Paper short abstract:

By approaching push-backs reported at Croatia's borders since 2016 as a series of multiple and multilevel disappearances, this paper strives to outline and conceptualize the structure of push-backs as a deportation technique of the contemporary European migration regime at the fringes of EU.

Paper long abstract:

The final closure of the ad hoc Balkan refugee corridor in March 2016 did not stop the movement of people across the Balkans towards the EU. Men, women and children continued to move along the pathway known as the Balkan route, while various physical and non-physical obstacles and deterrence practices started to proliferate in countries along the route. These obstacles and practices, created a so-called spatial substitution effect and fostered widespread use of riskier, longer, costly and dangerous migratory routes. Thus, today one of the most used branches of the Balkan route - the one activated in 2018, which goes through north-west Bosnia and Herzegovina and clandestinely proceeds into Croatia - leads through minefield areas left over from the 1990s war, deep forests and mountains, several rivers, police patrolled areas and areas under heavy surveillance. Manifold disappearances (disappearances of people, things, goods, personal objects, social, telecommunication and other networks etc.) are an integral part of this partition of the route. Manifested in different forms, from deportation to confiscation, they are condensed in the expulsion practices known as push-backs. By approaching push-backs reported at Croatia's eastern borders since early 2016 as a series of multiple, successive and multilevel disappearances, this paper strives to outline and conceptualize the structure of push-backs as a deportation technique of the contemporary European migration regime at the fringes of EU.