Paper short abstract:

I explore the im/mobility nexus of migrants crossing the Balkan to reach a core EU country. I foreground everyday experiences of im/mobility and the interruptive effects of mobility management, exploring migrants’ mobility tactics generated in the interface of border constructions at various scales.

Paper long abstract:

How do refugees and other migrants in the Balkan enact mobility and make decisions to move despite or in close interaction with border management and control practices that in this region are framed to produce immobility? This paper explores how refugees and other migrants’ im/mobility in the Balkan region is shaped by migration policies and practices at different scales, including the EU’s externalization policies, the Balkan nation states’ internal and external policies, and migrants’ desire to continue to a core EU country.

Drawing on fieldwork with refugees and other migrants, NGO volunteers and locals, I explore how migrants’ journeys are interrupted, and how they transgress the sometimes-incongruent border management. My investigation foregrounds the insights emerging from everyday experiences of the border, im/mobility, containment (Tazzioli and Garelli 2018) and the interruptive effects of border and mobility management. I argue that the Balkan region has labyrinthian characteristics in that journeys are interrupted, transformed and continued at different speeds. Literature on borders recognizes the relevance of migrant agency in responding to that border control (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013), seeking to displace the dichotomy between border control and migrant agency (Vaughan-Williams and Pisani 2020). Mobility tactics, I will show, are generated in the interface with how border constructions – constituting the Balkan territory as both one of transit and one of containment – affect their movements. Attending to the ways in which migrants continue their disrupted journeys is key to understanding the dynamics between mobility and immobility and its reverberation over time and space.