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Paper short abstract

The article analyses how grassroots practices of care and alliance-making rework Sarajevo’s urban space, enabling migrants to rest and (re)organise their mobility. The notion of a "rest hub" captures the relational and urban dimensions of waiting along migration routes.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on an ethnography grounded in direct participation in solidarity work, this paper analyses the relationship between solidarity practices directed at migrants in transit or (temporarily) present in the city and the urban space of Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina), understood as a site of everyday life, encounter, and contestation along the Balkan route.

Situating the production of solidarity initiatives at the urban scale, the paper engages with the question of how grassroots practices of care and alliance-making can render urban space liveable along migration routes. The analysis unfolds along three interconnected dimensions. First, it addresses centre-periphery relations, highlighting solidarity actors’ commitment to keeping their activities within central areas, in contrast to the spatial segregation produced by institutional models of reception. Second, it examines the multiscalar character of solidarity practices, through which Sarajevo functions as a site of experimentation that challenges national regulations while articulating a critique of EU migration governance. Third, it explores the relationship between the capital and the country’s geographical border, which since January 2023 has bordered the Schengen Area.

Through this analysis, Sarajevo emerges as a space at the margins of the spectacle of the “migration crisis”: a city where grassroots practices of care and alliance-making rework urban space, enabling migrants to rest, return, and (re)organise their mobility. Thinking in terms of a rest hub allows us to grasp the relational and urban dimensions of waiting along migration routes, as the city becomes more than a mere “through” space within a “transit country” along the route.