Such policies of hosting states fits into a wider practice of the “weaponising of mass migration”, which by treating to organise a sudden influx or by taking destination countries’ humanitarian obligations aim to achieve some political, economic or military targets (Greenhill 2016). Thus, Serbia, along with other EU-neighbouring countries is hardly a passive recipient of EU directives, and has not easily agreed to becoming a buffer zone for the EU. Indeed, the opposite might be said to be true: The carrot and stick method of the EU can sometimes backfire and make the attainment of its goals contingent on the benevolence and political calculation of the states it negotiates with. The Balkan Route The number of migrants crossing the Balkan Peninsula reached its peak in 2015, which led to the collapse of the existing EU border regime. There were several reasons for this rise, and it is worth highlighting a few of them at the outset. One of the factors that contributed to the popularity of the Balkan route were obstacles that appeared along the Western Mediterranean route, leading from sub-Saharan Africa through Spain, and the Central Mediterranean route, leading from North Africa, through Italy or Malta. All these routes experienced changing travelling conditions caused by often interconnected factors, including border controls, immigration policies and weather conditions (Katsiaficas 2016). Furthermore, as I will explain, the changing capacity of these routes is strictly connected to external and internal events closely related to the EU. Thus, the Balkan route should be analysed as a part of global migration flows that include decisions taken far away from it. In his comparative study of Migrants’ Access to Right to Stay in Turkey and Morocco, Ayşen Üstübici (2018) explains that in 2015 the EU agencies already had an extensive knowledge about migration management from its “laboratory” (as the Spanish–Moroccan border is often called) – a part of the Western Mediterranean route where the migration policy was tested and studied. The Spanish state, supported by EU funds (Akkerman 2019: 17), was attempting to stop people migrating to Spain, a country whose thriving economy attracted a growing number of foreigners throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993, Spanish authorities built the first fence on the edges of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa, which until then were porous and relatively accessible. Twenty-two years later, and with millions of euros spent, the barriers around the two enclaves were upgraded to three parallel fences, 6 metres high, topped with barbed wire and armed with infrared cameras, motion sensors and watchtowers. The militarised border made it possible for the border guards to brutally respond to a breach within a minute. This strict border control was supported by transnational cooperation between sending and receiving countries,

78  Europeanisation of Migration namely bilateral agreements on migrant readmissions between Spain and Senegal (2006), Spain and Morocco (1992, came into force in 2012), Spain and Mauritania (2003, 2006) and other countries in the region. Additionally, Spain started border control cooperation with Cape Verde, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali and Niger. Many of these agreements, which construct the politics of externalisation of border control, were strengthened by the Barcelona Process (1995), the Rabat Process (2006) and the Mediterranean Transit Migration dialogue (2007), all of which were aimed at involving African countries in protection of the EU border and eventually to stop south-north migration. The fences and bilateral agreements, as well as the grip of deep economic recession caused by the global financial crisis in 2008, meant that the Western Mediterranean route lost its popularity in favour of longer and more dangerous ones. The EU’s migration management is largely based on the politics of externalisation and cutting the “risk” of irregular migration. In its attempts to reduce the possibility of migrant arrival, the EU engaged the services of the biggest arms and security companies, among them Thales, Leonardo and Airbus. It is painfully ironic that such firms do not solve the reasons for migration, but instead merely boost them by producing and exporting weapons used in the conflict zones from where many of the migrants seek to escape. Thus, these firms profit from both sides of the refugees’ predicament (Akkerman 2019: 30). The Central Mediterranean route gained popularity amidst the social and demographic uprising in North Africa. In 2011 alone, in the wake of the Arab Spring, 63,000 migrants landed on Italian islands, principally Lampedusa (Fontanari 2019: 40). Although such a number of arrivals shocked the Italian government, it seemed to be relatively small in comparison to the 790,000 people fleeing Libya to neighbouring countries (Ibid.). Italy’s unilateral decision in 2009 to return migrants boats apprehended international waters to Libya later developed into a series of bilateral agreements on cooperation and repatriation (see Paoletti 2010, 2014), as well as the Italian–Tunisian agreement on repatriation, signed in 2012. Combined, these measures led to a significant decrease in migrant flows through this route. However, they also led to an increase in the death toll at sea resulting from drowning and showed the human cost of the EU-ropean border regime (Katsiaficas 2016). In response to the high number of casualties among migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the humanitarian operation Mare Nostrum was launched in 2013. This, and other humanitarian responses to rescue migrants from rough seas, were soon overshadowed by a focus on the securitisation of border actions and stronger cooperation of Italy with Libyan authorities. The popularity of the Central Mediterranean route fluctuated and, according to Frontex, after a turbulent 2011 and 2012, in 2018 reached its lowest level of recorded irregular border crossings (Frontex 2019). However, as with a few years earlier, the decreasing popularity of this route was accompanied by a rising death toll. A UNHCR estimate indicates that between January and July 2018 one in 18 migrants either died or went missing on their way to Europe via the Central Mediterranean route (UNHCR 2019). Furthermore, the Central Mediterranean route temporarily lost its popularity in favour of the Western Mediterranean route in 2019, thus the momentary low number of the detected border crossings on one

Europeanisation of Migration 79 of the routes is not a sign of a full border closure and this rule can be applied globally. As Ruben Andersson shows, when the number of migrant arrivals by sea drops in, for example, Australia and its government announce a success in halting “illegal migration”, the EU-ropean border guards register the rise of the irregular border crossing by similar level as the number decreases in Australia (Andersson 2016: 1066). Thus, closing one border has consequences elsewhere. This proves what Üstübici and İçduygu suggest that “border closures are not linear processes of closing, but rather cycles showcasing different degrees of opening and filtering underpinned by physical and legal closures” (2019: 182). While the Central Mediterranean route is still the most popular one, the Eastern Mediterranean route has also proved to be a common passage chosen by migrants heading to the EU. Significantly, most of the migrants from the Middle East take this terrestrial and marine route to the EU of their various starting points and paths. Migrants from South-Central Asia and North Africa also use it as it merges with other passages, depending on the conditions on the routes. The portion of the route that runs through Turkey, Greece and the Balkan Peninsula (including Serbia) to the Western EU countries is called the Balkan route (Map 3.1). As some argue, this name, given by Frontex, “carried overtones of the region’s putative criminality even before the mass movement of 2015” (El-Shaarawi and Razsa 2019: 92). In its variations, the Balkan route can go from Turkey via land border to either Bulgaria or Greece. Today, the 269 kilometres-long Turkish–Bulgarian border, cutting across

Map 3.1  The Eastern Mediterranean route Source: Map created by Dawid Lesiak

80  Europeanisation of Migration old Roman and Ottoman trade routes, is highly sealed. The Greek border is also sealed. Those who choose this passage must cross either 200 kilometres along the Maritsa river border or the fenced land border near to the city of Edirne. Another possibility is a convoluted 2,800 kilometres route along the Aegean coast. The land route is usually safer and, to a lesser extent, requires smugglers’ support, and is thus cheaper, but can also be hostile due to the brutality of militant groups and law enforcement agencies in Bulgaria. Those who choose the hazardous marine route from the Turkish shore use rubber boats to land on Lesbos, Kos or other Greek islands on the Aegean Sea. Until summer 2015 the passage via Greece continued through RN Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, but with the closure of the Hungarian border and erection of a 175-km border barrier, and later the Croatian border too, migrants started to move around the Balkan Peninsula and tried to reach the EU from different directions, for example Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania and Poland. As researchers show, until 2015 the Eastern Mediterranean passage grew in popularity, as other routes were declining, not only as a result of border deterrence, militarisation of borders, bilateral agreements and bad weather, but also because of the rising number of migrants coming from countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and particularly from war-torn Syria (Katsiaficas 2016; Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 188). In the last decade, the country mostly affected by refugees on this route was Turkey, which by 2018 had taken in more than three million Syrians escaping civil war (Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 196) (Figure 3.1). The impatience with the position of stranded migrants or refugees in Turkey and the increasing delays and

Figure 3.1 A Kurd looking towards the closed border between Turkey and Syria, Turkey, Suruc, 2014 Source: Photograph by Maciej Moskwa

Europeanisation of Migration 81 restriction regarding family reunification in the EU member states, made migrants continue their irregular journeys (Katsiaficas 2016). Another factor in the rise in popularity of this route, often somewhat omitted, can be attributed to expansion of airline connections and visa liberalisation. The impact of these on the influx of migration through the Polish–Belorussian border scholars has been widely described in media reports (Opryszek 2021; Posaner and Eccles 2021). Perhaps Turkey can be seen as an early adopter of using migrants in their foreign policy and economic expansion. Turkey removed visa restrictions for a number of African nations and facilitated their international movement. Starting from 2011, the partly state-owned Turkish Airlines opened direct flights to dozens of African cities where others feared to fly, aiming for high revenues from transporting goods and people from often war-torn African countries (Katsiaficas 2016). By 2017, Turkish Airlines had 52 African destinations, including the so-called failed states plagued by Islamist militants (Fick 2017). The liberalised Turkish visa policy, combined with the growing number of flight destinations enabled more people to reach Turkey in a fast and safe way and then continue their journey onward to the EU. This practice reflected my research partners’ migration trajectories as they simply flew to Turkey as tourists from, for example, Morocco, Algeria or Kenya. From there started their irregular travel through different paths towards the EU (Figure 3.1). But before taking the Eastern Mediterranean route, migrants also tried other ones. When I asked why one of them had not tried to cross the border with Spain but instead travelled to another continent, a 20-year-old Adnan from Morocco answered: I tried to cross the border with Spain, but it is very hard. I went to Melilla – it is our city; the Spanish took it from us. I stayed in Nador and from there I went to Farkhana where I tried to cross the border. I spent two nights there; it was really cold and it rained, and there was a lot of police. I tried but the Spanish police caught me and beat me. Also, Moroccan police beat you even more; even if you are Moroccan, they beat you. They are worse than Macedonian or Hungarian police. I swear. You must have a good reason to try leaving the country … Then I found some guys who were planning to go to Europe through Turkey. So, I went with them. In accordance with the false logic of the EU’s border management, the Southeast European countries were encouraged by the EU to stop migrants on their soil and thus prevent their further movement through Europe. But Adnan’s migration story proves the repetitive mistakes of EU migration policy, which are based on the presumption that blocking migratory paths will stop migration altogether, whereas in reality it makes people take longer and more deadly passages. As early as 2002, Greece signed an agreement with Turkey on readmission of migrants and later renewed it in 2013 and 2016 in the context of the externalisation of migration control (Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 186). Additionally, from 2010 Frontex and the Greek government expanded the presence of border-control personnel and technology along the Greek–Turkish land border, initiating surveillance and response activities, as well as building a fence in 2012,

82  Europeanisation of Migration which contributed to a decrease in detections of irregular crossings along that section of the Eastern Mediterranean route (Katsiaficas 2016). In response to these efforts to seal the borders, migrants instead started to travel across the Turkish–Bulgarian border and the Aegean Sea. But in November 2013, Bulgaria reacted to incoming migration by rebuilding a barbed wire fence along the border with Turkey and enhancing security measures such as the Integrated Border Surveillance System (IBSS) and a special border police patrol. In 2014, possibly because of the militarised Bulgarian–Turkish border, for the first time since 2009 more migrants arrived via sea than via land (Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 196; Globalsecurity n.d.) and consequently paved a way to an unprecedented number of migrants travelling through Balkan countries. Interestingly, the Bulgarian–Turkish border can actually be said to have been re-militarised and brought back to life with a new purpose since its days as the highly guarded edge of the Warsaw Pact countries and the advent of NATO. In the non-fiction book Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe Kapka Kassabova (2017) shows that during the Cold War period this crossing was popular among the would-be escapees from the Eastern Bloc journeying to the “West” through Turkey. This passage, which was supposed to take desperate people to a better world, was deadly dangerous; the fence stretching along the border was electrified and those who approached without permission had a high chance of encountering Bulgarian soldiers with orders to shoot anyone, particularly Soviet “traitors” (Ibid.). Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, migrants are still trying to cross this border – but this time from the other side. Among them was Abel, a 20-year-old Eritrean. He had attempted to enter Bulgaria three times but the border control, this time run by the EU border guards supported by Turkish partners, effectively stopped everyone who failed to possess the required travel documents. However, entering Bulgaria was just one of many constraints along their way. Upon finally crossing the border, migrants had to avoid private vigilante groups that hunted for migrants clandestinely crossing into the country. These groups, which were praised by the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov for their “appropriate reaction”, were accused by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee of assault, making death threats, unlawful detention, inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic violence (Bulgarian Helsinki Committee 2017: 6–7). The example of the re-militarisation of the Turkish–Bulgarian border proves that what is changing is not the geographical location of border fences, but their character and role (Andreas 2000: 2). Walls’ popularity and location persist, but their nature and the threats they are built to repel have changed. Today’s walls are redesigned not to keep people in as it was in the soviet times, but to deter the unwanted and keep them out (Andreas 2000: 1). Trying to avoid crossing through Bulgaria, migrants attempted marine passage instead. However, crossing the Aegean Sea was neither safe nor easy. The story of Masud, a 30-year-old Egyptian mentioned in chapter 1. He explained to me that the risk of crossing the Eastern Mediterranean Route is caused not only by the sea’s depth and roughness, but also by the need to engage smugglers.

Europeanisation of Migration 83 In Istanbul, Masud had met a smuggler and agreed on the conditions and price of a journey to Greece. Upon payment they would depart from house near Izmir on the western cost of Turkey. However, the smuggler wanted to transport twice as many people on the rickety rubber boat as there were spaces. I decided not to go. A lot of people said: ‘We won’t go in this number’. But after 30 minutes, he [the smuggler] came back and said to all of us: ‘If you want to go now, go. If you don’t want to go, stay in the house, I’ll take you back to Izmir’. Surprisingly for Masud, in spite of the other migrant’s claims that they would not risk crossing the Aegean Sea in overloaded boat, no one rejected the smuggler’s offer other than himself and two fellow migrants. Consequently, only they three stayed in the house and waited for the smuggler to take them back to Izmir. However, the smuggler refused to drive them back to the town and instead asked for 2000 dollars, which he had allegedly lost because of their refusal to board the boat. He imprisoned them in a house and threatened them with a weapon until they paid their debt. One of a Masud’s fellow migrants, a Syrian man had a picture of his daughter who was still in Syria and had been permanently disabled as a result of an airstrike. He showed the photo to the smuggler in an attempt to negotiate. “The Syrian guy said to him: ‘Don’t do this for me or these guys. Do it for her!” Eventually, the picture that the Syrian man carried to justify reunification with his family in Germany, along with 200 hundred dollars gave them their freedom. A few days later they tried to cross the sea again. Several researchers (Feldman 2011; Katsiaficas 2016; Üstübici and İçduygu 2019) have pointed out that national governments’ and EU agencies’ efforts to reduce migration often have effects that are ultimately contrary to the aim. Instead of discouraging migration, the externalization, securitization, and militarization of borders actually encourage migrants to choose lengthier and riskier paths, leading to higher costs and increased reliance on smugglers for their journey. Moreover, when land routes are closed, migrants turn to marine routes, which are life-threatening to those trying to cross them and more difficult for policymakers and authorities to manage.

Migrations in the Shadow of the EU The unconstrained flow of people and goods within the EU became a top priority for the EU project as early as the 1970s. To reach its goals, national border posts in the Schengen Area were removed and the bloc’s external borders were strengthened against irregular migration (Lahav and Guiraudon 2000: 57). Since then, the securitisation and politicisation of human mobility have come to justify border closures on the EU’s external borders as well as beyond (Üstübici and İçduygu

84  Europeanisation of Migration 2019: 182). To facilitate the unconstrained exchange of good and people in the Schengen Area, in the late 1990s and 2000s new norms, laws and institutions were established to manage migration. Gallya Lahav and Virginie Guiraudon (2000: 57) have called the European project of open internal borders that caused the public concern about security a “control dilemma”. This problematic position of the EU is not related to the states’ fear of losing control of its border but is rather an attempt at a cost-effective solution to rising public anxieties over migration that short circuits judicial constraints on migration control, while still promoting trade and tourist flows (Lahav and Guiraudon 2000: 57). As such, Sabine Hess and Bernd Kasparek argue, it “refers to the question how to reconcile a neoliberal economic paradigm of a – preferably global – free circulation of goods, services, and capital with a continued biopolitical will to control the movements of people” (2017: 60). To tackle this issue the EU, argue Lahav and Guiraudon, reinvented control over migration by shifting the level of policymaking at the international and local level and by co-opting and cooperating with a range of players that include private actors and third countries (2000: 57). I elaborate on this issue in Chapter 1. An example of cooperation in the context of Southeastern sluices to EU are various bilateral agreements with candidates for future membership in the EU. Those agreements supposedly aim to widen the pattern of international cooperation and should satisfy the interests of both parties; however, they are seen by its critics as a tool to sustain unequal power relationships (Papademetriou 2011: 9). A prime illustration of the alleged benefits for both sides are the agreements signed in the shadows of the “fortress Europe”; specifically, the EU enlargement agreements with the post-Yugoslav countries. These countries became a crucial part of the EU’s external border management due to geopolitical changes. After the fall of Yugoslavia and the EU enlargement that brought in Central European countries in 2004 and 2007, the Balkan Peninsula was defined by Frontex as a “territorial hole” with great potential for unauthorised migration to the EU (Marenin 2010: 13). It was also a period when the political climate of the EU enlargement corresponded with the West’s fight against terrorism after 9/11, the rise of Islamophobia and importance of migration management. This important turn was reflected by the change of EU expectations of the enlargement process: instead of democratic reforms in the candidate countries, the EU pursued securitisation of its external border and national border of candidate countries. Thus, as argued by Andrew Geddes and Andrew Taylor (2016), the EU’s capacity to conform to the provisions regarding security and border management specified in the chapters of the Acquis communautaire took top priority in the integration process and were meant to demonstrate a candidate’s readiness to join the EU (590, 594). Like dangling a carrot in front of prospective member states, the EU has set “intermediate” prizes to encourage Serbia and other Southeast European candidates to adjust their migration and border security laws to the EU requirements (see Geddes and Taylor 2016: 601). Serbia, like other Balkan countries, agreed to subject its migration and asylum laws to the

Europeanisation of Migration 85 EU in exchange for the promise of accession to the EU in the near, but unspecified future. Furthermore, the Serbian state, aiming to enter the EU, agreed to establish a new asylum system that corresponded with the EU standards, committed to control its border against “illegal migration”, agreed on readmission of failed asylum seekers, and was recognised as a “safe country” (Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 181). Subjugation to the EU As a part of Yugoslavia, Serbia signed the 1951 Geneva Convention, as well as the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, but never established a legally defined asylum procedure (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1107). As a result of a gentlemen’s agreement, the UNHCR operating in Yugoslavia was responsible for refugees from third countries, while the Yugoslav state was responsible for asylum seekers. An asylum seeker was defined as a “foreigner who had been persecuted for his support of democratic ideas and movements, social and national liberation, freedom and rights of human personality or for freedom of scientific or artistic creation”, whereas the refugee was one who “left the country whose nationality one holds or in which one has permanent residence in order to avoid persecution due to his progressive political strivings or his national, racial or religious affiliation” (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1108). The main aim of this division was to give the state the right to choose to whom it would grant asylum, while the status of refugees was considered to conform to the internationally agreed standards. In practice, most escapees to Yugoslavia were handed to the UNHCR, which subsequently conducted the asylum procedure according to the Convention and the Protocol on Yugoslav territory and later moved them to the “West” (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1108). Between 1970 and the beginning of 1990, most asylum seekers in Yugoslavia came from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Albania (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1109) and in lower numbers from Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary. Interestingly, migrants from Romania, Albania and Bulgaria in search of a better life usually crossed the heavily guarded border in an irregular way (Binder 1983). In 1992, during the intensified fighting between ex-Yugoslav republics, a new migration and asylum law was established in what remained of Yugoslavia. It did not have much in common with the 1951 Convention and was introduced to manage hundreds of thousands national refugees – as internally displaced people from the ex-Yugoslav republics were named – who desperately needed to be accommodated. The UNHCR still dealt with asylum seekers from third countries and provided international protection. However, since then the term “refugee” in Serbia has mainly been associated with Serbs fleeing other war-torn ex-Yugoslav republics. The next major changes in the Serbian migration and asylum laws dominated the Serbian integration process with the EU and since then migration has become part of Europeanisation process. Since 2003, when the first steps were taken towards

86  Europeanisation of Migration the EU Stabilisation and Association Process, Serbia (until 2003 the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro) has systematically adjusted its migration and asylum laws to EU-ropean standards. In return, Serbia, along with other Balkan countries (with the exception of Kosovo) moved closer to the “intermediate” prize, visa liberation to the EU. The exemption from visa requirements was strictly related to the security of external EU borders as the EU developed a common understanding that the degree of “safety” of the Schengen Area relies on “unsafe neighbouring countries” (Monar 2001, as cited in Kacarska 2012: 2). Therefore, the Southeast European candidates to the EU had to fulfil various security obligations, among which included: issuance of machine-readable passports (with a gradual introduction of bio-metric data, including fingerprints), the adoption and implementation of a variety of laws and international conventions, signing of readmission agreements, and achieving progress in the fight against organised crime, corruption and illegal migration (European Stability Initiative n.d.). In 2007, Serbia approved new Law on Asylum3 (which came into force in 2008), only for the sake of the European integration process and the long-awaited visa liberalisation, but in practice the new legislation created a lot of problems both for the state and for the migrants (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 70). Simultaneously with aforementioned changes, the EU till 2008 has invested 10 million euros in a high-tech control point on the Hungarian– Serbian border (Jansen 2009: 819). Migration in Serbia is politically and socially important because of its history as emigration country as well as a country which in 2016 still had 230,000 internal refugees from the wars of the 1990s (Bhabha et al. 2016: 124). Thus, it should be no surprise that the Serbian state has tried to use migration related issues on various occasions. The attitude of the Serbian authorities towards migrants passing through the Balkan Peninsula has evolved over the last decade. In 2014 and 2015, the primary focus of the authorities on their own internal migrants and local populations, which suffered from devastating flooding, probably caused the first phase of ignorance about long-term solutions. However, since then the country has changed its reception policies and practices from ignorance to humanitarianism and finally to securitisation (Stojić Mitrović 2014; Beznec et al. 2016; Stojić Mitrović 2019). As mentioned earlier, these transitions have been dictated by the negotiations regarding Serbia’s accession to the EU structures. However, what is important for this case – that is, migrant movement through the Balkan Peninsula – is that the new migration law introduced a 72-hour travel permission for asylum seekers to move through the country in order to reach asylum centres. Effectively a transit permission was major journey facilitator that give access to medical care and the chance to be accommodated legally (Stojić Mitrović and Meh 2016: 627). It also gave rise to the Commissariat for Refugees and Migrants (Commissariat), which became responsible for the reception, protection and integration of migrants from third countries and readmission of Serbian citizens from the EU4 (Stojić Mitrović 2019: 18). Concurrently, with the implementation of the new migration law, Serbia gained visa-free access to the EU. However, this privilege came at a cost; Serbia was obliged to share intelligence information about migration5

Europeanisation of Migration 87 and adopt the term “illegal migration6” in bilateral communication with the EU, which Üstübici calls “the international production of migrant illegality” (Üstübici 2018: 48). Moreover, it had to take responsibility for third country asylum seekers and Serbian asylum seekers who were expelled from the EU. As a result, Serbia as well as the other Southeast EU neighbours, was absorbed into the extra-territorial EU migration control structure (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1110–1105) and became a bottleneck for inward EU migration, a kind of “dumping ground” and buffer zone for unwanted migrants, which included taking the burden of migration control and accommodation of migrants. Furthermore, the new Law on Asylum from 2007 ended the division between asylum seeker and refugee, acknowledged Serbian responsibility for migration from third countries, and adopted an independent asylum system that allowed the EU to shift the responsibility to countries outside of the EU for migrants heading to the EU. Additionally, Serbia was recognised as a safe third country, despite the fact that its asylum system was still not sufficiently functional: it was neither able to ensure the proper determinations of international protection needs for an increasing number of asylum seekers, nor able provide effective protection (Bakonyi et al. 2011). As can be seen from the case of Slovenia, upon integration into the EU, restrictive provisions such as border control are implemented, while the reception standards are watered down (Geddes and Taylor 2016: 597). Thus, in spite of the implementation of an independent asylum system, the number of people seeking asylum in Serbia remained low and the number of those who were granted protection was even lower. Only one out of 1000 asylum claims resulted in the applicant being given refugee status (Bobic 2013, as cited in Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1117). This shows that alignment with EU migration and asylum law does not guarantee high reception standards, but rather only high security measures. Indeed, this inevitably leads to an extremely low number of people receiving protection in Serbia. Legal changes regarding third national migrants passed rather unnoticed by Serbia public opinion as the Serbian state did not excessively get down to its task of migration control (Stojić Mitrović 2019: 19). Migrants traversing Balkan peninsula were absent in the Serbian public discourse and were allowed to simply pass through. As the Deputy Commissioner for Refugees and Migration in Serbia put it: The refugees of the 1990s (Yugoslav refugees) and of the 2010s (third nationality refugees passing through Serbia) share rather similar characteristics – they want to escape from war disasters; they are tremendously traumatised, both men and women; all around you can see misery and plastic bags. And the distinction between them: the former refugees mentioned (Yugoslav refugees): skin colour, religion, language, and the desire to stay here. The latter mentioned, (third nationality refugees), none of these things. (Čekerevac et al. 2018: 109) These words suggest that Serbia had neither developed an integration strategy for incoming migration nor had any intention of doing so and had counted on their fast transit to the EU. Although the numbers of migrants from the third counties

88  Europeanisation of Migration have steadily increased since 2009, the Serbian authorities neglected their presence and rejected their needs. This could not last long though. As early as 2012, the only asylum centre in the country was Banja Koviljača and it was overcrowded (Čekerevac et al. 2018: 109). Although physically present and tolerated by authorities, migrants in Serbia were invisible, in other words “illegal but licit” (Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 30). Such a position of migrants was useful but dangerous – Serbian authorities did not bother much with migrants, and paid no attention to people irregularly traversing the country, also ignoring their mistreatment by local criminals and some police officers (Stojić Mitrović 2019: 19). The migration issue remained largely irrelevant for the Serbian state even in 2014, when migrants were passing through the country en masse. The Migration Control Trade-off Building “fortress Europe” comes not only at the cost of EU neighbours – who are promised accession to the EU in an undefined future if they agree to subjugating their migration laws and thus take on the considerable burden of border control – but also at the cost of the values and norms of the EU. Starting from Manus Island and Nauru to Greece and Columbia, there is a long list of states which have used destination countries ambitions to control and tame migration to extract revenues. Luisa F. Freier, Nicholas R. Micinski and Gerasimos Tsourapas call this sort of politics “refugee commodification”, which “involves the instrumental use of asylum seekers, refugees and other forcibly displaced people for specific material or nonmaterial payoffs by state and non-state actors at the international or domestic level” (2021: 2748). What seems to be at the stake in the case of the Balkan countries is less about money and I would suggest is more about acceptance by European elitist groups, namely the EU. Critics of the EU-Balkan countries’ relations have pointed out that the EU is ready to support semi-authoritarian “stabilitocracies” in return for taming irregular migration influxes in the region. “Stabilitocracy” is a term coined and elaborated on by the Canadian academic Srđja Pavlović (2016, 2017). This “hypocrisy of international politics”, Pavlović writes, always advocates for democratic rule and human rights and simultaneously supports semiauthoritarian regimes, if they act in accordance to EU commands. In his own words, this hypocrisy of international politics: […] enables the West to maintain its rhetoric of promoting democracy, free, fair, and transparent elections, an independent judiciary, a strong parliament, the rule of law, the protection of human rights, and the need to fight against corruption and organised crime. At the same time, it enables the local partner to establish a façade democracy while diminishing the role of parliament, holding unfair elections, criminalising the local political arena, assuming dictatorial powers, enacting predatory laws aimed at eliminating political competition, and stifling dissent as well as plundering a country’s resources for the benefit of political leaders and their closest associates. (Pavlović 2017)

Europeanisation of Migration 89 Thus, the EU trades shortcomings in the rule of law and free speech for an alleged stability in the region that in fact is only illusionary. As Pavlović shows, the semi-authoritarian stabilitocracies do not provide stability, but only make promises of it towards the “West” (2017). The phenomenon of rising semi-authoritarian regimes in the Balkan states has been further developed by other scholars of the region. Florian Bieber in his published book The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Western Balkans (2020), tries to deal with the question of how the authoritarian elites in Balkan states manage to retain power. Although the answer to this question partly lies in the protracted consolidation of democratic rule in the Balkans, Bieber argues that this process is incomplete and has actually moved towards democratic decline and semi-authoritarianism (2020: 4). If he is right, it is important to note that these new hybrid regimes are not outright autocratic, but rather fluctuate in the grey area between the ideal-type political systems of liberal democracy and authoritarianism. Autocrats, like first Deputy Prime Minister, later Prime Minister and finally president Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia, RN Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and others have gained power and built their initial careers on their reputations as reformers, and as such are recognised by the West, but they rule in “formally democratic systems while displaying patterns of rule that either erode or bypass democratic institutions” (Bieber 2020: 7, 10). Bieber elucidates that semi-authoritarian regimes flourish in the circumstances of crisis when leaders can suspend normal politics. As the refugee crisis has shown, stabilitocrats or autocrats instrumentally use these moments of uncertainty to consolidate power and to gain external recognition. The refugee crisis and other events – the Kumanovo shootings in RN Macedonia in 2015 and the alleged coup in Serbia in 2016 and other similar events, which have taken place in the last decade in the Balkan Peninsula – serve to highlight the importance of these governments in ensuring stability. More importantly, such incidents also demonstrate, that those who can guarantee stability and control over migration in the Balkans can count on EU-ropean leaders in legitimising their rule. For example, Gruevski and his party VMRO-DPMNE were accused of falsifying election results, corruption, engagement with criminal groups, murder and a litany of other criminal acts. In spite of such an egregious cause for circumspection, grounded in the so-called “bombs” – wiretaps documenting government abuse – in 2016 the Austrian foreign minister and member of European People’s Party (EEP), Sebastian Kurz, just prior to the RN Macedonian early parliamentary election, stepped on the stage of Gruevski’s election rally and said: We are happy that Macedonia is on a good path to the EU, we are happy that for us in Austria, Macedonia is an important partner in many questions… You probably know that the refugee crisis and migration are a special challenge for Austria […] without your government, the closing of the Western Balkan Route would not have been possible and we remain grateful […] As a representative of the EPP I wish the team all the best, and lots of energy for the electoral campaign. (Bieber 2020: 98)

90  Europeanisation of Migration Likewise – albeit implicitly – German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed support for Vučić’s candidacy prior to the election in April 2017 (Bieber 2020: 99). Merkel and Kurz were not alone in praising the authoritarian politicians for their merits in protecting EU borders. The European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn – who has unavailingly tried to solve the RN Macedonian political conflict – underlined during his visit to Skopje in January 2016 said that: [D]espite all the talk about new elections, we should not forget that there is a very serious migration crisis in Europe […] it is also about the European, Euro-Atlantic perspective, where I believe a strong, decisive government, which can take decisions, is important. (Wunsch and Dimitrov 2016: 12) This statement suggests that European particularisms trump democratic rule in RN Macedonia, which in 2016 meant stopping migration by all means. Such hypocrisy in EU international politics is not surprising given that during the last decade the stability of the EU has been strictly connected to the south-north migration that became a bargaining chip for EU candidates. The Balkan countries realised the potential given by the refugee crisis in creating their image for internal and external publics. Therefore, Serbia as Beznec, Speer and Stojić Mitrović write: [D]id not interfere in migrant movement because it wanted to improve the country’s image regarding human rights protection and nonviolence, which had been tainted by the Yugoslav Wars, and thus enhance its position in the negotiation process with the EU. (2016: 56) Let me recall here an example from the field, more precisely from the interagency meeting that I attended at the reception centre in Preševo – a kind of exemplary state facility that was supposed to demonstrate the humanitarian and welcoming attitude of the Serbian government. During the meeting on 6 March 2016, where all the local and international stakeholders were discussing the ongoing issues, one of the problems brought up by Commissariat was waste recycling. A person who was in charge of the reception centres in Serbia, suggested the need for waste segregation and thus new waste containers. He also advocated for access to drinkable tap water to reduce plastic bottles. Indeed, there was a need to tackle the problem of waste but at the more elementary level: the municipality of Preševo did not have an official landfill, thus all the garbage, segregated or not, was unofficially disposed of by the road towards Kosovo. My speculation is that he made the remark on the segregation of waste to create an image of Serbia as a good, environmentally friendly and progressive EU-ropean state.

Europeanisation of Migration 91 The Balkan leaders knew their role in migration management, did not fail to remind others of it, and sought rewards for guarding the Schengen free movement zone without even being a part of it, much less the EU (Greider 2017). The RN Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, tainted by the “bombs” of the VMRO-DPMNE party, and Serbian Prime Minister Vučić, internationally accused of keeping domestic media in a stranglehold and of often violently suppressing opposition and civil society, proclaimed themselves Europe’s defenders,7 aspiring to move closer towards European accession and support for their candidacy. Support of Balkan stabilitocrats by the EU does not seem to interfere with the fact that democracy in these states has been in decline for six consecutive years, and is on average back at the levels of 2004. Furthermore, these countries, as potential candidates to join the EU, do not follow the recommendations of the EU in other areas. Serbian harmonisation with the EU’s foreign policy declarations is also in drastic decline. In 2016, the level of compliance was at 59 per cent, 38 per cent less than in 2012 (M.Š. and M.A. 2017). The ambivalent position of a Serbian state towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine put in question further integration. Another, more recent, case of trading membership in the area of freedom, security and justice, is related to EU plans to externalise the Regional Disembarkation Platform – in other words, refugee camps. Such platforms, as EU documents state, “should provide for rapid processing to distinguish between economic migrants and those in need of international protection, and reduce the incentive to embark on perilous journeys” (European Council 2018). In response to this idea, the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, has proposed hosting the Regional Disembarkation Platform in exchange for opening EU membership negotiations (Erebara 2018). The proposal of the Albanian state has so far been rejected by few EU member states, but the idea of externalising the Regional Disembarkation Platform is still on the EU agenda. EU migration policy weakens its image internationally as a defender of democracy, justice, and progress. The construction of “fortress Europe” and all sorts of transit camps in the third countries territories are financed from EU funds that could otherwise be used for regional development and aid. A report on the policies, the profiteers and the people shaping the EU’s border externalisation programme shows that over 80 per cent of the budget of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa used to stop migration comes from the European Development Fund and other development and humanitarian aid funds (Akkerman 2019: 37). Moreover, in the EU budget for 2017, 25 per cent more money was designated for sealing the external EU border than that of the previous year. The funds mostly come from a cut in the EU structural budget for the poorest region in the Union (Bielecki 2016). Perhaps the best way to understand the scale of the growing expenses for the control and surveillance of the external border might be the analysis of Frontex’s budget, which ballooned from 700,000 euros in 2007 to 346 million euros in 2020 despite continuous accusations of lack of transparency and involvement in human rights abuse (Kilpatrick 2022). Regardless of the augmentation of this budget, resources dedicated to Frontex do not seem to satisfy its needs,

92  Europeanisation of Migration and thus in the proposed budget for 2027, the agency is aiming for 1.87 billion euros (Akkerman 2019: 21). State Exploitation of Welcoming Attitudes During the long summer of migration, world media extensively reported from Serbia as from other places along the Balkan corridor. The news from overflowing Idomenii, Preševo or Horgoš resembled what Nicholas De Genova called the border spectacle (2015), in which states stage dramatic scenes of enforcement at the border that aims to stop unwanted immigration and thus systematically render the “illegality” of migrants. However, as I noted earlier, the refugee crisis helped Serbia in its self-presentation; as an empathetic state struggling with the burden of a migrant influx. Thus, the border spectacle, on the one hand, displays the power of state to enforce the politics of exclusion, and on the other hand, gives the possibility of creating a positive national image on the international stage. Serbia used EU funds and technical support and exploited the welcoming attitude of local communities efforts and their scattered resources in foreign politics to soften the international reputation of the country that had been distorted by the Yugoslav wars (Stojić Mitrović 2016). Serbian political discourse, and to the same extent politics, which could be paraphrased as “we were refugees too”, opposed the anti-migration rhetoric and acts of other EU-ropean states. Gzim commented on his confusion when he had to explain to migrants that the police in Preševo were not as oppressive as they might have had experienced in another countries: It was funny here that despite all the shit which the police had done, we still had to tell refugees they should not be afraid of them. When refugees saw the police, they ran from them because police in Greece and RN Macedonia were very cruel. They beat the shit out of them. Here the police were good. Serbian authorities, rather than perceiving the refugees as a threat, saw them as an opportunity. They greeted the refugees as a chance to gain financial support from transnational NGOs and the EU and revive their international reputation. Aleksandar Vucić – once known as supporter of Slobodan Milosević’s nationalist regime and the parliamentary pronouncements of “For every Serb they kill, we will kill a hundred Muslims!” – has been trying to persuade anyone that will listen that migrants are safe and welcome in Serbia and that they can stay there. On his visit to the Preševo reception centre in November 2015, he said: Serbia will receive and show solidarity with and humanity towards all these people, whereas those deeds will speak volumes about our country. Those deeds will also speak volumes to those people about us. We will continue to receive refugees, we won’t put up any walls or close our borders and will continue conducting counter-diversionary examinations to ensure the safety of all citizens of Serbia. (Government of Serbia 2015)

Europeanisation of Migration 93 However, words without actions mean little and thus Serbia’s warm and welcoming hosting of refugees only began to resonate internationally after publication of the BBC journalist Manveen Rana’s photograph of a police officer cradling a Syrian child in Preševo. The picture went viral. But journalists wrongly described an ethnic Albanian police officer as Serb, which angered the Albanian population. This mistake was instantly spun by Serbian authorities to show the integration of ethnic minorities into police (Pupavac & Pupavac 2015). Similarly, the authorities wanted to benefit from “Volunteers from Serbia” an informal group of people from a mixed ethnic background from Preševo who won an international prize for supporting refugees. The authorities pressured the group to change the name of grassroots initiative to “Serbian volunteers” to emphasise the national and ethnic component of the group. These tensions on the local level, however, were not visible at the international, where Serbia’s struggle for rehabilitation and recognition as European country took place. It was there that Serbia managed to improve its image as a state which respects human rights and rule of law and which in July 2016 eventually opened Chapter 24 of the EU integration process, on provisions of asylum and other migrant-related human rights standards. Conclusions This chapter aimed to describe the functioning of the European border regime and dynamics of migratory routes to the EU. I attempted to show that understanding the EU’s external borders should not limited to the physical walls, which keep the Others outside. Rather, the key for grasping the EU border regime is a migration apparatus, which consists of political agreements, embassies, high-tech, invisible surveillance systems and databases located throughout EU and non-EU countries, which are supposed to halt “unwanted migrants” far away from the Schengen area, in the host or residence countries. This combination of discourse, laws, scientific statements, and physical arrangements of EU migration policies filter “genuine refugees” and “skilled workers” from “unwanted migrants”, who are perceived as a burden for welfare states. I also showed that EU-ropean migration policies force migrants to take more dangerous routes. The EU and its border regime resemble a self-devouring organism that by protecting itself from an imagined evil, suffocates itself. Illegal land and sea border crossings account for only an estimated 5 per cent of “illegal” immigrants; most of the migrants enter the EU in an authorised way and simply overstay their visa (Feldman 2011: 12). Thus, the irregular arrivals of around 100,000 migrants per year (with the exception of the long summer of migration and the Covid-19 pandemic) is a rather minor issue compared to the 3.5 million non-European and intra-European migrants annually (Andersson 2016: 1058; European Commission 2019: 2; European Council 2023). Thus, the tentacles of the EU-ropean border regime are not only pointed in the wrong direction, but also prove to be ineffective in stemming irregular migration. Last but not least, EU-ropean bureaucrats are ready to stop migration at all costs, even if it is means trading fundamental values off against geopolitical interests and stability. As such, it is worth reiterating that the

94  Europeanisation of Migration EU-ropean border regime undermines the bloc’s own cornerstones of freedom, rule of law and justice. Notes 1 Citizens of the following countries may apply for a work permit under the simplified procedure in Poland: Belorussia, Ukraine Moldavia Georgia, Armenia and till 2022 Russia. 2 Construction of the border walls or fences often can be for purely media purposes rather than their actual effectiveness. 3 Law on Foreigners, known also as Aliens Act (Law of 2008a), Law on Asylum (Law of 2007), Law on state Border Protection (Law of 2008b). 4 The Commissariat for Refugees and Migration, in accordance with the Law on Refugees, performs tasks of recognition and cessation of refugee status; caring for refugees; registration of refugees; adjustment assistance to refugees from other agencies and organisations at home and abroad, and ensuring balanced and timely assistance, provision of accommodation or settlement of refugees in the areas of local self-governments; taking measures for the return of refugees; meeting the housing needs of persons in accordance with the law; keeping records of their responsibilities and the establishment of databases (KIRS 2017). 5 Law on Confirmation of the Convention about Police Cooperation in Southeast Europe. 6 Illegal migration and illegal migrants is defined in the Strategy for Combating Illegal Migration in the Republic of Serbia for the Period 2009–2014: “as every movement of the inhabitants of one state to another, which is not undertaken according to laws which are in force in the countries of origin and departure, as well as travel through a particular state which is in breach of the valid legal acts of that state. An illegal migrant is a foreign national, who illegally entered/exited another state (entrance beyond official bordercrossing points, entrance with falsified or otherwise irregular travel document) in order to travel through or permanently reside; also persons who entered the country legally, but who didn’t leave the country after their legal residence had ended. This Strategy introduces a category of potential illegal migrant – a person denied the entrance to the territory of a particular state as well as the person who received a negative decision on their visa application” (Stojić Mitrović 2014: 1112). 7 Here, I refer to the statement of Vučić claiming that the way his country has dealt with refugees “makes us more European than some member states” or Ivanov, asserting that his country is “is defending Europe from itself” (Wunsch and Dimitrov 2016: 13).

4

Waiting The Strain of Liminality

Creating Structuralised Waiting In the village of Horgoš on the Serbian–Hungarian border the dramatic scenes in September 2015 happened: The Hungarian riot police used the tear gas and water cannons against migrants, after they tried to break the barrier and enter EU. On regular days, it is a small border crossing, usually used by the Hungarians living on both sides of the border, who commute for work and pay family visits. Four hundred metres to the west, there is another, the main border crossing, Röszke–Horgoš, which (dis)connects the European north-south axis, through highway A1. It is a part of the busy pan-European transit corridor, with tens of thousands of cars and trucks passing through every day. Both are close to Horgoš. This village was also known for a third crossing point with hundreds of migrants waiting to cross. On the other side of the fence was the Hungarian transit zone fenced with razor-wire. These zones were the only places where migrants after March 2016 could legally cross the border and seek asylum. The entire procedure, which was supposed to determine whether asylum seekers were admissible or not, were carried out inside a converted shipping container. Once the migrants entered the transit zone, the Hungarian authorities interviewed the asylum seekers and would later let them submit an application and finally bring it to a court hearing room for a decision by a judge or a court clerk, who might be only present via an internet connection. Researchers speculate that the fast-track procedure was probably created to instantly deport inadmissible migrants, given that the Hungarian government had declared Serbia as a safe third country (Beznec et al. 2016: 61). According to the Hungarian government however, these forcible expulsions could not be regarded as deportations, as the fence and the transit zones were not on Hungarian territory (Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office 2015). Horgoš village struck me with its modest, but well-maintained terraced houses and gardens. At midday the streets of the village were clean, quiet and empty. Most of the local community walked to their destinations, trying to escape the summer heat. The only people who stayed on the village streets longer than necessary were migrants looking for shade, trying to escape the burning sun and boredom in the pre-transit unofficial camps. They were killing time on freshly mown lawns, benches or a low stone wall separating the lawn and the pavement in the central DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262-5

96 Waiting part of the village, under the surveillance of a portly Commissariat officer. He did not engage interact with the migrants, but just followed them like a shadow, steadily and from the same distance. The village did not offer much to its mostly Hungarian inhabitants: An ice cream parlour, a few grocery shops, two bars and a pizza restaurant, along with vast and fertile lands filled with orchards. It offered even less for migrants. Local entrepreneurs unofficially banned migrants from entering their stores, except grocery shops, where the watchful eye of the seller observed migrants doing shopping, and an ice cream parlour, where they could get desert but only to take away. I joined three Afghan males in their early 20s and 30s enjoying the shadows cast by the post office building. They were eating cookies, playing games and scrolling Facebook on a phone; migrants made use of the post office’s generous supply of free Wi-Fi. Amid, the eldest, had been recently robbed, so these three Afghanis shared one smartphone among them while waiting for another phone and their power banks to be charged in the supermarket around the corner. As in southern Serbia, it was also very common for the local community here to charge the phones of migrants for a fee. The price was standardised: Around 100 RSD (0.85 Euro cents) per device. I mostly talked to Jashmid, since only he could communicate in English. Jashmid was well-groomed, had a fancy hairstyle, nicely tailored trousers and New Balance shoes. He showed me a picture of himself in Dubai with a skyscraper in the background. The image looked like the front page of a fashion magazine. Jashmid was 17 years old and came from Kabul, where he had finished 12th grade. He had left his mother and sister there. It was not clear what had happened with his father. For two years Jashmid had worked in Dubai as a salesman in a car dealership. He had loved Dubai – for him a city of beauty and business. However, due to cancelation of his visa he had had to leave the United Arab Emirates and had decided to emigrate to Europe. While we were sitting together and getting to know each other, Amin showed me news from Kabul on social media. The first story was a report of a bomb attack in the capital city in which five people had died. The picture attached to the article showed soldiers looking at torn bodies lying on the asphalt, and an ambulance in the background. The other news was a video made by Daesh fighters.1 It presented decapitated soldiers on a pickup truck. I did not watch it for long. Chills went through my body and I decided to turn away. I could not, or maybe refused to, believe what Amid had just shown me, although I had heard before about the cruelties of the endless war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Amin typed a word in Google Translate and repeated after the voice, “Scary?” I nodded my head affirmatively. Then, he added, “We escape war!” I could not comprehend why he was showing me this. Was he trying to justify his emigration? Did he perceive me as a representative of the European society who was judging his motivation for migration? I never asked him these questions. Perhaps he did so to justify his journey to Europe. Maybe, it was just a way of passing time. Possibly it was an expression of fear of the unknown, and of a doubtful procedure that migrants had to pass through in the Hungarian transit zone. Boredom and anxiety are seemingly contradictory emotions which were part of

Waiting 97 everyday waiting in Serbia. On the one hand, waiting for one’s turn to cross the border was the only official way to enter the EU and legalise one’s stay. On the other hand, migrants felt insecure about the result of the interview; as the number of accepted people in the transit zone shrank, they feared that they would not access the transit centre or that their asylum claim would be rejected, and consequently they would stay in Serbia. Once the phone and power banks were fully charged, the Afghans invited me to the camp in the pre-transit unofficial camps zone. I put a baseball cap and sunglasses on, trying to awkwardly hide my “whiteness” and therefore be indistinguishable to the police who were randomly patrolling the area and racially profiling incoming people. They stopped journalists and volunteers from entering the camp. We walked along the village, then crossed the E75 motorway connecting southern and northern Europe and continued on a dry path between healthy fruit trees. As we approached the camp, in the late afternoon light I saw a glow above the settlement coming from campfires. Jashmid told me, “This is our life”. Extinguished campfires and other signs of camping spread around the settlement. There were cans, toilet paper and plastic bags scattered everywhere. The smoke and smell were suffocating. When the sun went down and the darkness covered the settlement, the only sources of light were flickering campfires and solar lamps provided by NGOs. Drones took to the air, patrolling the border area in its most critical places. A few minutes later, the buzz of the drones was drowned out by the roar of a helicopter. Jamal explained, “They fly over the border four times a day: twice at dawn and twice at dusk”. They could locate migrants hiding in the bushes thanks to thermal-imaging cameras. Jamal remembered helicopters and drones from his home country. The drones controlled by American pilots sitting behind monitors in the United States were killing people in Afghanistan suspected of terrorist activities. That is how Jamal’s friend had died. There had been no court or judgement. The missile had accurately hit the target following the signal given by his cell phone. These were the conditions where migrants waited to be accepted into the Hungarian transit zone. If the anthropologists Synnøve Bendixsen and Thomas Hylland Eriksen are right in arguing that once we accept waiting, we are stripped of control over our own time (2018: 92), then waiting generates not only vulnerability and humiliation but also dependency and a lack of personal autonomy. In creating the conditions of waiting in precarious and unsafe environments for an unpredictable amount of time, the Hungarian state exercised power in the Foucauldian sense. Foucault claims that the state’s disciplinary power is exercised over modern society by, among other things, the control of people’s time (1995: 80). This observation resonates with the research of Mikko Joronen (2017) on the activities of the Israeli state towards Palestinian refugees and Fontanari’s (2019) study of migrants’ movement within the EU. Both claim that waiting is a powerful tool for governing populations. However, Fontanari goes further and claims that extended waiting, combined together with a glimmer of hope, constitutes a clear technique of control for regulating social interaction (Ibid: 195). Thus, waiting involves

98 Waiting disciplinary politics, control over human interactions and power relations: who is waiting for whom? However, power relations not only dictate who has the power to stop and suspend someone’s life (Hage 2009a: 2), but also what the conditions of waiting are and under what circumstances the right to move can be regained. The notion of waiting has been comprehensively analysed in Ethnographies of Waiting, book edited by Manpreet K. Janeja and Andreas Bandak. In the introductory chapter, they explain that waiting has been used as “an instrument to elicit a particular form of subjectivity or as a weapon to make existence intolerable” (2018: 2). At the core of it is the volatility of the future, which is often achieved by establishing protracted and unclear asylum procedures (Stock 2019: 70). Prolonged waiting delays people’s lives, desynchronises them with the rest of society. It suspends them in space and time. Such an understanding of waiting fits the case of the unofficial settlements in northern Serbia, where wretched conditions have made living unsupportable. Poor accommodations, monotonous food, subjugation and vulnerability in relation to law enforcement and, finally, the unpredictability of the future generated anxiety, desperation and anger among those who waited to cross the border. Bandak and Janeja (2018: 6) argue that waiting can be seen as an imposed form of sanctioning used to slow down migrants’ movement. Thus, waiting appears to be a method of border deterrence. In this chapter, I focus on migrants who, after re-bordering and the implementation of the filtering process, were stranded in a legal and existential liminal state. They were unable to move northwards due to the militarisation of the border, violence and limited access to asylum procedures but able to freely move around the country. Using the notion of a “politics of waiting”, defined by Bandak and Janeja as “the structural and institutional conditions that compel people to wait” (2018: 3), I analyse the stuckedeness of people in a liminal space in unbearable conditions and for an unpredictable time in Serbia. Building on the ethnographic description of the imposition of waiting that lies in transit zones, official and unofficial refugee camps, and inconsistent rules of admission to asylum procedures and government facilities, I show how re-bordering and politics of waiting generated boredom, delay and anxiety, as well as legal limbo. These effects, as well as the existential conditions slow down migrants’ movement along the Balkan route and eventually tame the migration influx to the EU. The imposition of waiting affected the migrants’ movement, broke their will, created bafflement and took control over their time. It stripped migrants of their subjectivity, made their existence unsupportable and made it more difficult for them to imagine their liminal position coming to an end. Depicting Waiting Infrastructure The pre-transit unofficial camp in Horgoš was situated next to a fence and barbed wire that had been erected in August 2015, following Hungary's declaration of a state of crisis. Beyond the fence, the Röszke transit zone, fortified and restricted, comprised blue shipping containers where a limited number of migrants seeking asylum were allowed to enter each day through controlled metal turnstiles. Each container,

Waiting 99 measuring 13 m2, provided basic accommodation with two bunk beds, one regular bed, five lockers, a white fluorescent light, and a heater. Other containers served as offices for social workers, a dining room, a laundry area and sanitary facilities. Effective from 15 September 2015, amendments to Hungarian law designated the transit zones as the exclusive places for lodging asylum applications. Except for vulnerable groups, applicants were subjected to arbitrary de facto detention for 28 days to verify their data after the asylum interview. Subsequently, on 28 March 2017, the Hungarian Parliament passed additional amendments, leading to the automatic detention of all asylum seekers during the processing of their applications. This meant that detention in the transit zone could last months or even years (Matevžič 2019: 19). At the official level, it was not counted as imprisonment as the government did not consider the transit zones to be detention centres. The Hungarian state circumvented the law by automatic judicial review of the decision to extend the period of asylum seekers’ stay in the transit zone (Matevžič 2019: 20). Migrants whose asylum application was rejected were sent back through the gate in the fence to Serbia, although, under a bilateral readmission agreement with Hungary, Serbia does not accept any returns except for its own citizens and citizens of Kosovo. The closure of the borders brought a significant increase in the number of migrants stranded in Serbia – to at least 5,700 by September 2016 (UNHCR 2016). In summer of that year, between one-third and half of them stayed outside of the government facilities (UNHCR 2016). In Horgoš, migrants waited for months under Hungarian state surveillance in the pre-transit unofficial camps or temporary reception centres on the Serbian side, and later in shipping containers on the Hungarian side. Their everyday existence was filled with boredom and poor living conditions – no kitchen or washing machine (and, particularly in the unofficial settlements, no showers). The rhythm of life was marked by the degrading experience of queuing for the distribution of food and non-food items (NFIs). Whether it was at an hour's drive from Horgoš, the temporary reception centers in Subotica, the bus station, or in the pre-transit unofficial camps, this process dictated their daily existence. The Hungarian state thus created a condition of waiting in which migrants were deprived of state protection, the right to self-determination, and even to basic dignity: The lack of a possibility to maintain personal hygiene, privacy or personal autonomy. Officials reduced their identity to numbers on a list and personal clothing preferences to dark blue tracksuits and a light blue backpack with UNHCR logo, making migrants visible from a distance. The waiting conditions undermined what migrants called basic human rights. Waiting time was unpredictable. Single male migrants had to wait longer because priority was given to families, females and minors. For single men there were only one or two places left per day. If every migrant who stayed in Serbia in summer 2016 had registered, the last one would still not have crossed the border by spring 2017. However, even with a long-term perspective, entering the EU seemed unrealistic. The number of people accepted into Hungary was shrinking, and the number of migrants staying in Serbia was growing. In January 2017, Hungary accepted only five people per zone per day. Consequently, waiting times became potentially indefinite.

100 Waiting The fast-track system of processing asylum claims was based on desirability, where migrants had to prove that they were eligible for asylum and that the Serbian state was not obliged to provide protection. In other words, they needed to prove that they were fleeing a war-torn country, violence perpetrated by organised gangs, traffickers and other non-state actors, persecution on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, or disasters (Persons in Need of International Protection 2018a: 136). It was essential to fit to bureaucratic criteria, criticised by researchers who argue that in the asylum system a “real” refugee should be an epitome of pain and suffering. A “genuine refugee” is supposed to be a profoundly poor, traumatised, serious and sad person (Khosravi 2010: 73), and as argued by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, only such a self-representation and testimony will be officially approved by the machinery of human rights protection (2009: 232, 239). The complex admission system for asylum claims and the state-of-the-art surveillance infrastructure of Hungarian transit zone contrasted with the makeshift settlement, which consisted of camping tents and improvised shelters made from plastic tarpaulins, wood and corrugated sheet metal. Some tents were covered with thick-leaved branches of fruit trees from nearby orchards, which served as protection from the sun. There were three blue portable toilets by the fence and a pipe with a tap – the only source of water in the camp, which marked the beginning of a muddy puddle spreading over the settlement. Not only were the material living conditions humiliating, but inhabitants also had to accept the constant presence of the border guards on the other side of the fence, who harassed them. Jashmid said that the guards would use a strong torchlight to follow migrants going to the toilet – or bushes when toilets were overloaded – and strip them of their last remaining remnants of privacy. The intolerable conditions of waiting and the lack of effective methods to resettle migrants in EU countries pushed migrants to extreme solutions. As Khosravi points out, contemporary border politics does not use its power to directly kill people, but rather exposes the transgressors to death (2010: 27). To put it differently, even though the EU-ropean border regime – and even its most aggressive emissaries – generally did not kill migrants per se, they made migrants’ existence intolerable. A report entitled “Violence against refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe through the Balkans” states that self-harm, suicide attempts and abuse of alcohol and other drugs became passive strategies for coping with the uncertainty, stress and violence of border guards which were the results of irregular migration (Žegarac et al. 2022). Pushback and impeded access to the asylum procedure pushes migrants to dangerous, and often deadly, routes, such as the one across the rough Mediterranean Sea, or across deep rivers, that take their toll every year. One such victim was a Syrian migrant who was forced to make an irregular border crossing. On 1 June 2016, two brothers attempted to cross the river Tisza bordering Serbia and Hungary. One of them drowned as a result of Hungarian law enforcers preventing him from climbing out of the water by throwing stones at him, using pepper spray and unleashing dogs on him (Than 2016). The pre-transit unofficial camp in Horgoš was one of three in the north of Serbia. Its sister unofficial camp was also located 60 kilometres further west in

Waiting 101

Map 4.1  The waiting infrastructure as of June 2016 Source: Map created by Dawid Lesiak

Kelebija/Tompa. Collectively, both the pre-transit unofficial camps at the beginning of July 2016, their peak, accommodated 1,011 people (UNHCR 2016) and a month later their population dropped to 430 people, mainly women and children from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (UNHCR 2016). From these two settlements, one could see tourists travelling to and from Southeast Europe and enjoying their surplus of mobility and freedom of movement, while a few hundred metres away people were waiting in unbearable conditions to seek asylum (see Map 4.1). These two contrasting abilities to move shows different mobility regimes coexisting in the same space and time; regimes that divided and discriminated against people only on the basis of place of birth and skin colour and normalised the movements of some travellers while criminalising and entrapping others (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2012: 189). By comparing the speed of travel of the migrants to that of the privileged passport holders, it is easy to understand how time-space compression affects different travellers in different ways (Harvey 1989). With proper travel documents the journey from Greece to Hungary can be made in two hours by plane and a matter of hours by car. Migrants crossing the Balkan Peninsula need months, sometimes years. This time is irrevocably stolen from them. Between the unofficial camps in Horgoš and Kelebija there was a third one. The temporary reception centre Subotica for 200 migrants was managed by the Serbian authorities and in contrast to the two others had access to sanitation, electricity and Wi-Fi. The reception centre was called “the cage” by the residents of the city because of its shape and population density. These were part of a wider network of official and unofficial transit camps spread along the Balkan route. Surrounded by a fence, an area of two 60-metre swimming pools had several shipping containers, green camping tents and a small house. According to UNHCR reports, at the peak

102 Waiting of migrants’ concentration in northern Serbia – at the beginning of July 2016 – there were at least 1,500 migrants, of which 41 per cent were children (UNHR 2016). Subordinating Queuing One element of the waiting infrastructure in Serbia was waiting list(s) for those migrants who wanted to enter the EU in an official way. Both Hungarian and Serbian authorities denied the existence of any waiting list(s), most probably because such a document would be proof of hindering the procedures for asylum seekers and an explicit violation of the Geneva Convention. The origin of the waiting list(s) is unclear. According to a joint agency report, the Hungarian police demanded that migrants themselves organise a list of people seeking entry at the border and camping in the pre-transit unofficial camps located by the border fence near Horgoš village (Joint Agency Briefing Paper 2017: 13). Another report, published by the Danish Refugee Council, claims that the list began as an unofficial document created by migrants to manage the chaotic procedure, but which was later formally adopted by the Hungarian authorities (Passey 2017: 8). It is debatable how many lists there were at the beginning, who qualified for the list and how long one had to wait to cross the border. Nevertheless, both migrants’ own accounts and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (Hungarian Helsinki Committee 2017b) confirmed its existence as well as its non-transparent character, meaning its criteria could be changed. What is known is that the Hungarian authorities handed responsibilities of controlling the waiting list(s) to migrants, without giving them any possibility of negotiating the rules of admission. The list(s) first emerged in spring 2016 and took the form of a piece of paper where migrants had to sign their name and date of birth, as well as country of origin. In August 2016, the document was stamped by the Hungarian authorities. The length of wait was unpredictable, and the reason for admission to the Hungarian transit zone was arbitrary (Hungarian Helsinki Committee 2017b). It is also clear that neither the Hungarian nor the Serbian states allowed NGOs and grassroots groups to access the settlements – except for the Red Cross – and simultaneously refused to provide any assistance in the pretransit unofficial camps. The Hungarian authorities wanted to have control over the “community leader”, who was chosen among residents of the pre-transit unofficial camps. According to my research partners, the “community leader” was picked by the Hungarian authorities, had to know English, be a male, and come from the Middle East, ideally from Syria. In return for keeping the waiting list(s), he enjoyed certain privileges such as access to electricity – in the form of a power bank – and in the case of a single man, exemption from detention in the transit centre in Hungary. The “community leaders” were empowered to shuffle names on the list. Queuing in Serbia became a new form of migrant subordination and time-space management. Lining up for food, transit papers or access to asylum means a waste of energy and forced obedience. Given this, I cannot help but agree with the observation of Basma Abdel Aziz, who argues that queues, as a form of waiting, produce humiliation as well as obedient, easily manipulated citizens (2021: 152). As it was in the case of reception camp in Preševo, which I describe in detail in Chapter 1,

Waiting 103

Figure 4.1 Migrants washing themselves and their belongings surrounded by the closed Hungarian border, Serbia, Horgoš, 2015 Source: Photograph by Maciej Moskwa

also in Horgoš, queuing brought chaos. People tended form bulky masses and tried to jump the queue. Jashmid, who stayed in the Horgoš pre-transit unofficial camps for more than a month, described the method of processing the list to me. He said that migrants had to stay in the pre-transit unofficial camps area to keep an eye on the list. Leaving the camp could mean losing their turn. Thus, many migrants agreed to camp without a sanitary infrastructure, under the burning sun border guards’ surveillance and as long as was needed (see Figure 4.1). Some migrants took pictures of the list to have proof in case their places on the list were changed or, as Jashmid called it, “abracadabra” was performed on the document. Migrants who refused to stay in the pre-transit unofficial camps zone because of the untenable conditions came there a couple of days before their turn to pass the gate to make sure that they would not lose their place in the line (Figure 4.1). To speed up the queuing, camp residents registered not only themselves but also members of their families who had not arrived yet. It was often the case that the people who were registered did not appear at the border gate at all because they had not made it to Serbia or chose to take an irregular route instead. In such situations their names were crossed off and their place should have been taken by the next person on the list. But the “community leaders” were usually corrupt and untrustworthy. In the place of migrants crossed off the list, they put those who paid them. However, migrants not only queued in the unofficial settlements, but also in temporary reception centres. At the semi-official level, there was a high degree of

104 Waiting cooperation between the Hungarian and Serbian border guards and the “community leaders”. One (I)NGO worker told me, the list was passed by the “community leader” residing in the pre-transit camp to the Hungarian authorities and later it was sent to the reception centres in Serbia. The Commissariat in Serbia, with the help of (I)NGOs and the IOM (International Organization for Migration) drove migrants to the Hungarian border when their turn was approaching. As time passed, more migrants left Horgoš and moved to other unofficial settlements or government facilities within Serbia. The boredom, poor food, robberies and occasional fights with the local bandits made the waiting unsupportable. The monotony and danger that waiting entails can have a physical impact on migrants. Among those who left Horgoš was Reza, an 18-year-old Afghani. He said that the canned food and bread provided by the Red Cross every single day made him sick. He had fever, diarrhoea and nausea. Although he had signed on to the list in Horgoš, he decided to move to the camp in Subotica. Migrants queued at various stages of their trip. They wasted their time, money and energy. Some of them had started their queuing in their country of residence when they applied for visas and collected money to cover the journey or for the smugglers. While on the Balkan route they lined up at the entry point to the next country in order to receive chartiá, for their place on the waiting list(s), food and NFIs at various distribution points. They were stopped, questioned and delayed by various state and non-state actors. Delaying Besides stealing migrants’ and their families’ time and money lengthy waiting also delays their journey and desynchronises life pulse and progress through social hierarchies: Obtaining a degree, finding a job or getting married. Khosravi writes that “[d]elaying might be understood as a technique of domination, devaluating people’s time” (2021: 66). Forced delaying postpones prospects of future change and imposes further suspension and waiting. It prevents one from taking the next step. Delaying does not build patience but rather creates helplessness, boredom and frustration. It is a negative force that desynchronises time in terms of the modern conception of temporal utility and made them out of sync with societal and biological wider rhythms (Coleman 2020: 47). It slows down migrants’ time while letting the rest move at a regular pace. Prolonged waiting in the Balkan route made the journey aimless, migrants’ despair and prospects of leaving the liminal space unrealistic. Khosravi suggests that the purpose of delaying migrants at the border is to remind them of their place in the racial hierarchy. A migrant from the Global South, particularly if they are from a former colonised country, has to be delayed because they, as the antithesis to what Europe is supposed to be, has historically been imagined temporally behind the West (Khosravi 2021: 66). Therefore, delaying is a racialised strategy to keep people of colour behind. Delays engender evaluations of steps made and decisions taken. In a situation where migration is not near an end and the future is uncertain, waiting undermines plans, breaks people’s will and questions decisions taken. Waiting drains people’s

Waiting 105 hope and keeps them in a state of chronic, low-threshold anxiety. Gradual stagnation steals the will, and implants a hollowness instead, which sabotages their aims and efforts to change their lives (Aziz 2021: 152). Why are we waiting here and is the object of waiting reachable at all? Waiting is a time when doubts arise, and hopes are weakened. Migrants were delayed by waiting list(s), by having been erased from it or by having been rejected from asylum procedure in the Hungarian transit zone. However, migrants tried counteracting delays and bribed law enforcement officers to set them free, or the waiting list manager to move their names up in the register to reduce the delay. Others paid smugglers to help them cross the border. However, these acts of resistance were often useless. One of my research partners who had tried all these methods and still held a feeling of being delayed was Gebre. This fairly tall Eritrean in his late 20s spent a few days in Horgoš but he could not stand the boredom there. He signed up on the waiting list(s) but did not believe that he would never ever be allowed to enter the transit zone because being Eritrean, not Syrian, located him at the bottom of a racialised humanitarian and mobility hierarchy. One time, I invited Gebre for a dinner to a ćevabdžinica – a type of grill restaurant that serves affordable local food. It was loud and busy: Fried meat sizzled, cutlery banged on the tables, people talked in raised voices. While eating, he recounted his story to me. For him and his family, migration was nothing new. He spoke in a way that indicated his comprehension of his precarious position, combined with anger. His parents had run away from Eritrea to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. In 2012, the family’s economic situation there was good enough to send Gebre to university in Kuala Lumpur. However, during his second year of IT studies, his father fell ill. Gebre came back home to look after him, but soon after, his father passed away. As a result, the family not only lost its breadwinner but also the right to stay and work in Saudi Arabia, although Gebre had been born there. A return to Eritrea was not an option for his family, as his father had deserted form the Eritrean army, which could result in persecution upon family return. Unemployed and without right to stay in his country of birth, Gebre had to abandon his studies and begin his clandestine journey. Daniel Mains (2007) explained that for young men in urban Ethiopia, who have internalised the ideology of progress through their education but remain unemployed, the only solution appears to be migration. Gebre was quite persistent in his attempts to use official means to emigrate. He applied for a visa to the EU, but the application was rejected. Then, he applied for a green card in the United States. He waited for the result for months until he became impatient and vexed. Shortly after, he successfully applied for the Turkish visa and tried the irregular way to the EU through the Balkan route. As he explained me, his motivation for migration was the continuation of education. He hoped that upon reaching the EU he would be able to restart his IT studies. Seeing that this prospect was moving further away rather than coming closer, had been an excruciating experience. For him, with the death of his father, his experiences lost sync with one of his university friends. When checking his Facebook, he felt sorrowful. He could not abide seeing pictures of his friends from graduation parties or internships in Australia. Dropping out of university was so painful that he

106 Waiting cut off contact with his university peers and removed them from his social media. He cut off contact with me probably for the same reason, when he learned that I had gained a fellowship at a Canadian university. He could not get over the fact that his chance to graduate had been taken away. The sense of being delayed was very strong for Gebre. The suspension of his journey in time and space felt as if his world had stopped while everyone and everything else kept moving. Irregular migration interrupts life. Migrants are stopped and delayed at various stages of their journey, including destination countries. They fall victim to wasted studies, the passage of time, and deteriorating health which are the result of protracted waiting in limbo. They could not study and access other public services. Gebre’s history illustrates the dramatic turn a life might take and how delay further impacts on decisions. Before departure from Saudi Arabia, he had had cataract surgery. As a clandestine migrant, he could not access healthcare and have his sutures removed, which caused an infection and gradual loss of vision, further putting off the prospect of graduation. Another person whose narrative of being delayed strongly resonated was Jamal. When I visited Horgoš again, I saw Jamal downcast. I asked him about the source of it. He answered that the day of crossing the border was approaching and he feared the moment of reaching Germany. He feared that he would not have the right to work and drive a car, in other words, to have a normal life. From the residual information which came to him from Germany, he concluded that the asylum process in the EU could take years. The awareness of this upcoming stage – yet another state of limbo that could be endlessly protracted – was causing him anxiety. Migrants had not calculated that they would be stuck for months in the position of irregularity, that their plans, school or treatment schedules will be entirely stopped or delayed. At that point I had an impression that sometimes Jamal regretted the decision he had taken despite the fact that staying in Afghanistan would have been life-threatening. My assumption was confirmed by his words that he had been encouraged to emigrate by the rumour of opened borders but without fully understanding the risks of this journey and its length. If we had known how difficult it is to get there (to Europe), many would not take this risk. Many have made a mistake emigrating, but closing the border with Macedonia, Serbia or Hungary is a mistake too. Migrants are like birds, they always find a way to migrate. Now, for us, there is no way back. If I decide to return to Afghanistan, they will see me as a traitor. They will say, first you ran away, and now you are coming back. It would be very difficult to return. I asked Jamal if he regretted that he had taken the Balkan route. He answered angrily: Are there any other options? What do you think? If you take your children and wife, you aim for the safest journey. Do you think that we are travelling by yachts? They (the smugglers) give us rubber “puff” (sound of popping

Waiting 107 inflatables) and force you to travel across the rough Mediterranean Sea. I could have asked you why you haven’t been to Afghanistan. What? You do not know that there is a war, that it is dangerous? Some migrants were drawn to Europe believing the border to be “opened”. They had not planned to emigrate, it was rather an impulse caused by the degradation of living conditions in a home country, fear, visa cancellations in a host country or turbulence in their private lives. They saw an opportunity and decided to seize it, knowing that many others had successfully reached Europe before them. With determination, they embarked on the journey, hoping to find a new life like those who had come before them. Boredom I saw Jamal and Jashmid with friends again, Jashmid had a hangover and did not drink himself that day but served vodka with energy drink to others. Energy drinks were very popular among migrants because, as they told me, it was a substitute for nutritious food (sic!) which was absent from the migrants’ daily diet. Alcohol served to kill the boredom and idleness which were overwhelming in the pre-transit unofficial camps. This drink was common in long stopovers. It allowed the overflow of time to spin faster. The EU–Turkish agreement on migration put the Balkan route on hold. Soon after, migrants began to move around Serbia, but various forces interrupted those trips. Sometimes migrants stop in unofficial camps, other times were confined in the transit camps or detained in prisons. Lengthy stays in these places were filled with boredom, where food distribution set the pace of the day, yet even this time marker was often not certain, as NGOs or government bodies rarely stuck to the schedule. Migrants’ existence was suspended in time and filled with ennui. As time is related to events, if the day is not divided into sequences of significant events, then it seems to last forever. Boredom in moments of forced immobility was widely present among migrants. Simon Coleman rightly states that “boredom is a state, while waiting is an activity, even though the former may be caused by the latter” (2018: 47). Waiting, particularly active forms of it, may conceivably even be the opposite of boring (Hage 2009b: 12), replete with fulfilling activities and oriented towards a firm date for stepping into the next stage of one’s life trajectory. Forced and protracted waiting, however, enhanced by limited opportunities, brings boredom which is a state caused by a lack of agency over time, passivity, meaninglessness and endlessness. Izabela Wagner and Mariusz Finkielsztein argue that from the strategic point of view, boredom in the refugee camps is not only empty time, characterised by the low density of events, little opportunity for pursuing engaging activity and the passive role that refugees are cast into. Rather, they stress that it is also a part of a punishment employed institutionally that has significant consequences on inmates, ranging from apathy and listlessness to aggression and nervous instability (2021: 654).

108 Waiting Thus, Wagner and Finkielsztein suggest that boredom, similarly to waiting, can be used as a strategy of control that undermine refugees’ rights (2021: 674). The feeling of being bored was described to me by Adnan, who had been kept for 28 days in the Hungarian transit zone in Horgoš. Through the phone, he told me that they were bored to death. There was nothing to do. They only slept, ate and scrolled social media. Neither today nor tomorrow or in the next days, nothing would have happened. Metal barracks would heat up with the rising sun and cool down with the dusk. The camp monotony made people lazy and passive. Lack of plans, or daily chores like cleaning, cooking or studying makes every day unbearably long and similar. The experience of being locked in a transit camp was one of an overabundance of useless time and tediousness. Even the border guards were bored. They roamed around the camp purposeless, chatting with other workers. After the closure of the Balkan corridor, NGO workers in various refugee camps in Serbia sat and ate high-energy snacks that were part of food packages as they waited for new migrants. Migrants waited for the impossible – the border opening. For many, there was nothing to plan for, nothing to wait for, as the borders remained close. Everyone was bored because no one knew what was coming and how to prepare for it. If there is no aim, no light on the horizon, there is unlikely to be any hope. It was this that made migrants’ immobility so painful, because as writes Jackson, “for if there is one thing that reduces a person to nothingness it is waiting without hope” (2008: 147). The Burden of Waiting Prolonged waiting in a liminal state blurred future perspectives, weakened hopes and broke people’s willpower. Aims that just a few weeks ago were at one’s fingertips became unreachable. The existential state of a lack of future and hope, writes Samuli Schielke, is intimately coupled with frustration, and often inches close to despair (2008: 256). Migrants turned their adrenaline and hope which had fuelled the journey into frustration and aggression towards other inmates and themselves. Waiting in liminality converts energy into boredom and anxiety, which can aggravate mental health problems. I clearly remember migrants in official and unofficial camps after the closure of the Balkan corridor, who went through serious emotional breakdowns caused by stuckedness. I observed disturbing scenes of minors’ and adults’ selfmutilation: Hitting the wall with their heads, burning themselves with a cigarette or to cutting themselves all over their forearms. One of my research partners told me about suicide attempts in temporary reception camps, which were later confirmed by NGO documents. A report by the UNHCR from July to August 2017 noted: “On 6 August, a man from Algeria lost his life in the vicinity of Šid town, where he was hit by an approaching train that he reportedly did not see on time. On 14 August, a young Algerian man reportedly committed suicide by throwing himself under the wheels of a moving locomotive on the ŠidTovarnik railway near the border with Croatia”. (UNHCR 2017)

Waiting 109 Waiting is cruel, it keeps people suffering yet lets them remain hopeful. “They shall be kept at the edge of frustration’s hole, but never pushed down to the bottom” writes Basma Abdel Aziz (2021: 154). But when one touches the bottom, he or she becomes suicidal. It is understandable that when borders are tightened like a noose around the neck and migrants’ internal and external pressure only increases, that this extreme solution might seem to be the only recourse. Gebre started to experience suicidal feelings after being robbed by a smuggler’s intermediary to whom he had entrusted not only long-awaited money from his family but also his last hopes. He was stuck. Ghassan Hage claims that stuckedness occurs in a situation in which a person “suffers from both the absence of choices or alternatives to the situation they are in and an inability to grab such alternatives even if they present themselves” (2009b: 100). In despair, Gebre went to search for the unfair intermediary in Belgrade. When Gebre run out of money for private accommodation he stayed in the barracks behind the train station and in the “Afghan Park”2 and around the parks and on the streets of Belgrade (Lažetić and Jovanović 2018). The capital city was the largest concentration of these unofficial living arrangements in Serbia. Migrants who stayed there were exposed to frostbite, body lice, smoke from campfires, and abuse criminal gangs, including kidnapping, physical attacks, threats and extortion. As the Commissariat was afraid of having a repetition of the situation in Calais in North of France,3 it limited access of grassroots organisations and NGOs to the unofficial settlements in order to discourage migrants from living there.4 When Gebre lost faith in finding smuggler’s intermediary and thus the belief that the trip would ever come to an end, he wrote to me: “I am sure that there’s nothing that is going to change it (his stuckedness)”. The anguish of an unsuccessful journey, betrayal and overwhelming violence caused him intolerable pain that he just wanted to go away. For him, it seemed that he would never manage to get out from the entrapment between the border, that nothing good was waiting for him and that there was only one solution to liberate him from the burthen. I’m gonna kill myself cause I’m really done. The only thing you can help me with is to find me someone that can help me to kill. Please. Or you could do it, but I don’t have anything to give you. The only thing I have is my laptop. I wish if I have something more to give you. Please, this is the only thing you can do for me, if I am your real friend. Gebre was not the only one who lost faith and started to face mental health problems. Researchers claim that it is one of the major health concerns among the migrating populations travelling to Europe. World Health Organization analyses of the health of migrants in the European region show, among other things, that psychosocial disorders are usually a result of the travelling and living conditions of a prolonged journey or the interruption of care, due to lack of access the health care systems during the journey (WHO n.d.). A quantitative study based on data provided by MSF – which from July 2015 to June 2016 provided mental health care to migrants on the move stranded in Serbia – reveals that from 992 individuals who

110 Waiting sought support, 828 (83 per cent) had symptoms of mental health issues. Furthermore, the study shows that nearly one-in-three migrants had experienced traumatic incidents of violence perpetrated by state authorities in a systematic and organised way during the journey from the country of origin (Arsenijević et al. 2017: 5). Other qualitative research confirms the emotional disorder of migrants. Inka Stock shows that migrating populations stranded in Morocco tend to have long periods of deep depression and a sense of personal failure as the link between existential mobility and physical mobility becomes broken (2019: 101). The case of an Afghan man, who I met in the temporary reception centre in Šid, shortly after the implementation of the EU–Turkish deal on migrants, clearly illustrates how border regimes can break the willpower of a human. Shahbaz, like Gebre, also did not make it to the EU before the closure of the border. The temporary reception centre in Šid was located in an old two-storey building from the 19th century, which had barely been renovated since then. Migrants slept on metal bunk beds in two grey brick houses and two big tents. The living conditions were poor; the toilets were derelict, the doors and windows did not close properly. The centre was drenched with greyness: White and grey walls, blue and grey bunk beds with grey blankets, even the partly painted parquet flooring was grey. All this, in cold and humid late winter weather, created a depressing atmosphere. I encountered Shahbaz in the dormitory in one of the brick buildings. He invited me to sit on his bed – from there, we could see the train station, from where migrants had departed to the EU in their thousands just a few weeks before. Shahbaz, an 18-year old Afghani, spent 14 years of his life in Pakistan as a refugee. When his family’s residence permits were cancelled, they returned to Afghanistan. From there, due to limited resources only he departed for the EU. When I talked to him, Shahbaz had already been stranded in Serbia for two months. He was waiting for the border to be re-opened. He seemed depressed and completely disoriented, saying: There are two ways: if the border is open, we go; if the border is closed, we will go back. I am waiting for the IOM (International Organization for Migration, Voluntary Return Program) and also for border opening. So, I don’t know my future, what will happen and what the government will do for me or what the IOM will do for me. I am lonely (his voice became fragile)… I am so bored day after day, I said, I will be crazy because I am starting to have some problems, mind problems. I don’t know. […] I am registered with IOM, but they didn’t give me a response. Two months I am waiting. I said, it is better to go back to Afghanistan. I will see my family, I will see my mother, father, it is better than this situation. I also have smaller sisters and brothers. In Pakistan they were in school, now they are only at home. […] The domestic war in Afghanistan is getting worst day by day. They called me and said, ‘Please, stay in Serbia. After two weeks you will go, find the way for you to get to Finland.’ I said, ‘Brother, how can I do it?’ He said, ‘Listen to me, go to centre of Serbia to Belgrade, take one taxi, come to Austria. When you will be there, I will help you.’ I said, ‘How can I? Problem is I do not have

Waiting 111 money. I gave fingerprints in Hungary, so how can I come to Austria?’ He said, ‘Please try, try, stay here, do not go to Afghanistan. It is not possible for you to go back.’ So, what do I do? The psychological strain of liminality causes disorientation, and undermines self-confidence and motivation, which, in turn, makes it harder to imagine a future. It also takes away the physical strength necessary for long journeys and for taking blows from border guards and bandits. The case of Shahbaz ties up existential mobility and physical mobility. It also reveals that, on top of the infrastructural conditions making waiting unbearable, there was also pressure from family and friends, which pushed migrants to endure this state of liminality. Having become a burden rather than an asset to their families, the migrants themselves did not want to disappoint their families and friends, placing even more pressure on their psychological well-being. Migrants’ lengthy stays in Serbia were fraught with money problems. Their journey costs, according to my research partners, started from around 6000 Euros per person depending on duration and involvement of smugglers. Various researchers have shown that prolonged migration or failed migration has profound implications not just for those who move, but also for other family and community members who stay home (Faist 2010; Cohen and Sirkeci 2011; Passey 2017). The imposition of waiting on migrants in Serbia extended their already long journeys and required extra money for their survival. Hage (2009a) has indicated that waiting is linked to economic factors. There is a political economy of waiting and waiting can be a waste of time and thus money (Hage 2009a: 3). As a result of extended waiting, migrants were running out of money before reaching their destination country or/and were forced to rely on their benefactors back home for a much longer time. Thus, stuckedness in Serbia influenced migrants and their wider circle. The families left behind, who had often donated all their wealth to migrants’ journeys or who were the guarantor of loans taken to cover it, expected migrants to endure the burden of the extended state of liminality and ultimately reach the destination country. Many of my research partners had spent all their savings, sold properties or borrowed money to cover the journey to Europe. Some of them combined different financial resources, including taking loans which were guaranteed by family members left behind. In the case of Shahbaz, his family had sold their land and house in Afghanistan and moved to a refugee camp in Kabul to finance his emigration. Seeking Asylum in Serbia Shutting down the Balkan corridor was not limited to heightened border control by EU and non-EU countries. Serbian authorities also curbed access to the government facilities for “unwanted migrants” and changed the rules of admission to them. Facing a challenge to accommodate the rising number of migrants in the country, the authorities used a combination of detaining them in the government facilities and controlling their movement within the country. The state forced migrants in the government facilities to either seek asylum in Serbia,5 sign on to the waiting list(s)

112 Waiting or voluntarily return to their home country. None of my research partners wanted to live in Serbia or go back home. Shahbaz told me: What will I do in Serbia? People in Serbia are good, but the language is so difficult. They will shelter us for five or six years, but we do not have any relatives here. I try to go to Germany only for education. And I also believe that relatives there will help me. Migrants’ months-long stays in Serbia let them observe and interact with the local community. These short but intense encounters allowed them to understand how precarious the living conditions in Serbia were – the economic hardship, instability and relatively high unemployment would hinder their integration into the labour market or education. Migrants also did not consider staying in Serbia because the situation there was unpredictable: Predictability, security and rhythm daily routine are important components of “normal life” (Jansen 2015: 41). Nevertheless, it was of utmost importance to legalise their stay in Serbia, since the chartiá expired so quickly; as put by Stojić Mitrović and Meh: “they arrive as ‘illegal’, become ‘legal’ for three days, they rest, take a shower, and then become “illegal” again, on their way towards the EU” (2016: 627). The migrant solution for this was filing a declaration of a wish to seek asylum in Serbia, but rarely submitting a formal asylum application. As one interagency report stated: These individuals fall into a legal grey area under Serbian law. In practice, they continue to be allowed to stay in government centres, where they receive services and aid, although there is technically no legal framework governing their status and rights. Refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants who do not file a formal application for asylum have several options: including applying for family reunification, registering for assisted voluntary return, or waiting for transit to Hungary. (Passey 2017: 8) The asylum seekers in Serbia had the right to shelter in an asylum centre, access free primary and secondary education, the right to social assistance, and freedom of movement within the territory of Serbia but, importantly, did not have right to work while their claim was being processed and were housed in peripheral areas disconnected from the rest of the country (Lukić 2016: 34). Although many of these rights remained only on paper, the status of the asylum seeker or persons with granted asylum, at least temporary legalised their stay. Unsurprisingly, data provided by UNHCR shows that there were more asylum applications than asylum seekers themselves in the country. In the period from 2008 to 2016, most of the migrants in Serbia abandoned their asylum procedures before their cases had been resolved (Belgrade Centre for Human Rights 2016: 39). This indicates that claiming asylum in Serbia was usually just another strategy to legalise one’s stay during the long stopovers and movement within Serbia, which minimise the chances of deportation during the attempt to enter the EU.

Waiting 113 Regardless of the high number of migrants dropping their asylum procedure, the number of stranded migrants in Serbia grew and the conditions in the government facilities deteriorated. The unofficial settlements were cut off from humanitarian aid or forcibly shut down, and their residents were directed to the overcrowded, closed-type official centres,6 where there was meagre, monotonous food, no NFIs and little prospect to cross the border. Conclusions In this chapter, I show how mobility created immobility and explained that waiting policies built on infrastructure as well as on legal acts and norms undermined subjectivity, caused anxiety and desperation and delayed migrants’ journey. The ever more tightly closing mesh of European external borders created an existential limbo, where the state deprives migrants of protection, weakens their ambition and subordinates them. Queuing for food, waiting in the unofficial and official camps, or waiting to start the asylum procedure undercut their freedom of movement, dented their aspirations and made their existence intolerable. The boredom that creeps into migrants’ life, causes ennui and passivity. The sense of endless waiting breaks people’s will and slows down their movement. It also stunts theirs social and economic advancement. As well as this, waiting in the position of undocumented migrants drastically reduce the chances of work and thus is a significant burden for them and their family budgets. Consequently, on the one hand, the politics of waiting produces depletion, frustration, and struggle to keep up with social expectation, while on the other hand, it creates migrants’ vulnerability from the informal economy and criminal groups, which might exploit their fragile position of having an unregulated legal status and suffering financial desperation. The lengthy waiting of my research partners in the layovers in the position of liminality brought them a sense of existential and geographical stuckedness that caused distress and mental challenges. Even though the displacement in itself, as liminality, is not supposed to last indefinitely, the politics of waiting turn the temporariness into an oxymoronic permanent liminality (Szakolczai 2017); a suspension that should be temporal becomes endless, with migrants’ journeys taking several months, sometimes years. These travels turn into brief episodes of movement interlaced with long stops, which does not end upon arrival to the EU. Migrants are “caught in mobility” and keep roaming around within the Schengen Zone (Picozza 2017; Fontanari 2019). In Chapter 5, I focus on migrant’s agency and their attempts to oppose the politics of waiting; I describe how people counteract it and what their strategies to cope with stuckendess are. Notes 1 Deash – the Arabic acronym for ISIS/ISIL. 2 Officially, Park Luka Ćelović, which is located by the bus and train station in Belgrade. 3 The unofficial settlement of migrants in France who were stuck on their way to the United Kingdom.

114 Waiting 4 In May 2017, the Serbian authorities removed most migrants from the area around the station and placed them in reception centres. Apart from the fear of having a repetition of Calais, there were two other, interconnected reasons for removing migrants from public spaces and both of them seemed to be connected with a planned massive building project in the city. First, the area between the train station and Sava River was soon to be demolished and prepared for the construction of a redevelopment project called the “Belgrade Waterfront”: A luxurious complex of buildings and a shopping mall in the heart of the city. Second, Serbian authorities were concerned with the police reports and local community complaints about disturbances caused by migrants: Littering, lack of sanitation and criminal acts (Lažetić and Jovanović 2018). The “Belgrade Waterfront” project is known for its ignorance of Austro-Hungarian heritage, the low amount of commerce in this part of the city, a lack of transparency surrounding the high public cost of this investment, and finally, the expulsion of dwellers, both formal and informal. The latter resembles what Micheal Herzfeld called spacial cleaning, a “conceptual and physical clarification of boundaries, with a concomitant definition of former residents as intruders” (2006: 142). Herzfeld shows that the subject of a city’s remodeling projects are usually neighbourhoods that are associated with or inhabited by people perceived as dirty or, adopting Mary Douglas’s (1966) category, “matter out of place” (2006: 135). As a consequence, weaker groups – and often highly visible ones that do not fit renovation projects – are pushed away without many alternatives being provided (Dupont and Vaquier 2014: 356; Bloch 2019: 14). 5 The asylum procedure was highly inefficient; less than 75 migrants were granted asylum in Serbia from 2014 to October 2017 (Mandić 2018: 811). 6 Anna Pajvančić-Cizelj (2018) explains that closed-type centres in Serbia meant that entries and exits were possible but were limited, controlled and restricted. Although it was not easy to enter or leave the centre, entry and exit were possible. For example, the centre’s walls were porous for young male refugees who, unlike women, went to towns or surrounding villages (Pajvančić-Cizelj 2018: 845).

5

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness

I approached Subotica late at night, entering the city from the south; I passed by a few groups of 10–15 people walking northward. In a town that had already fallen asleep, they were the only visible pedestrians on the illuminated by soft, amber lights streets. In summer 2016, the bus station was a hub of movement and a beacon of connection for migrants traversing the Balkan route. Some of them were crouching against the bus station wall, drinking energy drinks and checking Google Maps. A few metres further on, others were crowded around an extension cord, where they charged their phones. Clearly for them, the day was not yet over as they seemed to be waiting for something. The rest of the young single males were preparing for sleep: They unfurled their sleeping bags and blankets by the main entrance. It was the very beginning of August 2016, which in northern Serbia is rather warm and moderately humid, so there was no fear of the cold. Alongside the bus station several taxis were lined up and the drivers were chatting, facing the awaiting migrants. I approached a kiosk by the main entrance and asked a man sitting on a white plastic garden chair by an ice cream freezer for a recommendation for accommodation. After he had given me the directions to a cheap hotel, I asked about the unusual agitation combined with the boredom of waiting at these late hours. He explained to me that he and other taxi drivers were waiting until late at night to take migrants to the border area. Since migrants rarely managed to cross the border the first time, they circulated between the northern and southern parts of the country.1 This short vignette from Subotica, a departure point for migrants to the EU, contradicts the media reports and maps that depicted migrants’ movement through the Balkan Peninsula as linear and unidirectional – from south to north – in 2015 and 2016 (see Newhouse 2018). Before long, the media depictions of the one-way movement were replaced by stranded, passive migrants in unofficial settlements in Idomeni, on the Greek–RN Macedonian border, and in Horgoš, on the Serbian– Hungarian border. Instead of clarifying migrant mobility the pictures, graphs, maps and other visualisations of either unidirectional migrant movement or stranded migrants, obscure it. This is of importance because visual representations of the migrant movement have a particular authority and persuasive effect in political and social debates (Newhouse 2018: 90). The bilateral agreements and physical walls, combined with the tightening of controls to prevent irregular border crossings, DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262-6

116  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness aimed to make mobility more difficult and more punishable (Üstübici and İçduygu 2019: 180–181). However, after the closure of the Balkan route, the movement of migrants within Serbia did not stop. Despite great efforts towards militarising the EU’s external borders, the push-back and violence of border guards, and the imposition of waiting by the Hungarian state, migrants persisted in trying to move. They rarely passively stayed in the government facilities, but instead travelled around Serbia: Not only from south to north but also from north to south and in other directions. What did this movement mean for them? This chapter starts with a reconstruction of the representations of migrants’ journey to the EU in the media. By focusing on the migrants’ geographical movement around Serbia in the first year(s) after the closure of the Balkan corridor (before the change of transit route to one through Bosnia and Herzegovina, starting in 2018), I explore the relationship between time, space and the meaning of movement on the fringes of the EU. I challenge the perception of the unidirectional movement of migrants and demonstrate that it is constantly interrupted and that migrants can move in the reverse direction or even circularly. Although I focus here on migrants’ trajectories within Serbian territory, I do not undervalue the role of international migration and the role of states in shaping it, but rather analyse movement in a liminal space as part and parcel of international migration. I examine the movement of people within the Serbian territory who neither want to stay there nor are able to cross the border with the EU. By doing so, I want to highlight migrants’ experiences and understand human reactions to geographical entrapment by linking the concepts of hope, waiting and mobility. I argue that the hyper mobility (Fontanari 2019) of migrants on the doorstep of the EU is an expression of hope in times of stuckedness (Hage 2009b). Defining Migrant Movements Fragmented and multidirectional migrant routes have previously been explored by other researchers (Collyer 2007, 2010; Hess 2012; Picozza 2017; Newhouse 2018; Fontanari 2019). Collyer, who looks at migration through Maghreb countries, claims that stranded migrants and fragmented journeys “are both key elements of mixed migration which capture the essential character of the protection requirements of migrants in this situation” (Collyer 2010: 279). Journeys, on the one hand, are interrupted by natural barriers, increasingly effective, violent immigration control, and/or denial of access to the European asylum regime. In fragmented migration, failures play a key role: Deportations, robberies and detentions all have a decisive impact on the depletion of financial resources, scope of possibilities, and, finally, the changing shapes of migration routes (Collyer 2007, 2010). On the other hand, these journeys are sustained by technological developments such as instant money transfer and new ways of communication (Collyer 2010: 276). Thus, fragmented journeys imply the multiplicity and complexity of migration motivations, living and working conditions, forms of survival and changing legal statuses of migrants. The fragmented character of the movement contributes to the vulnerability

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 117 of migrants, and protection needed when trapped in liminal space, unable to continue but refusing to go back (Collyer 2010: 288). Another important piece of research analysing migrant movement to Europe is already mention Fontanari’s Lives in Transit (2019), for which the author conducted anthropological, multi-sited research among migrants travelling to the EU via the Mediterranean Sea. Fontanari shows that even after reaching their destination country, migrants continue to move around, in search of work and better living conditions. She explains that the hyper mobility of migrants within EU borders is a “product of protracted transit having being forced by bureaucratic procedure due to the short-term nature of document validity” (2019: 172). Hyper mobility is interlaced with fragmented circuits caused by endless waiting for resident permits, queuing for food, accommodation and repeatedly applying for subsidiary protection, all of which, in the end, leads to a prolonged, precarious and unsettled life (2019: 94). The findings of both Collyer and Fontanari correspond with my own research. However, I would additionally suggest that migrants also maintain their geographical mobility at the margins of the EU. The movement on the doorstep of the EU helps migrants to wait out the period of liminality between the country of departure and the country of destination. Even if it appears senseless or circular, the movement gives hope and reduces the feeling of stuckedness (Hage 2009b), which prevails during prolonged stays in temporary reception centres or asylum centres. Thus, the ability to move during periods of imposition of waiting is essential in order to endure it. The movement is also an expression of the agency of individuals who are stuck in spaces of liminality. All this allows me to expand Fontanari’s argument that hyper mobility is an effect of the anti-migration sentiments of the European bureaucrats limited not only to the EU countries. There is a difference between the imposed hyper mobility, which I could observe on the margins of the EU, and the forced mobility within the EU observed by Fontanari (2019). She argues that hyper mobility, alongside the fragmented circuits of migrants after reaching the EU, has negative effects. Her research partners were forced into hyper mobility, which, in turn, brought uncertainty, distrust towards state institutions and, in the long run, hopelessness (Fontanari 2019: 49, 154–159, 196). The case of Serbia is somewhat different. Through analysing migrants’ movements, as well as informal conversations and interviews, I claim that the migrants’ movements on the doorstep of the EU brought them hope of crossing the border and eventually reaching a safe country with the possibility to develop a sustainable existence. In this chapter, I would like to contribute to the discussion on migrant movement by analysing the role of desires and aspirations in shaping migrants’ trajectories. I will show that the expectation of a better future was the main catalyst of the movement of migrants. In other words, in order to be able to maintain hope, migrants moved (Map 5.1). This meant that they sometimes avoided the government facilities which provided accommodation and food, but which also restricted their movements, especially during the time of closure of the Balkan corridor, when the Serbian state tried to re-establish control over migration and turned towards securitisation and prevention of unwanted migration (Stojić Mitrović 2019).

118  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness

Map 5.1  Migrant movement within Serbia as of June 2016 Source: Map created by Dawid Lesiak

In that period, many NGO-run centres supporting migrants were shut down and migrants were removed from public spaces such as parks and train stations (Beznec et al. 2016: 58). As a result, migrant movement – and thus agency – was restricted to the point that they could not go shopping alone and had to be accompanied by

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 119 camp workers or volunteers.2 In March 2016, a 58-year-old male from Iraq, whom I escorted to a shop, told me: We don’t need money, we don’t need this [pointing at a bag with groceries like Coca Cola, Milka chocolate and other goodies, bought thanks to some pocket money provided by an NGO]. We need to go, start to work, live. I reconstruct the trajectories of migrant movement after the closure of the EU border to migrants in March 2016. The journeys during the so-called “long summer of migration” of 2015 differed greatly from those that had taken place before and after the EU–Turkey agreement was introduced. The Reaction to Uncertainty The first weeks of August were sunny and hot. We ran food distributions at the bus station in Subotica every day. There, I met a 16-year-old Afghani. Sayad spoke fast and spontaneously. His sentences were chaotic but very expressive. He said that the threat to his life was the reason for emigrating from Afghanistan. The Taliban had killed his father because he was a teacher accused of spreading heretical Western knowledge and culture. They had also threatened to kill Sayad. His mother, fearing for her child’s life, sold the house and sent him to Europe. Sayad crossed the Bulgarian–Serbian border in Dimitrovgrad in June 2016, the fifth month of his journey. On his way to Belgrade he did not stop at any temporary reception centres and arrived in the capital city around 11 pm. There was a place called the “Afghan Park”, but he did not know where it was. A Serbian passer-by showed him the way. In the park an NGO employee explained to him where the asylum centres in Serbia were and how to get there. In spite of the suggestions of NGO workers, Sayad camped for a few days with his Afghan friends in the “Afghan Park” by the train station. However, the dreadful conditions in this unofficial settlement made it impossible for him to properly rest after the exhausting and dangerous journey through Bulgaria. Therefore, he decided to go to the Krnjača asylum centre, as previously advised. In those days, he did not need any documents to access the temporary reception centres and asylum centres. Staying there for a couple of days he enjoyed the relatively good quality of the food and NFIs migrants received there. He then tried to reach Hungary in the company of a few acquaintances but without the help of a smuggler. They were apprehended by Hungarian border guards within a short distance from the border and sent back. Although Sayad would have had a chance to be accepted as an underage asylum seeker in the zone, he refused to wait. He did not want to sign on to the waiting list, because, as he said, “You never know what Europeans can come up with”. He feared that once he tried the official way, border guards would take his fingerprints and this could hinder his asylum requests in EU countries other than Hungary. Sayad wanted to neither seek asylum in Serbia, nor register on the list that already had over 3,300 migrant names. This would have meant waiting for his turn for months – assuming that he would manage to keep his place on the list. Sayad’s

120  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness refusal to accept the official method of crossing the border was not an expression of impatience, but rather lack of trust in the rules imposed by the border regime. Waiting, as explained by Gabriel Marcel, “implies a confidence in the fact that certain event will occur” (1967: 280), but in whatever manner, waiting in reception centre in Serbia did not assure a continuation of the journey. Sayad’s case depicts the reaction of migrants to uncertainty and the changing rules of admission and the conditions in the government facilities. A day after the Krnjača asylum centre’s authorities asked migrants to seek asylum, Sayad escaped the centre and travelled to Šid where one of his friends had recently managed to cross the border in an irregular way. He wanted to give it a try too. He failed again but the push-back here was not like in the north. As yet, Croatian border guards simply drove migrants back to the Serbian border but did not use violence. They did not club them nor set their dogs on them. After the failed attempt, Sayad went to the temporary reception centre in Šid, as he had done the previous time, but the guards refused to let him in. According to the new regulations introduced in the second week of September 2016, migrants were not allowed to leave the temporary reception centres for longer than three days – Sayad had been absent for nine days. As a result, he and several other people camped in the park in the vicinity of the reception centre. When we met in Paris in May 2018, he told me, “there we had no house to hide in, no bathrooms to wash, no family to share worries – these essential things which one needs to survive”. The reception centre guards did not allow migrants from the outside to use the toilet. Desperate, Sayad surreptitiously jumped over the wall in the backyard of the centre. When a guard saw him, Sayad was thrown out. This situation was repeated a few times, it was almost as if they were playing a game of cat and mouse. Eventually, he and other migrants were permitted to use sanitary facilities in the reception centre. Nevertheless, Sayad did not stay there for long. He moved and constantly searched for a new place to rest. When he travelled within Serbia, if he was not allowed to the government facilities, he slept in the parks, behind fridges in train or bus stations. In this uncertain environment, migrants were constantly evaluating their safety and the best strategies to protect themselves. Although the uncertainty of staying is often similar to the uncertainty of movement (Horst and Grabska 2015: 4), the latter gives hope of bringing the unpredictable predicament to an end, thus migrants tried to leave southern Serbia by any available means and as soon as possible. Occasionally, Sayad travelled to Belgrade where he sold canned food and NFIs received from the Red Cross and other organisations, which he could not stand any more. He said, “it is too hard now because I get spaghetti every day, I can’t eat spaghetti every day, spaghetti, spaghetti. I have been in Serbia already for months and I eat only spaghetti”. In order to make his trip more profitable, he collected cans from other migrants. For each can he got 30–40 RDS3 from the retailers – small shops like the kiosk at the Subotica bus station. He spent the money earned on food, drink, clothes or transport. Others used it on cigarettes, alcohol or smugglers. Sayad’s trips around Serbia were endless. Between September and October, he spent two weeks in the Luka Ćelović Park also known as “Afghan Park” at the central park of Belgrade. In that period in this park and its surroundings camped

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 121 about 500 or 600 migrants. He liked the place; it allowed him to meet his friends, talk with them in his mother tongue, share stories and worries about the family left behind and fears of the uncertain future. The “Afghan Park” let him forget about his loneliness. Although migrants slept in the open air, they could use computers located near by Refugee in the Asylum Info Centre to communicate with their beloved ones, and find clothes and food in the grassroots Refugee Aid Centre Miksalište. The conditions significantly deteriorated when temperatures decreased, and it started to rain. In the “Afghan Park”, when the rain and blasts of cold came, Sayad and his friend had no other place to hide. By the end of summer 2016, when the securitising turn was being implemented in full, the Serbian government had not only toughened the rules of admission to government facilities, but also tried to remove migrants from public spaces. Migrants with no asylum application or proof of registering on the waiting list – those who slept in public spaces, such as parks, train stations or abandoned buildings – effectively renounced state protection and could be arrested. Sayad was among those who intentionally left a government facility. He said that, in spite of the danger of being detained, he preferred to move between cities than stay in temporary reception centre and risk being locked up in a government facility, “This is why I change, sometimes to Subotica and sometimes Šid. I want to go outside of Serbia. I want to move forward”. He wanted to move freely and try to get to the EU. Migrants engaged in “secondary movement”, the movement from a country of first arrival where, at least in theory, they can seek asylum, to another country, often one county that provides better living standards, have higher asylum seeker acceptance rates or where ethnic group members or family are.4 Although the secondary movement might bring exploitation, homelessness and a precarious legal position, it gives a hope that towers above the dangers it might bring. As put by Picozza, “although it comes with a price, there is a certain freedom or autonomy to be found in ‘illegality’, quite differently from the subjection to state” (Picozza 2017: 74–75). Similarly to Sayad, Gebre preferred to stay outside the government facilities. When Gebre arrived in the temporary reception centre in Preševo, he was forced to register with the police, after which he was able to use the support of translators, psychologists and medics. The reception centre workers directed him to either the recently renewed dormitories in the old tobacco factory or the UNHCR shelters designed by IKEA. He was happy to be far away from the smugglers and worries of traversing RN Macedonia. Gebre was given food, sport clothes and shoes. He slept for nearly three days, waking only for food. Meanwhile, his brother sent him 200 Euros to cover his further expenses. When rested, Gebre asked for the 72-hour permit to transit Serbia. Although he had heard about difficulties in crossing the border with Hungary, he believed that he would be able to reach Germany within a few days, at most weeks. Thus, he departed by a local taxi to Belgrade and then by public bus to Subotica. In November 2016, he slept under grey UNHCR blankets in the park by the temporary reception centre in Šid. The damp blankets were rotted, dirty and smelly, and there was no place to store them during the day. Migrants were sometimes robbed by locals or stole blankets and other valuable things from each other. Occasionally,

122  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness Gebre and other migrants without a permit could access the government facilities during the day and get some food but were not allowed to sleep there. One of the reasons why Gebre avoided official government facilities was the level of insecurity and frustration inside them. As he relayed to me, migrants were becoming desperate and aggressive and they were ready to sacrifice everything to cross the border. He added: “The situation is killing people. Last night there were fights in the camp in Šid, one man stabbed another. Those who were friends yesterday, today are enemies”. After the implementation of the new rules, the government facilities were not only overcrowded and difficult to access for those who wanted to stay mobile, but also not prepared to accommodate migrants for a longer period. Consequently, migrants were often left in temporary infrastructure for an indefinite period. Sayad said: The Subotica camp is not good. It is not for living. I don’t have a tent there, I don’t have a room to sleep. I just have a single cloth to lay over me and sleep on the floor. At night it is very cold. I don’t think we can even call it a camp. The conditions were not that different in the temporary reception centre in Šid, which accommodated around 750 people (UNHCR 2016). With the increase in the number of migrants the situation there became untenable: The temporary centre, although partly renovated, was full to the brim and dirty, and the lines for food extended endlessly. Demand was high but the supplies were insufficient; sometimes the last in the line for food left empty-handed. NFIs were distributed only rarely and selectively. Moreover, insecurity grew because of robberies and fights between migrants, migrants and smugglers, and migrants and the local community. Violence as Border Deterrence Migrants’ movement, on the one hand, was hindered by the border guards that stopped them on their journey northwards, but on the other hand, it was heightened by push-backs. The victims of these brutal practices were migrants who tried to cross the external EU border or those who sought temporary shelter in Serbia without asking for asylum. Since June 2016, when Hungarian authorities introduced the “eight-kilometre rule”5 allowing the deportation of irregular migrants within 8 kilometres from the border, the push-backs became notorious at the Serbian– Hungarian border. According to Hungarian Helsinki Committee in the whole of 2016, 19,057 people were denied access to the asylum system, that is prevented from entering or escorted back to the border at the Hungarian–Serbian border (Hungarian Helsinki Committee 2017). Push-backs evolved into a tool of unofficial removal of migrants from the county and thus can be defined as a practice of authorities preventing people from seeking protection on their territory by forcibly returning them to another country outside of legally established procedures. Since the vast majority of these practices have a collective character, it is without consideration of the individual circumstances of each person, without legal assistance

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 123 and an interpreter for the language that they understand, and without the possibility of appeal, which would suspend any expulsion pending the outcome of the appeal. As such, they violate Article 4 of Protocol No 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights and Geneva Convention (Joint Agency Briefing Paper 2017). The violent chain of refoulements were a common experience among my research partners. Sayad was among them. During one of the food distributions at the bus station of Subotica, I was happy to see him again. It had been a couple of weeks since I had heard from him. We greeted each other. I asked how he was doing. However, very quickly I regretted it. How could I ask this polite and rhetorical question without noticing his eyes irritated by the pepper-spray, the wounds and infections covering his body? I could see that he had not managed to cross the border and he was beginning to despair. He told me: When they [the border guards] caught us, they checked our bags and searched us. They asked if we have guns or anything else. We said that we are migrants, not terrorists. The border guards got angry. We said why are you checking our bags? What does it mean? Then they took us to the border and started to record. We were seven in the line and behind us was the gate in the fence to Serbian side. I was the last one, the seventh. They asked one of us to read the paper where it was written that they hadn’t offended you, they hadn’t hurt you by beating or something. That they are sending us to the Serbian side safely. One of them wanted to spray us but the chief border guards said in a whisper to stop and not do it because they are recording. When they stopped recording and had a proof that they didn’t harm us one of them sprayed us directly in our faces. Some of us run to the gate but they (border guards) stand on our way. They had German shepherd dog, and another one which was crazy, aggressive. I and my friends run through the border guards (trying to get to Serbia), but they left the dog on my friend. The dog directly caught me, but I managed to escape somehow. Eventually, we run away but when I watched my friend, he was walking slowly, I asked him what it’s going on? He asked me to check out his hand. When I checked it, I saw that he was bitten by the dog. Then one by one they were coming from the border. All of us were bitten by the dog. Sayad’s travel companions were bleeding. They were left alone on the Serbian side of the border, in the middle of nowhere. They walked but some of them collapsed and lost consciousness after a few metres. Distraught, Sayad called his friend for help– an independent volunteer. She contacted the (I)NGOs operating at the time in the area. They rescued Sayad and his friends and transported them to a hospital in Sombor for skin grafting. The border violence on the Hungarian and Serbian border was omnipresent and constantly on the rise. MSF stated in its 2016 annual activity report for Serbia that they had assisted thousands of people stranded in the appalling conditions around the Subotica between April and November 2016. They carried out 7,407 medical consultations and registered a steady and significant increase in various

124  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness violence-related traumas (MSF 2017: 83). In the given period, MSF treated 82 people for dog bites, irritations from tear gas and pepper spray, and injuries from beatings inflicted on them while attempting to cross the Serbian–Hungarian border (MSF 2017: 83). The violence of the Hungarian border guards, supported by Frontex who protect the EU’s external borders, was directed equally to all irregular migrants regardless of gender, age or nationality. The Fresh Response team, which apart from distributing food also collected testimonials of migrants mistreated by the Hungarian officials wrote (Fresh Response, n.d.): This past winter, as temperatures dropped to 20 below zero, the level of violence at Hungary’s border with Serbia increased sharply, with many describing acts that can only be seen as torture. People of all ages, some as young as 13, were beaten, stripped naked and ordered to lie face-down in the mud, snow or water for as long as an hour. Their clothing was taken or destroyed. Water poured down their necks. Eyes pepper-sprayed. Batons struck against genitals. Forced selfies with laughing officers. All this performed by people in ‘dark blue uniforms’ – official Hungarian border police. The reports, based on the interviews with migrants and their testimonies, show that law enforcement officers not only beat with sticks, kicked and punched, but also robbed and destroyed personal items, among them phones. The aforementioned documents suggest that border guards’ activities go beyond border deterrence and are reminiscent of torture practices. The authors of the MSF report from 2017 recall a case of 30-year-old man from Afghanistan, who said that: They [border guards] ordered us to take off our clothes and leave our blankets, it was very cold, it was snowing, and we were shivering. They ordered us to be in a line, keeping our arms up in the air, for those who could not keep them in the air, a policeman was beating us on our ribs with a baton. While we were in the line, they forced us to keep our eyes open, spraying them with a painful spray, dogs were all around us. (MSF 2017) It is alarming that even with evidence provided by Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and acknowledgement of border violence by Frontex (Voynov et al. 2017), out of 44 investigations into brutality by Hungarian border police only two policemen have been sentenced for abuse of force (Joint Agency Briefing Paper 2017). Another perturbing fact is that this kind of deterrent practices to discourage migrants to cross the border continues and has been employed by Croatian officials (Are you Syrious 2019), although the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg condemned this practice back in March 2017 and called it illegal (Riegert 2018). Finally, the aforementioned reports suggest that violence as a border deterrence is a new practice that emerged in Southeast Europe during the course of the long summer of migration.

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 125 Migrants were repeatedly pushed back, not only from Hungary or Croatia to Serbia, but also from Serbia to RN Macedonia and Bulgaria. For example, such practices took place in the Preševo centre, which during my field research was considered the migrants’ favourite camp in Serbia. However, in summer 2016 it became a place filled with fear. One of the rank-and-file (I)NGO workers from this centre told me that after UNHCR left the camp, the Commissariat woke single males up in the middle of the night and informed them that they would be transferred to another centre, but instead they were taken to the RN Macedonian border. As the interagency report on push-backs explains, the authorities ignored migrants’ intention to apply for protection, even when they were granted permission by a court to remain in the country (Joint Agency Briefing Paper 2017: 9). Push-backs are a way to delay people. Over and over, individuals find themselves shuttled back and forth incessantly (Khosravi 2021: 67). These illegal removals are part of bordering practices which consist of waiting, delaying and circulating. Migrants were forcibly moved from the government facilities in the northern part of the country to the south, or further past the border, and consequently their journey to Western European countries was hindered. Thus, push-backs, although aimed at removing migrants from Serbian territory, paradoxically heightened migrants’ mobility within the country. The expelled migrants crossed the border again and repeatedly travelled through the country. However, the aforementioned violence is not exceptional or limited to the EU’s external Southeastern border. Various reports prepared by the UN Refugee Agency and international organisations like the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (n.d.), the Joint Agency Briefing Paper (2017), and Human Rights Watch (2017), as well as civil society movements, confirm that large scale and systematic deterrence strategies based on violence were implemented by the EU and non-EU member states to hinder asylum seeking. As cases of push-back from Serbia show, neither Serbian, Croatian nor Hungarian authorities were interested in the individual claims of a potential asylum seeker. Similar practices of expulsion, violence, prolonged arbitrary detention, and poor and degrading conditions, instead of protection were observed in Greece (Human Rights Watch 2016), France (Human Rights Watch 2014) and Spain. But only the Spanish government was brought to court. The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights described and took legal measures against the Spanish authorities (European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights 2017). Their case report states that in Ceuta and Melilla (the Spanish enclaves in North Africa) migrants who managed to cross the three-layered fence on the Spanish–Moroccan border were immediately apprehended by the Spanish Guardia Civil, handcuffed and returned to Moroccan lawenforcers. The Moroccan security forces are known for their systematic mistreatment and abuse of migrants, particularly of those who try to cross the border with Spain or camp on Mount Gurugu, known also as “Bambino”, near to the border area. The violence includes stone-throwing, the use of metal and wooden tools, collective beating, direct blows to the head and breaking of limbs. Most recently as a result of such practise at least 23 migrants died in June 2022 (Human Right Watch 2022). In spite of fact that the European Committee

126  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment condemned and recommended that Spanish authorities ensure that no person is handed over to Moroccan security forces, the automatic expulsions from Spain to Morocco continue to this day. In February 2019, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child obliged Spain to amend the special legal regime authorising automatic expulsions from Ceuta and Melilla. The case of Hungarian and Spanish collective expulsion regardless of age and gender indicate that violence – which in itself obviously does not comply with national and international laws – became a strategy of the EU states to intimidate or stop irregular migrants. New Constraints and Opportunities Although the EU-ropean border regime strips migrants of the possibility of controlling the speed of movement, imposes waiting and exposes them to long periods of suspension and enormous violence at Europe’s external borders, migrants should not be perceived only as victims of the border regime, but also as its active actors. Bandak and Janeja, inspired by Marcel (1967), distinguished different forms of waiting. They suggest that predictability of events and general confidence allows for somewhat patience for anticipated outcome, a passive waiting (2018: 3). However, during times of uncertainty, chaos, anxiety and despair surge creating generative force that “keeps open what is anticipated, and therefore entails hope” (Ibid.). Common despair among migrants, shrinking possibilities for asylum application or running out of money does not discourage people on the move to further migration or make them accept to wait passively and patiently for their turn on the list. For many, this possibility, although deferred, was just one of the ways of reaching the EU. Migrants, while waiting, actively look for new routes, contacts and methods to cross the border. Self-determination, an unwillingness to follow the rules imposed by the states and the continuous negotiation of their position should be seen as a political stance and an expression of migrants’ agency. They often dropped previously held plans for new ones which were just a glimmer on the horizon. Migrants, weaving through constraints, embracing emerging opportunities. The case of Reza illustrates this balancing between the official ways of crossing borders and irregular ones with the support of smugglers. His and his brothers’ entire journey was financed by his father and oldest brother, who lived in the United Kingdom, as well as Reza’s own savings. But instead of paying 8,000 Euros to the smuggler in advance for the whole journey, they sent smaller instalments of money via Western Union to cover each stage. All the travelling conditions were agreed when “the borders were open” and the next payment should be made upon reaching the Austrian border. Reza and his brothers were supposed to cross the border in a place indicated by the smuggler. In the event of being caught by border guards and transferred to the camp in Hungary – as frequently happened before March 2016 – they were told leave it as soon as possible and the smuggler would then provide transport for the onward journey. However, the

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 127 rules had changed. Reza and his brothers tried to cross the Serbian–Hungarian border seven times but each time they were caught and returned to Serbia. Irritated by the impotence of the smuggler, they decided to sign on to the list to cross the border in an official manner, and informed the smuggler that they would no longer use his services. But he did not agree and threatened the brothers. Reza self-confidently told me, “It is not Afghanistan; they can’t do whatever they want with people. We are in Europe. I am not afraid”. At that moment, Reza tried to find out how much it cost to travel from Hungary to Austria with a smuggler’s help, in order to deduct this amount from the sum they agreed on for taking them to EU (8,000 Euros) and pay the smuggler only for the journey to Serbia, so they would be even. It struck me that he spoke of the smuggling business in the same tone of voice as if we might be discussing issues with a logistics company. Elsewhere, Susan Bibler Coutin realised that adopting terms from service business draws attention to the seeming normalcy of the illicit practice of human smuggling (2005: 297). I believe, however, that migrants normalise the discourse of human smuggling because for them those who facilitate border crossing often appear to be more trustful, reliable and less violent than state authorities, and thus are more natural and relatable to. During one of our encounters, Gerbe wondered aloud why smugglers help migrants. As the stories of my research partners show, smugglers can intimidate, rob, beat and/or kidnap migrants, but they might also be their last resort when borders are closed. One Thursday evening, I met with Reza in Subotica and we went to play pool. The bar was empty and no one bothered us. While playing, we talked about the possibilities of crossing the border. I was surprised when Reza said that his little brother “is his passport to Germany”, because I understood that it was his father and oldest brother who helped them to finance their journey. However, I did not pressure him to clarify this. Two years later, in town near Vienna, where Reza settled down, I asked him what he had meant by saying that the little brother “was his passport to Germany”. He explained that families on the list at the Serbian–Hungarian border took priority over single males and were not forced to wait nearly a month in the blue containers at the border. Therefore, he and his two brothers registered as a family: The little brother as a 11-year-old, he as a 16-year-old and the oldest brother figured as their 21-year-old guardian. Thanks to the youngest one and concealing his real age they could cross the EU’s external border faster and did not have to wait as single male migrants. As a matter of fact, latching on to a family or composing a family by single migrants was a common strategy at the Hungarian border. Since everyone told him that he looked younger than he really was, Reza used the advantage of his underage appearance. He said, “I will be shaved and play stupid”. His nonchalant tone failed to disguise his underlying anxiety. At stake was separation from his brothers and a long wait for his turn, on the single male list. He was afraid because there were rumours that during the interview in the Hungarian transit zone a medic was present to check migrants’ age in case of doubts. Migrants were ready to negotiate their position within the EU-ropean border regime. They adjusted their age and migration stories to the requirements of the

128  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness border regime. They used smugglers as long as they were needed. Furthermore, migrants switched from being smugglers’ followers to those who took advantage of them, or even turned into smugglers themselves. This was the case of Na’il, a 23-year-old from Syria who juxtaposed to the image of passive migrants, displayed an agency. He arrived to the camp in Preševo in February 2016 thanks to the money which he had earned as a smuggler of goods across the Syrian and Turkish border. Four months later, when he had collected enough resources, he tried to cross the border with Hungary together with a few other people. The border crossers did not cut the fence, but simply crawled under it. Even though they managed to cross the border, they were not well enough prepared to hide in the forest for a few days. When he and his friend emerged from hiding to look for food in the local village, they were immediately apprehended by border guards. Someone had told him not to run away once spotted by border guards, because if they had to run after you, they would become angry and torture you more. Therefore, he did not run, but the border police beat him, anyway. They took him back to the border, was peppersprayed, beaten, and eventually pushed back to Serbia. Next time, they tried to cross with a smuggler. They were successful, but Na’il came back to Serbia to follow through on his earlier plans. He decided to smuggle people through the Serbian–Hungarian border for money. He planned to cross the border 10 times with groups of up to 15 people. For each person he wanted 200 Euros. He intended to use the money earned for his own onward journey. Na’il feared getting caught by the police and being accused of smuggling people. Law enforcement agents hated smugglers. Not precisely because smugglers could harm people, but rather because they undermine border guards’ work and the millions of Euros spent on border infrastructure. However, the most difficult part was not entering Hungary but returning unnoticed to Serbia (see Figure 5.1). A person caught trying to irregularly cross the border in the opposite direction was instantly accused of smuggling and jailed for years. Na’il knew about all the border crossing rituals. He tried to be cautious, but the plan backfired. After two successful transfers, the Hungarian border guards caught him. They gave him a hard time, although he claimed that the money he had on him came from selling a house in Syria. The border guards did not listen to him, but the cash which he had managed to save was enough to bribe the officers to let him go. The migrants’ endeavors to traverse the border encompassed a spectrum, spanning from strategies for mere survival to actions that might don the cloak of criminality. Their journey unfolded in myriad forms: an unconventional embrace of assistance, renegotiation of passage terms with smugglers, and simultaneous border-crossing attempts via both official and clandestine routes. Yet, within the realm of migrants’ agency lies a facet often overlooked by scholars – one tinged with negativity, capable of causing harm to others. This duality manifested in instances where migrants turned to theft, engaged in smuggling, or capitalised on their position by peddling spots in the waiting line as ersatz “community leaders”. Still, these human pursuits must not be disentangled from the backdrop of the imposed tapestry of prolonged waiting and the forceful hand of violence (Figure 5.1).

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 129

Figure 5.1 A man jumping over the gate of the closed border crossing with Hungary, Serbia, Horgoš, 2015 Source: Photograph by Maciej Moskwa

In Search of Hope in Liminality After a four-day rest in the temporary reception centre in Subotica, Sayad again tried to cross the border. He walked with a group of friends, following the path indicated by their phones’ GPS. They kept only one phone on at a time, to limit signals, which, as they learned from the smugglers, could reveal their position to border guards. They trudged eastwards for 20 hours along the northern Serbian border trying not to be detected by drones and helicopters patrolling the border. They wrongly assumed that the further they were from bigger settlements, the easier it would be to enter the EU. In his eye-catching blue UNHCR backpack Sayad kept two energy drinks, water, crackers, chocolate and clean clothes: sport shoes with white soles, black slim jeans and a shirt – all in the “European style” so as not to stand out from the rest of the local population after eventually arriving in Hungary. The idea was to have a backpack light enough not to hinder running, but at the same time able to hold enough food to last for at least a few days of walking and hiding in the woods. Since Hungary had introduced the “eight-kilometre rule”, crossing it did not guarantee success. The plan was to cross the border and get deep into the Hungarian interior unnoticed, ideally all the way to Austria. Sayad told me: We entered the Hungarian side and walked one day and one night. In the night, at two or three o’clock they surrounded us. They had cars like an ambulance, and took us to the camp and I think that the camp authorities refused

130  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness to accept us and said to deport us to Serbia. They took us back to the fence. We didn’t know exactly about the directions to go. It was a jungle. When they opened the door for us to go back to Serbia, we said to them: you don’t have another choice, you should take us to the camp, but they got angry, let dogs on us and pepper-sprayed us. We quickly entered the Serbian side, like 500 m. The migrants’ attempt to cross the external EU-ropean border resemble a rite of passage. The border crossing ritual, or “game” as it was named by NGOs and media (Joint Agency Briefing Paper 2017), has a repetitive scheme, role of migrants, smugglers and law enforcers: Crossing the border, apprehension, pepper spraying, beating and harassment and finally push-back. Arpad Szakolczai, who draws on Turners work (1967: 99–100) explains that: any rite follows a strictly prescribed sequence, where everybody knows what to do and how. Second, everything is done under the authority of a master of ceremonies, the practical equivalent of an absolute ruler whose word is Law—though only during a rite, when there is no law. (Szakolczai 2018: 18) Border guards pushed back Sayad and his travel companion through randomly selected gateways, which made it difficult and longer to find their way back to a town or a transit centre, and in turn increased their visibility and geographical mobility. In spite of the failures they did not give up. A few days later, Sayad told me “Tonight, I will try, inshallah, to cross but I don’t know if I will succeed or not. We try every three or four days. We do not have another choice”. Before long, along with a group of 10 friends Sayad tried again. It was a Saturday night. They drew close to the border near the Kelebija crossing, fueled by the hope that the rainy weather would lessen the alertness of the border guards and hinder the dogs’ effectiveness. Then, they proceeded to breach the fence. Five of them managed to cross it and run into the woods, but when the sixth was almost on Hungarian soil, the border guards appeared. These who did not cross the Serbian border hid in woods hoping to try one more time that night. In the thick, humid bushes the insects bit them mercilessly while the wounds from the fence and barb wire festered. Soon the helicopters soared into the sky in search of migrants. Those who managed to cross the border soon would reach Austria, but Sayad and his company failed again. They returned to the Subotica bus station where MSF dressed their wounds. Sayad realised that getting to Hungary was impossible, so he instead travelled to Šid, on the border with Croatia. Alongside his companion, he sliced through the trailer tarpaulin of a truck, stealthily entered, and concealed themselves amidst the cargo. But the heat detectors at the border had no difficulties in finding them. The border guards sent them back to the border again. In the middle of September, Sayad travelled to Subotica and later back to Šid and Belgrade in search of better living conditions and food. Exhausted from their constant failures, they looked for a place to rest. They even travelled 700 kilometres south to the camp in Preševo to make sure that they had a place to sleep in decent conditions. For migrants within Serbia, travelling was

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 131 unconstrained in summer 2016. Their documents were not checked upon purchasing a ticket. If they did not have one, migrants were asked to leave the train, but in a matter of minutes they were back on their way. Once they were thrown out of the train through a door in the front carriage, they would enter through the back door or would simply catch the next train. However, there were a few incidents where migrants using public transport were apprehended. In September, when Sayad and other acquaintances were travelling by train from Belgrade to Šid, they were stopped and separated into two groups based on visual appearance: Underage and adults. Sayad was assigned to the underage and eventually released, but the adults were detained. After a week and having to pay a fine,6 they were also out. Like Sayad, Gebre’s story also illustrates the determination to move and attempt to cross the border and bring the liminal period to an end, a process which was interspersed with stays in both government facilities and unofficial settlements. Along with a few other acquaintances, Gebre paid for a smuggler to cross the Serbian– Hungarian border. The successful passage often depended on a smuggler who, in a period of the lawlessness exercises power. Their extensive connections, and access to law enforcement officers, blazed the trail so that others could follow through imitation. In the eyes of the migrants, the smuggler was often perceived as the master of ceremonies in this cruel rite. During this attempt to cross the border, the smuggler cut some wires from the fence’s netting and the barbed wire which secured its lower part. One by one they wriggled through a relatively small hole. When someone got stuck in the fence, the smuggler pushed him or her through. But the noise by the fence alarmed the border guards, positioned every 200 metres, who screamed and ran towards the migrants. A few of Gebre’s travel companions managed to disperse into the woods, but Gebre and three other migrants were apprehended and taken to an interrogation office. There, the detainees were harassed and beaten by the border guards, who threatened to rape them if they did not disclose the size of their group, the identity of the smuggler and their plan for crossing the border. Then they pepper-sprayed them, beat them again and pushed them out through a gate in the fence back to Serbia. In such liminality, even the master of ceremonies – the smuggler – happens to fail sometimes. Gebre and 15 other migrants boarded a taxi at the Subotica bus station, which took them to the vicinity of the Serbian–Hungarian border, but they were defeated in their attempt to cross. Discouraged from trying to enter Hungary by the aggression of the border guards and the state-of-the-art surveillance system embedded in the demarcation line between Serbia and Hungary, he signed on to the waiting list to cross the border through official channels. But Gebre did not want to passively wait in a temporary centre for months for his turn, and so travelled to the Serbian–Croatian border to check the possibilities of entering the EU from there. In spite of the absence of a fence, crossing that border was no easier than the one in the north of the country. Croatian border guards effectively intercepted migrants inside country’s territory and pushed them back over the border, to Serbia. To begin with, Croatian border guards simply drove migrants back to the Serbian border and did not use violence. However, was only a matter of time before the brutality of Croatian border guards became a method of border deterrence.

132  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness It was early November when Gebre decided to return from Šid to Subotica to check his position on the waiting list. When he realised that his place had been sold without his permission, his frustration rose. He asked me: “Why does Europe hate me? Why don’t they let people in?” Powerless, he rented a room from a local old lady in Belgrade, where he collapsed into helplessness and frustration. When he ran out of money he moved to abandoned buildings by the train station. In late November it was already cold in Belgrade, just a few degrees above zero. Gebre spent his days in McDonald’s checking the internet for changes in the migration law of the EU countries, collecting information from volunteers and NGO workers. He hoped that the border would be open again sometime soon. Meanwhile, he asked around about the possibility of buying a place on the waiting list. Examining the liminal position of migrants in Serbia, stuck between the country of departure and destination, help to better understand human reactions to liminal experiences (Thomassen 2009: 14). As a part of the Balkan route, Serbia could be understood as a threshold of the EU. The geographical proximity to the external EU border and the on-going alignment of Serbian migration law with the EU (Stojić Mitrović 2014), combined with the undefined legal situation of migrants stranded on Serbian soil, have shaped the ground for their betwixt and between position. Irregular journeys position migrants simultaneously outside and inside national space (Coutin 2005: 196). In such space, migrants’ rights were either suspended or occasionally applied with full strength. In the period of liminality, the motivation to emigrate and to a certain extent one’s origin, did not matter – being Eritrean or Moroccan did not significantly change migrants’ position in the eyes of law enforcers. Thus, in their liminal position at the doorstep of the EU, a migrant’s past does not come into play. In this sense, liminality led to a homogenisation of status (Turner 1967: 98). The single men travelling alone undertook efforts to continue their journey. The driving force behind this exertion was the hope to liberate themselves from stuckedness; from immobility and suspension between the borders. Stock (2019: 104) sees it slightly differently: She names movement of Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Morocco in and out of hopelessness and acceptance of the status quo “desperate hope”. My understanding of hope is analogous to the definition proposed by Valeria Procupez who understands it as waiting while working to make something happen (2015: 63). During casual conversations and interviews with my research participants, they tended to repeat such words as “I hope” or “inshallah”. Although inshallah in its Quranic meaning denotes the supersedence of human will by God, it should not be taken here in its religious sense but rather as a synonym of hope. Both expressions were followed by action: Untiring attempts to cross the border or collect new resources and information, intertwined with a short rest in the government centres. This kind of hope does not guarantee anything, but it does suggest that something can still be done (Zigon 2018: 65). Thus, hoping means to be oriented towards the future and involves waiting, which in its modality can be either passive or active/inert (see Marcel 1967: 280). When waiting leaves open

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 133 what can be anticipated and entails hope, it can be a generator of action (Bandak and Janeja 2018: 3). In other words, in order to be able to hope, migrants had to move. In this way their hope was expressed by their hyper mobility, which allowed them to endure the imposition of waiting, uncertainty, and hazardous living conditions – that were combined with the violence of border guards – and pushed them towards border crossings. Migrants hoped to reach their destination country and moved within Serbia from the south to the north, from the north to the south, and in any other direction they thought might be of use. Research on Afghan migrants stranded in Greece has shown that, at the moment of departure, a destination country is usually a pinned down place on their map, but the destination changes as the scope of opportunities shifts during a fragmented journey (Kuschminder 2018). Important factors in changing a decision regarding an intended destination include: The migrant’s changing legal status during a journey, the length of the journey and the perception of living conditions in the country of residence (Kuschminder 2018). For the protagonists of my research, the destination country was rather loosely specified. But this imagined destination was nevertheless filled with expectations of having the right to decide about oneself, to have a chance to rent a flat and not be placed in camps under state surveillance. Another common aspiration was work and/or study. For example, Sayad’s utmost desire was to finish his secondary education and then obtain a university degree. As scholars have shown, education is perceived as a means to economic development and to reducing poverty (Jeffrey 2010: 467; Mains 2011: 67). Education is therefore associated with economic success and experiencing progress at an individual level and is a key to entering the middle class (Mains 2011: 67–68). Likewise, for Gebre, the opportunity of studying was an important factor since he had abandoned his IT studies in Indonesia due to the death of his father. However, Gebre’s main priority was a functional and available health system due to an eye infection that was worsening as a consequence of his medical treatment being interrupted by migration. This reasoning was what led him to abandon his asylum application in Serbia and later in Croatia because the necessity for his surgery was rejected in both places. Urgent need for a medical treatment pushed him to take measures for a secondary movement to Sweden, where he hoped to receive eye treatment. Many of the research partners whom I met during the fieldwork had decided to migrate because they had experienced the situation of being stuck. Either in their home country or country they emigrated. They could not flourish; they could not study, work or get medical treatment. These places were marred by war, economic injustice, political terror or simply authorities denied them citizen rights. They felt that they were deprived of a stable life and/or stuck, unable to progress up the social ladder. Stock (2019: 41–51) has rightly shown that as well as financial reasons, there are also other motives which make people undertake a risky journey. She has explained that migrants’ desires to move and to look for another place to live, is grounded in a mixture of economic and political factors and a

134  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness desire for adventure. These are often incentivised by unpredictable events such as war, death of a relative or divorce, which dramatically impact one’s emotional and social status and undermines their scope of possibilities. Therefore, migration is a coping strategy that helps people to regain control over their lives and deal with existential challenges. Migration in this case, as Hage claims, “is either an inability or an unwillingness to endure and ‘wait out’ a crisis of existential mobility” (2009b: 98). A good example of the inability to live in the condition of existential stuckedness was Isaias, a 20-year-old Eritrean who had lived as a refugee in Uganda for five years. He described his life in a transit camp in the country of departure as follows: “My mum is just sitting. Sometimes she is working, sometimes she is sitting. In Uganda there is no work”. He had experienced the same situation in Kenya, where he had moved with his uncle. The whole day I was just sitting. I went there to find some work, you know, to keep going, but I was unsuccessful. I was just sitting, I wanted to start school – it is expensive in Kenya. If you do not have money, you can’t do anything. The impossibility of gaining an education and, by extension, the limited work opportunities block migrants’ path to personal independence and developing gender and age-based social norms (Jeffrey 2010: 468). It also creates a space with an overabundance of unstructured time, which is a source of mental distress (Mains 2011: 44; Jeffrey 2010: 477). The inability to develop, work or study – in other words the inability to comply with personal and social expectations – were the reasons why Isaias previously returned to Uganda after living in Kenya, where, as he “was just sitting for six months” with his mother. He then departed to Europe via Turkey. When he described his present situation in Serbia, he again used similar words: “Now, the borders are closed. I can’t go further. I am just sitting in the camp”. Isaias added later, If they [the EU] says that the border will remain closed, I will go further [return to Turkey]. I haven’t got other options. I can’t just sit here any longer. There is no job, there is no pocket money. I can’t live here longer. […] I am just sitting here [in the camp]. I can’t do anything here. But if I get there [to Germany], I can study, I can get education. This narrative shows the importance of connecting the available opportunities with matters of the future, which taken together translate into a sense of possible existential advancement. If people are unable to make this connection, they will try to move. In Serbia, migrants were unable to satisfy their aspirations. Migrants flee violence, terror, poverty and social injustice, but also try to escape the lack of self-control over their time. The need for existential advancement, concludes Stock, is for migrants’ part of economic and political motives and should

Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 135 not be viewed separately from them. The existential aspiration justifies the migratory project (2019: 43). In a similar vein, Hage argues that migrants are: […] looking for a space and a life where they feel they are going somewhere as opposed to nowhere, or at least, a space where the quality of their ‘goingness’ is better than what it is in the space they are leaving behind. (2009b: 98) Their geographical mobility, even if only internal, gave them agency and hope to reach their destination country and possibly realise their goals of social advancement by continuing their professional and personal development, or, at the very least, it gave them hope to attempt to start a normal life: Self-sufficient, predictable and secure. Conclusions In this chapter, I explored the trajectories of single, male travellers through the Balkan route and their reaction to the tightening of the external Southeast EU border. In order to better understand the meaning of high mobility at the bottleneck of entry into the EU, I have contrasted their experiences with research about migrants who have already reached the Schengen Area. I illustrated that the closure of the Balkan corridor, the increase of violence and the movement of single, male migrant travellers. Such movement reflects migrants’ hope and agency, as well as offering a chance of social mobility. In other words, as long as migrants’ needs, hopes and aspirations remain unsatisfied and unsatiated and there is another place to go, they will keep moving. The hyper mobility on the fringes of the EU brings to mind walking on the spot or turning around in circles (Jansen 2015), which become metaphors of blocked expectations on the road to Europe (Narotzky and Besnier 2014: 11). The high level of geographical movement creates a border control paradox: The more states impose movement-adverse conditions, the more migrants feel they have no choice but to continue moving. Hence, this work confirms Hess’ argument that the EU-ropean border regime does not stop movement; rather it keeps people “caught in mobility” and transforms border-regions into zones of heightened circulation (2012: 436). Furthermore, and importantly, it illustrates that many attempts to “protect” the EU’s external borders not only unnecessarily risk human lives, but also do not easily stop migrant movement. In this sense, they are unproductive; if anything, they seem to create hyper-mobile classes that circulate in precarious zones. Notes 1 Some of the material for this chapter and the summary has been previously published in Robert Rydzewski, “Hope, Waiting, and Mobility: Migrant Movement in Serbia after the EU-Turkey Deal” in Movements: Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies, 2020, 5(1) https://movements-journal.org/issues/08.balkanroute/04.rydzewski-hope-waiting-and-mobility.html.

136  Migrant Movement as In-betweenness 2 Temporary reception centres had been changing the rules of migrants’ admission and release. In March 2016, migrants were allowed to temporarily leave the reception centre in Preševo only if escorted by an NGO worker who guaranteed his or her return to the centre. 3 30–40 RDS = 25–34 Euro cents. 4 Secondary movement, from the policy makers’ perspective, is perceived as an abuse of the asylum system. It is often pejoratively called “asylum shopping”. 5 The Hungarian law in July 2–16 that authorised law enforcers to caught irregular migrants within 8 kilometers of the Serbian–Hungarian border and push-back them to Serbia. 6 The Serbian law (The Aliens Act) defines illegal entry and illegal residence and specifies a fine for these acts, respectively between 10,000 and 50,000 RSD (100–500 EUR) and between 6,000 and 30,000 RSD (60–300 EUR). Those who do not have the money can serve a few days in the local district prison – one day is an equivalent of 10 Euro fine. After paying the fine, migrants are obliged to leave the country within 30 days depending on decision prescribed by the authorities. For this period their stay is legalised (Stojić Mitrović and Meh 2016: 627–628).

Summary I Must Keep Going

This book stems from the unpredictable path of the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in and RN Macedonia in various tranches between 2013 and 2021. It aims to answer the question of what actually happened throughout an exceptional period in the Balkan Peninsula, when nearly a million migrants reached the EU. Why did the EU-ropean border regime collapse? How was the new system of border control in Southeast Europe implemented? Who shaped the Balkan and how did they do so? Lenses of liminality help us to see different shades of the refugee crisis, not only the collapse of an old structure, but also the development of new one. Thus, to paraphrase Stef Jansen’s (2015) writing on abnormality in liminality, much is undone but redone too. Abnormality and chaos create productive and transformative social and political conditions. The frenzied period of 2015 and 2016 was a liminal phase, demarcated by de-bordering and the creation of the Balkan corridor. During this period, the EU tried to implement new elements of border control which, on the surface, did not radically change the EU-ropean border regime. The EU, as it had been doing so before 2015, continues to readily support stabilitocratic politicians in third countries and uses enlargement projects as a carrot dangling on a stick to convince these leaders to stop migrants on their soil and not let them pass into the bloc. The EU is also ready to invest a substantial portion of EU taxpayer’s money into high-tech surveillance systems to secure its external borders and filter those who are trying to cross it. But in spite of all these efforts, migrants keep arriving in relatively steady numbers of around 100,000 per year. As I have shown, the EUropean fight against irregular migration risks migrants’ lives by forcing them to take longer and more deadly routes. Nothing is changing in this respect. At the moment of writing this text, in January 2023, the most common passage through the Balkan route leads via Serbia, and then to the north-western horn of Bosnia and Herzegovina, eventually reaching Croatia via its mountainous border. Without doubt, the EU’s attempts to tame migration are counterproductive and the refugee crisis has not changed it. Rather, it has actually worsened the situation on the fringes of the EU and fuels other crises such as the one currently taking place on the Polish–Belarusian border. Nevertheless, I suggest that when looking at the EU’s external Southeast borders, the refugee crisis brought significant changes in the European border DOI: 10.4324/9781003350262-7

138 Summary regime structure and political scene. During this chaotic period, the borders of Southeast Europe, demilitarised after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, have again become militarised. Furthermore, the events of 2015 and 2016, on the one hand, let xenophobic and anti-migration rhetoric backed by paramilitary groups bloom, and, on the other hand, let solidarity and humanitarianism flourish. These two discordant voices somehow became louder after being silenced by the EU status quo regarding migration. Various actors who went unheard until 2015 started to compete with each other. The voices clamouring about an invasion of culturally incompatible Muslim men became present in public and political discourses and consequently drove the rise of Islamophobia. Their voices were accompanied by paramilitary groups that engaged in border control. These groups, together with right-wing parties settled more prominently in national and European political landscapes. On the political level, Lažetić (2018) argues that the refugee crisis has exacerbated the anti-migration sentiment, with a wide variety of far-right actors using the “failed integration” of migrants and refugees from the Middle East as proof that the EU is actually a failed liberal experiment. The new anti-migration platform has contributed to the establishment of a broad pan-European far-right alliance. On the other hand, the refugee crisis energised new forms of civil society. The case of the inhabitants of Preševo proved that solidarity groups might appear in the vacuum caused by state absence in the post-Yugoslav region. During a liminal period such groups can look beyond old animosities sustained by ethnopolitics. As I have demonstrated, a common experience of exile, war and abandonment may pave the ground for sympathy with those who have arrived through similar experiences. As I only touch upon briefly in this book but elaborate somewhere else (Rydzewski 2022b), during the long summer of migration a foreign volunteers’ group also appeared. Their ephemeral response sparked by the media’s dramatic coverage that caused, for them at least, the “spectator’s dilemma”. Consequently, many, mostly young people, went to support migrants on their journey to EU-rope. However, as soon as the media lost interest in the migration issue, the number of volunteers declined and many NGOs ceased operations. Thus volunteers’ “tourism” along the Balkan route – as a reaction to media reports – raises the question of who is the main beneficiary of their work in the field: the migrants or the volunteers pursuing the sense of their own life in a post-industrial “risk society”. According to Fassin (2012), the logic of humanitarianism implies that helpers receive pleasure from helping, which is not a fault, but rather questions their altruism. The real danger, however, is on the structural level. The volunteers are in dialectical relationship with the state and have been used in their international politics with neighbouring countries. They often replace the government in providing migrants with protection and help, although it is the state who is designated to do so. As David Mosse observes, “… policy models do not guarantee practices, they are sustained by them” (Mosse 2005: 182). Civil society’s participation in the refugee crisis might therefore constitute a precedent for future cases where the state is not able to guarantee assistance to people in need and its duties will be performed by less organised groups of individually motivated volunteers. Perhaps recent events in Poland

Summary 139 perfectly show it: Polish government is happy to take the international praise for helping Ukrainians, whereas in reality it was civil society that so swiftly and comprehensively response to the needs of people fleeing the war. The borders allow certain groups to move, while immobilizing others. Throughout the long summer of migration, the EU tried to introduce new measures of border control that, although previously planned, would not have been possible to be implemented without the “state of exception”. The externalisation of the refugee camps, reinforcement of the filtering priority and relocation all sought to regain control over European external borders. A crucial part of this project were the “hotspots”, a kind of buffer zone where migrants were filtered often on racial bases. In these “hotspots” the “unwanted migrants” were separated from “genuine refugees” and then immobilised, while members of the latter category were to be transferred to the EU. This became painfully clear after Russia invasion of Ukraine. The welcoming attitude of EU-ropean citizens towards about four million people fleeing Ukraine showed that Europe can afford and manage to host more people than those who come during long summer of migration. However, we should not ignore the fact that among those who fled Ukraine where non-white people who were stopped and denied or hindered access to asylum in Poland. This also showed how deeply racism is embedded in EU-ropean society. All new elements of an old but “improved” EU border regime were backed by the normalisation of tremendous violence used by border guards in Southeast Europe, often supported by Frontex. At the beginning of 2023, the direction of the EU-ropean migration policy has not changed. After the decline of migrant movement caused by Covid-19 in 2019 and 2020, the Balkan route has registered the most migrants since its peak in 2015. As a consequence, the EU delegates keep pushing post-Yugoslav countries to control their borders against “irregular migration”. Recently, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson threatened to freeze Serbians’ visa-free access to the EU, in case Serbian authorities does not limit access to its territory to third countries across the world (Brzozowski 2022). However, it is clear that many of components of the new border regime in this region were unsuccessfully implemented. The Balkan route is not closed, neither are any other. Migrants are gathering on Greek Islands, the Serbian, Bosnian and Herzegovinian and Croatian borders, as they are doing, too, on the Polish-Belarusian border. They protest against the inhumane living conditions in the “hotspot” centres, closed borders, violence and ineffective relocation programmes. Although the scheme to relocate migrants from hot spots has failed and caused contention between EU leaders, these failures have not discouraged the policymakers from proposing similar schemes or sticking to the obviously ineffectual direction of deterrence and containment of migrants as EU migration policy priorities (see Mainwaring 2019). My case study of migrants stranded in Serbia after the introduction closure of the Balkan corridor shows that migrants will keep moving until they find a place where they can flourish. Migrants in Serbia found it nearly impossible to be safe and able to establish stable life. Thus, they perceived Serbia as nothing more than a transit country, and looked for stability and development somewhere else.

140 Summary The migrants’ focus was on the future and further movement towards the EU. As Adnan, mentioned before Moroccan, whom I met in the unofficial Kelebija pretransit camp, told me: I am one year on the journey. I am having a shitty life. I must keep going. […] When I get to Sweden, I will be fine. I will forget about everything. I will try to start another life, new life. Migrants perceived their stuckedness in liminal space as something temporal and exceptional, imposed on them by the border regime, which, like the whole journey, would come to an end soon. The aforementioned quotation confirms the argument made by Thomassen that those who are in a liminal state believe that there is “a way out it” (2009: 21), but researchers have shown that reaching the EU does not end precariousness, exclusion or movement. Indeed, once a migrant enters the grey zone of illegality, they might never find a “way out of it”. As Shahram Khosravi puts it: “It [migration] is a journey of indefinite route, length, cost and destination. You do not know what to expect and no one expects you” (2010: 14). The movement gave migrants hope to escape this liminality and eventually reach an idealised Europe, a kind of mythical place, which takes time to arrive to. However, there were also people who stopped hoping and looking towards futures in which they could see themselves as active subjects. The psychological strain of liminality causes disorientation, and undermines self-confidence and motivation, which makes it even harder to find, even imagine, a happy end to the journey. As many researchers have shown, upon reaching the EU migrants were often disenchanted with their reception. The strict asylum procedure, short validity of documents (Fontanari 2019), Dublin regulations (Picozza 2017) or simply differences in reception conditions (Brekke and Brochmann 2014) barred them from finding a new home and forced them to move again. Therefore, movement can be a blessing and a curse for migrants depending on the state of their journey and the expectations they hold. The growing body of literature on the topic illustrates that even after often deadly dangerous and years-long journeys, migrants are still unable to find safety, prosperity or a settled life within EU borders. The movement on the outside of these borders is filled with hope, which often eventually turns to disillusion. As such, this book confirms that movement often gives more satisfaction and hope than actually reaching the destination does (Hage 2009b; Procupez 2015; Fontanari 2019). In doing so, my ethnography illustrates that, paradoxically, halting migration has an opposite effect: the EU’s migration approach is responsible for an increase of cross-border movement, despair, vulnerability and human misery. Furthermore, it suggests that the EU-ropean border control regime not just expensive, but ineffective too, given the fact that all my research partners eventually reached the EU. For example, after a circuitous route, Sayad ended up in France, where he was granted refugee status and acquired French language skills. He now works in a kebab restaurant on the outskirts of Paris. He keeps dreaming about finishing secondary school. This dream, for now, is out of his reach since he cannot afford to study. Reza ended up living with his younger

Summary 141 brother in an NGO-rented flat close to Vienna in Austria, though he lives with uncertainty since receiving an expulsion order. His older brother, however, managed to reach Germany, where he was granted refugee status – a fact that clearly proves the arbitrariness of the European asylum system. The family reunification process is not accessible to them since they are already adults. Therefore, for Reza the suspension continues. He can neither work nor study. During the Austrian People’s Party’s time in office (2007–2017), asylum seekers’ rights were tightened, with the government limiting access to social support, German language classes and financial support. Gebre, when we were still in touch in 2017, roamed around Europe in the position of a “Dubliner”. He travelled from Croatia to Sweden and then to Germany, where he waited with deep uncertainty for months under an expulsion order. Since then, I have heard no more from not only Gebre, but also Masud, Emad and Ashkan. The EU border regime produces a constantly growing number of lumpenproletariat who are stuck in liminality. They live in uncertainty, in the zones of abandonment, where they become “visible realities that exist through and beyond formal governance and that determine the life course of an increasing number of poor people who are not part of mapped populations” (Biehl 2005: 4). Thousands of migrants and those whose asylum applications were rejected circulate as Dubliners outside or inside of Europe, in life-threatening conditions, hoping to reach their destination. They are left without a work permit, access to health care, education or any prospect of settling down. Such politics can backfire on the EU since these abandoned people, deprived of opportunities, are an easy target for gangs or extremist groups. And yet, there are also good practices. Germany made an effort to speed up asylum processing times and also allowed migrants whose asylum requests were rejected a “tolerated” stay if they found employment or attended vocational training. Finally, Germany introduced a number of new integration policies that stand out in Europe. For example, the responsible authorities relocate asylum seekers and refugees not to refugee camps but assign them to flats in ethnically and nationally mixed neighbourhoods to avoid ghettoisation. This integration approach is supported by an intensive programme that comprises of language training and courses on the German culture, values and legal system (Brücker et al. 2019). I observed these good practices in Germany, but hopefully, they are not limited only to this country. So, is the crisis over? If we agree on the understanding of the refugee crisis as a crisis of border control, then it is certainly not. The holes in the border are only partially sealed. The EU and national governments, in spite of high political and financial costs, allows defence companies to enclose the bloc a vicious circle of securitisation and militarisation of border control. In recent years, Greece has announced a pilot plan to install a “floating wall” in the Aegean Sea to deter migrants from reaching the Greek islands (Smith 2020). Poland has built a wall on the Polish–Belarusian border that cuts through virgin forests and swamps, relegating migrants to the mercy of the Belarusian regime. Yet, in the walls of “fortress Europe” new cracks will show up every day because people in their thousands have found their way to the EU’s margins desperate to escape liminality.

142 Summary In December 2022, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and RN Macedonia UNHCR recorded 192,266 registered migrants’ arrivals, compared to 44,646 in 2018 and 103,371 in 2020 (UNHCR 2023). On top of that, 1,115 Ukraine received Temporary Protection (Ibid.) in Serbia. The number of migrants camping on the fringes of the EU will grow and attempts to stop them are doomed to fail, not only because of wars and global inequalities, but also other push factors, such as the demographic boom in Africa and climate change, which is causing more floods and droughts. Paradoxically, governments and their citizens that today push migrants back may soon be forced to seek asylum themselves, since wars, wildfires and floods do not recognise national borders. Trying to summarise this book, and simultaneously observing the events on the Polish–Belarusian border, a valid question to ask would be how we can break the vicious cycle caused by blocking yet another route. Moreover, how can we change the border control strategy that proved to be costly and inefficient but nonetheless prevailed in the EU for decades? How can we challenge the presumption that irregular migration is to be stopped? In this regard, I agree with Ruben Andersson (2016), who claims that given the relative smallness of migration flows and high human and economic cost of the ineffective border control against irregular migrants we should acknowledge that “migration (both forced and voluntary) is a structural phenomenon that will not be remediated by punitive border policies …” (2016: 1068). He proposes, among other strategies, the application of a harm reduction approach that requires a switch from the perception of migration as a risk to providing migrants’ opportunities and integration that will translate to stability. Among other harm reduction measures, he proposes the establishment of legal paths for migrants to reach Europe such as resettlement, family reunification and other programmes. Such programmes will build trust and patience among people waiting to fulfil their aspirations. All these changes, as he claims, require a very different approach: systemic work in the field of social justice and human rights, rather than ad hoc interventions to stop migration. Importantly, the change should be implemented globally rather than nationally or regionally because migration is an interconnected, global phenomenon (Andersson 2016: 1067).

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Index

abandonment 35, 46, 48, 50, 60, 67, 70, 112, 121, 138, 141 Albanians 55–58, 71 Balkan corridor 1, 22, 24, 26, 30, 34–35, 38, 40–43 Balkan route 3–4, 7, 21, 35, 43, 58, 73, 77–83, 101, 104, 115–116, 132, 139 Belgrade 37, 109, 113–114, 119, 120 bordering 21, 98, 125, 137 boredom 76, 95–96, 98, 104–105, 107–110, 113, 115 Bulgaria 24, 43, 79–80, 82, 85, 119, 125 chaos/disorder 4, 11, 15, 18–21, 26–27, 28, 30, 38, 42–43, 66, 68, 102–103, 109, 119, 126, 137–138 chartiá 2, 24, 28, 38, 43, 104, 113 communitas 71 delaying 81, 104–106, 113, 125 empathy 34, 37, 45, 52, 62, 68, 70–72 ethnicity 7, 21, 27, 34, 36, 45–47, 50, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 61, 71–72, 82–83, 93, 121 Europeanisation of borders 56, 74 Europeanisation of migration 56, 74, 76, 85 EU–Turkish deal 4, 30, 76, 108, 110 fence 1, 19, 21, 25, 29, 33, 55, 72, 77–78, 80, 81–83, 95–96, 98, 99, 100, 101–2, 125, 128, 130–131 filtering 5, 9, 31, 34–35, 38, 40–42, 57, 70, 76, 79, 98, 139 Frontex 31, 36, 78–80, 82, 84, 91, 124, 139 genuine refugee 9, 21, 35–36, 38–40, 70, 93, 100, 139

Horgoš 5, 29, 38, 63, 92, 95, 99–106, 129 hotspot 5, 21, 35–37, 139 integration with EU 14, 16, 26, 52, 54–57, 75, 84–86, 88, 91, 93, 141–142 islamophobia 5, 84, 138 Kelebija 2, 101, 130, 140 Kosovo 24, 48, 50–51, 54–56, 59–61, 70, 73, 80, 99, 142 limbo 13, 37, 42, 98, 106, 113 liminality 12–16, 29–21, 31, 35, 37, 41–43 Macedonia (North) 1–3, 6–7, 14–17, 21, 24–25, 29, 31, 33–34, 39–40, 42– 43, 48–51, 54, 56, 58–62, 69, 77, 80–81, 89–92, 106, 121, 125, 142 mental health 108–110 movement 1, 6–7, 9, 11, 14–17, 21–23, 27, 29, 31, 34–35, 37–29, 42–43, 46–47, 54, 56–7, 61, 66–67, 72, 76, 79, 81, 83–87, 90–91, 94, 98–101, 111–113, 116–122, 125, 127, 133– 135, 139, 140 pečalba/kurbet 58 Preševo 2, 6–9, 18, 24–29, 32–44, 47–73, 82, 90, 92, 93, 102, 121, 125, 128, 130, 136, 138 pre-transit camp 95–104, 140 protests 19, 34, 38, 48, 60–61, 67, 139 pushbacks 10, 16, 24, 41, 30, 35–37, 40, 41, 43, 76, 100, 122, 130, 136 queuing/lining up 2, 18, 26, 28, 64–65, 93, 102–104, 113, 117, 122, 123–124

160 Index Serbians 52, 61, 67, 68, 70, 86, 119 Šid 7, 29, 30, 34, 36–37, 42, 60, 108, 110, 120–122, 130, 131–132 smugglers 16, 21, 32, 37, 43, 55, 59, 80, 83, 104–106, 109, 111, 119–122, 126–132 solidarity 16, 21, 45–47, 51, 57, 61, 67–68, 70, 72, 92, 138 stabilitocracies 88, 89 stuckedness 14, 42, 55, 106, 109, 108, 111, 113, 117, 132–134, 140, 142 Subotica 6, 7, 36, 59, 60, 99, 101, 104, 115, 119–123, 127, 129–132 transit zone 2, 21, 36, 95–102, 105, 108, 127, 132 transition 2, 6, 12–14, 19, 20, 36, 46, 55, 60–61, 86 transportation 13, 19, 23, 28, 31–38, 39, 40, 43, 55

trauma, psychological strain 7, 15, 18, 50, 66–68, 87, 100, 110–111, 124, 140 uncertainty 13, 17, 20–22, 25, 28–29, 37, 39,43, 68, 89, 100, 117, 119–120, 126, 133, 141 violence 5, 11, 13, 16, 21, 42, 42, 50, 52, 66, 69, 82, 90, 98, 100, 109–110, 120, 120–128, 131, 133–135, 139, 141 waiting 2, 13, 26–28, 43, 39, 48, 59, 64, 95–117, 119–120, 120, 126, 128, 131–133, 142 wall 14, 40, 75–76, 82–83, 92–94, 115, 138, 142