Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the various levels and scales of responsibility invoked in debates over whether and how to meet the humanitarian needs of migrants and refugees stuck behind the EU border in Bihac, northwest Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Paper long abstract:

For two years, residents of Bihac in northwest Bosnia-Herzegovina have shared their small former industrial town with several thousand people on the move - refugees and migrants from outside Europe taking the Balkan Route between Turkey and the more prosperous countries of the EU. While most have no wish to stay in Bosnia, violent pushbacks by the Croatian and Slovenian border police have created a bottleneck of people now stuck outside the EU without money, phones, possessions, even shoes, and often also with serious injuries, compliments of the Croatian police. In Bihac, political pressure fueled by fear of young, mostly male "others" keeps the official camps from expanding capacity, while local police attempt to keep migrants from gathering in public spaces. But where should they stay? Why are these people here and how does that shape our responsibility to them? Who should feed, clothe, and house them? Based on ethnographic research in Bihac, this paper will map the vectors of responsibility towards the humanitarian needs of migrants through social media comments and everyday conversations among residents with an eye to unpacking the various levels of governance and scales of geopolitical interests that residents look to to assign ultimate responsibility for migrants as both security risks and humanitarian objects. I argue that these evaluations of scale and governance are reshaping and crystalizing citizens' relationship to the postwar state and its many fragments, as well as their sense of (semiperipheral) belonging to a re-racialized (white, Christian) Europe.