Rivers are deadly if you’re not on the right side

In the spring of 2024, Morgane Dujmovic [1] has carried out a research mission in the Balkans, with one question in mind: why have the Balkan borders crossed by exiled people become so violent? Most of these people come from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Just like at other European borders, they experience police violence and increased mortality risks.

The first stop on this mission was the canton of Una-Sana in north-west Bosnia-Herzegovina, the last step before the Schengen area for those attempting to cross to Croatia. Here, the oppressive atmosphere of the border towns and camps contrasts with the lightness of the booming tourist industry.

Let us hear from local residents, shopkeepers, cab drivers and police officers.

This portfolio article is the first in a series looking at the human consequences of the outsourcing of European migration policies to the Balkans, entitled: “Rivers are deadly if you’re not on the right side”. It was first published on Mediapart, Le Courrier des Balkans and visioncarto.net. Our warmest thanks to the visionscarto team for their work in proofreading and editing this text, especially to Isabelle Saint-Saëns for the English version.

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Episode #1. The two colours of the Bosnian spring

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From Korana to Una: tourists, locals and exiles

Nesting between the Velebit massif and Mount Dinara, which forms the border between Croatia and Bosnia, the Croatian Lika region reveals its high karst plateaux in the muted light of spring. Honey and cheese stalls alternate with herds of racy cows and horses. There is also a bear sanctuary where nature-loving volunteers from France and Austria try their hand, alongside tourists from all over the world who flock to visit the famous Plitvice Waterfalls and Lakes National Park [2]. The only sombre note in this landscape comes from the numerous ruined farms, reminding us that it was on this stretch of the border that one of the fiercest episodes of the Serbo-Croat war was played out, from 1991 to 1995 [3]. In the calm that has returned, who could suspect that these high mountains are still the scene of violent and sometimes deadly hand-to-hand combat?

My gaze lingers on the Dinara and I set off along the banks of the Korana River. The number of Croatian border police vehicles increases as I head towards Bosnia-Herzegovina, as do the checks in the Bosnia-Croatia direction. Near Plitvice Park, the police simply checks the identity of travellers and asks them where they are going. Names are sometimes written down on a piece of paper to keep track of people and vehicles that have already been checked: border controls must not get in the way of this early tourist season.

I make my way up the mountain, approaching the pass that marks the border at Ličko Petrovo Selo (Croatia) / Izačić (Bosnia-Herzegovina). Here are many more border police vans cross, some stationary, others on duty. A policeman patrols one of the countless derelict buildings – properties of the Serb populations who lived there before the military Operation Storm launched to reconquer Krajina. Through the openings in the collapsed walls, one can already guess that some of today exiles might be taking refuge there. But the effects of the sordid cat-and-mouse game that takes place at nightfall are only felt once the mountain pass has been crossed, on the Bosnian side.

The “game” is the cynical name given over the last few years to the constantly reinvented attempts to cross borders and join the European Union (EU). The Bosnian canton of Una-Sana has become one of the theatres of this game, since the closure of the officialised Balkan corridor in 2015-2016 [4]. Located in the extreme north-west of Bosnia, this region represents one of the most direct routes from the southern Balkans to the Schengen area. From 2017 onwards, with the reinforcement of the Serbian-Hungarian and Serbian-Croatian borders, exiles on the Balkan routes were more clearly oriented towards Una Sana, from where they could hope to reach Slovenia, about one hundred kilometres away. Since Croatia joined the Schengen area at the beginning of 2023 [5], this theoretical area of free movement is on the other side of the mountain that can be seen from Bihać, the administrative centre of the canton.

Over the last twenty years, Croatia’s application to join the EU and then Schengen implied a drastic increase in the resources allocated to fortifying the Bosnian-Croatian border, in terms of human, technological and financial resources [6]. On the Bosnian side, the regions bordering Croatia have thus become one of the priority areas for migration control before Schengen borders: the EU deploys devices to consolidate a filtering “buffer-zone”, intended for separating the wheat from the chaff – i.e. migration deemed acceptable from the one deemed undesirable [7]. This process of externalization is exerted under constant political and financial pressure in the context of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s application to join the EU – the candidate status of which was confirmed by the European Council in December 2022, almost seven years after the Bosnian authorities applied for membership [8].

Available at Migreurop, closethecamps.org in French, Arabic, English, Spanish.

In the canton of Una-Sana, the “buffer-zone” function attributed to Bosnia-Herzegovina is based upon the specific geography of the region: this semi-enclave in the shape of a pocket forms a veritable bottleneck for people whose journey is stopped there [9]. As can be seen at other EU borders which are kept closed, it is common to see groups walking along the road for the fifteen kilometres which separate the town from the border crossing point of Izačić, either just turned back by the Croatian police, or heading towards the border to try a new game.

In the town of Bihać, residents have been witnessing for seven years now repressive strategies to push these exiles out of Croatia and fix them in the canton; the high point, in terms of border crossings and violence [10], being reached in 2018. A shopkeeper in Bihać recalls:

“Until Covid, it was really tough, people were sleeping all over the place around town, in the forest, in places that weren’t suitable at all. We saw a lot of people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kurds, blacks from African countries too, and often families with very young children. We ourselves cannot help but understand people fleeing countries at war or having to live in camps: we lived through the war, four years of siege in Bihać” [11].

The rhetoric of openness and compassion intersects with local discontent: for example, the discontent that led to the closure in October 2020 of the Bira camp, which until then had been located in the centre of Bihać [12]. At the height of the management of the Covid-19 pandemic, some of the people housed there were transferred to another camp located 27 kilometres from the town, in a remote rural environment far away from the Croatian border [13]. In the spring of 2024, it was the sole official accommodation for single men: only families and minors were accepted in the city, in the Borići camp known among exiles as “the family camp”. The transformation of this former student residence into a camp has mobilised a European budget of one million euros, both for its reconstruction and its operation since 2018 [14].

The Borići camp is planted in a pine forest that gives it its name (“borova šuma”, in Bosnian) and its facade was refurbished in the summer of 2022; this peaceful atmosphere could almost lead to forget the anxiety felt every day by the people housed there. Although categorised as “vulnerable” by humanitarian institutions and organisations, these isolated women, families and children are subjected to violent refoulement every time they make an unsuccessful attempt to cross the mountains into Croatia. For those who have already tried the crossing, the camp is a place of eternal flashbacks, a temporary but fragile respite, since the senses are entirely turned towards the prospect of a new attempt. A member of one of the families I met was recovering from an injury sustained on the Balkan routes; for them the time for crossing the border had yet not come, “not tonight”.

I get on the road again in the direction of the Lipa camp. Along the banks of the river Una, the tourist signage is a reminder that this region, synonymous of dull anxiety for some, is a place of discovery and fun for others. In the Una national park, as on the Croatian side, private “apartmani” are filling up for “the season”, while the first groups of tourists are revelling in the spring atmosphere at the water sports sites and waterfalls.

The Bosnian Ministry of Security has clearly stated its intention to reconcile this freedom of movement with “European standards” of migration control [15]. In recent years, Bihać and the canton of Una-Sana have thus become one of the many border areas in the world where a “bipolar differentiation” is taking shape [16], between the world of welcome and profitable migration of tourists, and the one of undesirable migration, made up essentially of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa fleeing violence, war, persecution or untenable socio-economic situations.

A few subtle signs of these profound inequalities in mobility stand out in the idyllic landscape... At the last junction leading to the Lipa camp, on the roadside tourist signage, stickers indicate the omnipresence of taxis and the existence of a “pushback map”.

In the EU camp in Lipa: who benefits from the game?

As I approach the Lipa camp, one word springs to mind: lunar. In addition to the remoteness from the town, access is made difficult by a winding track almost 3 kilometres long, a series of potholes through the mountains leading to an uninhabited plateau. In front of the camp, the desert atmosphere contrasts with the architecture of fenced enclosures and the overlooking video-surveillance system. The omnipresent signs forbidding entry and picture taking are reinforced by the language repeated by all the members of the police security force, who warn that “the entire camp is video-protected”.

The will to isolate exiles is palpable here; it is in line with the interests of the Bosnian and Croatian police, who thus keep men at a distance from the border, to deter them from undertaking the game. For the municipal authorities, the sidelining of the exiles from living areas is an assumed strategy, as the Lipa camp has periodically been used to evacuate them from abandoned buildings in the town, as announced by the mayor of Bihać in the spring of 2021:

“There are still places where migrants are staying (...) which we will also empty, clean and seal in the coming days” [17].

Furthermore, the camp location is in line with the expectations of the EU, which has financed its infrastructure and operation through its “EU support to Migration and Border Management in BIH” program. Lipa is part of a series of camps set up in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 2018 and 2021, along with those in Bira, Sedra and Miral (since closed), and those in Borići, Ušivak and Blažuj, still in operation in spring 2024. The European grant that financed these “Temporary Reception Centers” (TRC, as they are officially known) totalled 100 million euros in expenditure over the years [18]. This sum is regularly used as a sledgehammer argument to put pressure on the Bosnian authorities; in January 2021, for example, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell seized this financial argument to urge the Bihać and Una Sana authorities to get the Bira camp up and running again [19].

In practice, however, these funds have been allocated to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency and partner of the EU, which has been given the task of coordinating and managing the camps as part of the “Inter-Agency Migration Response” strategy. IOM has thus captured the bulk of funding from the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance for migration management and border control, establishing itself as a key partner in these areas [20]. However, this configuration has changed since 2021: in line with the European Commission goals, which Bosnia-Herzegovina is reminded of in the Commission monitoring reports for its accession to EU [21], the IOM is now moving towards what it calls a “plan for a transition to a state-owned migration response” – a formula that leaves little doubt about the previous interventionist strategy [22].

In the view of a handover of this mission to the Ministry of National Security, management of the Lipa camp has been transferred since November 2021 to the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs (Služba za poslove sa strancima, better known in the field by its English acronym SFA). As one of the Service’s officials put it, Lipa is “the first center to be managed entirely by national institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina” [23], and represents a sort of pilot project in the transition plan expected by the EU and IOM. In 2021, the EU financed the construction of a dedicated detention area, transforming Lipa into a “Multi-purpose Reception and Identification Centre” [24]. This explains the tension that leads to restricting access to the camp, and the pressure not to provide information to outsiders – according to several exiles encamped there in the spring of 2024.

This is why geographer Louis Fernier has used a spatial reconstruction method in order to map the living space of the camp, based on evacuation plans and testimonies [25].

In 2023, the people encamped at Lipa spoke of relatively good conditions, compared with camps in other countries (hence the term “VIP” camp on Louis Fernier’s map). However, the remoteness of the camp, coupled with the inadequate resources of daily life, contributed then to what he analysed in his PhD as “spatial offenses” [26] against exiles.

In spring 2024, the talks about poor living conditions are more numerous and vehement. Despite the rather clement accommodation conditions at this time (between 348 and 603 people registered at Lipa, for a capacity of 1,512 beds), exiles seem to lack in the camps everything that the EU and its delegation in Bosnia-Herzegovina pride themselves on funding. These words contrast with the “good-natured” atmosphere described in the IOM fortnightly reports [27].

Inside the Lipa camp, the contrast is all the more striking, given that the EU logo is everywhere, alongside those of the IOM and of the dozen or so NGOs authorized to intervene in the camp to guarantee minimum reception conditions. As S* explains: “The doctor only comes for an hour on Mondays and an hour on Thursdays. If someone is about to die, what are they going to do?”. Such descriptions echo the opinions of many observers: indeed, these precarious housing conditions motivate the regular presence of collectives such as No Name Kitchen, with volunteers trying to make up for the shortage of foodstuffs or Non Food Items (clothing, hygiene kits, etc.).

The access road to the camp is another evocative symbol of this contrast. On this dusty, cracked, unmaintained road, visitors come across all-terrain vehicles and vans emblazoned with the EU logo. The latter are the result of expensive donations: in particular, black all-terrain vehicles worth 370,000 euros were donated in March 2023 to the Directorate for the Coordination of Police Forces (which took over responsibility for camp security the previous year) [28], and white pickups and vans were donated in February 2024 to the Border Police to “support operational actions in regional offices”, like the one in Bihać, amounting to 500,000 euros [29].

On the other hand, segregation and destitution are good opportunities for some local shopkeepers. Several stores are tolerated on the wasteland adjoining the camp: needed by the encamped people, the products sold there are also appreciated by the police officers who come there daily to buy bread, cigarettes... Several derelict sheds suggest an important past activity; among these is the trace of a store with a cynical name: the “Game shop”.

In the main private shop still in operation, one can find “everything for the game”: warm clothing and walking boots for men; sleeping bags; and SIM cards that can only be used for internet in Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. One of the salesmen describes the profits made locally from migrants:

“People here are generally not happy about the migrants’ presence, they accuse them of the slightest theft or criminal act. But, at the same time, the locals make a big business out of it. Just imagine, if you think of the sales, the accommodation, the taxis!” [30].

In fact, in Lipa there is also a steady stream of taxis taking turns to transport the encamped men to the centre of Bihać. “It’s non-stop work, 24 hours a day”, one of them tells me. Trips into town are frequent, to get supplies, to see relatives in the family camp, or to try the game. There are always one to five cars waiting to be boarded: each journey costs 20 euros, so travellers try to get together to share the cost. In front of the camp; taxi business cards carpet the dirt floor.

Some drivers make no secret of the fact that they generate a very lucrative business and “use migrants for money”, in the words of one of them. Another, more measured, describes at length a not-so-profitable and rather risky business:

“With the fuel, or anytime you don’t end up in the right place, in the end you just break even. (...) Five or six years ago, if you took someone in your vehicle even as far as the bus stop, let alone to the border, they could arrest you and put you in prison; it was the case for my colleague, and I had a trial. This is the only place where they can lock you up for trafficking without you even having crossed a border!” [31].

The Bosnian legal framework has in fact made it possible to penalize the transport of illegal migrants, resulting in several prison sentences for taxi drivers. It has also largely contributed to criminalizing any type of aid given to exiles outside the channels of the humanitarian organizations partners of the authorities: spontaneous actions by the local population and distributions organized by unauthorized NGOs have been repressed in various ways (administrative barriers, prosecutions, confiscation of passports, expulsion of foreign volunteers) [32].

Recently, the transport of exiled persons has been governed by a decree which seems to regulate the ban in a more flexible way: transport is only tolerated in the context of the professional activity of a taxi, and the amount of the financial fine remains low enough for the activity to be considered profitable (around a hundred euros). As a result, more and more residents of Bihać have recently taken up this activity, with over a hundred new taxi licences issued by the end of 2023 [33].

In spite of local utilitarianism, the cordial atmosphere between some of the men encamped in Lipa and the drivers gives credit to the empathetic words I gathered:

“We help them, it’s for money, but we help them. They have enormous problems crossing the border. The Croatian police beat them up, take their money and phones and send them dogs. I’ve seen this violence first-hand.”

Indeed, exiles who have been rejected at the border by the Croatian police and want to reach the official camp at Lipa have to get there on their own: either after a two-day walk, or by calling these drivers, who sometimes accept payment for their journey (around 100 euros) at a later date.

Like most of the inhabitants of Bihać, the taxi drivers thus find themselves in outposts to observe the repressive practices of the Croatian police, and the EU control strategy on its south-eastern borders.

To be continued in the next parts of this series: the survivors of European geostrategy, the illegalities of the Croatian police and the murky game of Frontex, mortality at border rivers and the impact of the New Deal.

In the spring of 2024, Morgane Dujmovic collected some thirty stories from people placed in the Borići and Lipa camps, in the northwestern region of Bosnia-Herzegovina that borders Croatia (Una-Sana). Each of these stories sheds a harsh light on migratory projects that break down, on violated bodies, on lives that are caught at this Bosnian-Croatian border, today the outer limit of the EU and the Schengen area [34]. Who are these people trying to reach Europe, at the risk of losing everything? What does this border violence mean for them?

This portfolio article is the second in a series looking at the human consequences of European migration policies outsourced to the Balkans, entitled: “Rivers are deadly if you’re not on the right side”. It was first published on Mediapart, Le Courrier des Balkans and visioncarto.net. Our warmest thanks to the visionscarto team for their work in proofreading and editing this text, especially to Isabelle Saint-Saëns for the English version.

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Episode #2: The Survivors of the Border

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In the spring of 2024, I brought the CartoMobile to the outskirts of the Lipa and Borići camps. In a converted truck, this on-board research device enables me to bring participatory mapping workshops to exiled people caught in the meshes of the border. My aim is to include these people in the representation of their own narrative, where migration policies encourage their sidelining, invisibilization, silencing.

The CartoMobile functions as a space for creation and work, adapted to intellectual reflection and self-expression; it is also a space for respite and rest, when the violence of the border context imposes it (absence of intimate space, eviction, deprivation of shelter) [35].

In Lipa and Borići, all the people I have welcomed in the CartoMobile had been affected by gradual institutional violence during their journey to Europe. My presence in these places generated a word-of-mouth reaction: I was identified as someone writing about border issues and their violence. As a result, some of the people encamped there came to meet me to tell me about their game [36]. From these numerous testimonies, a unanimous phrase emerged: “Police of Croatia: problem!’.

Getting pushed back, away from the law and out of sight

The inhabitants of Bihać are at advanced posts to observe the repressive practices of the Croatian police (see episode 1 above). Taxi drivers, in particular, are regularly contacted after pushbacks, to take people from the place of refoulement (usually an isolated area in the forest or mountains), to the town of Bihać or the Lipa camp. As one of the drivers I met in Lipa explained:

“We help them, it’s for money, but we help them. They have enormous problems crossing the border. The Croatian police beat them up, take their money and phones and send dogs. I’ve seen this violence first-hand”.

Of the twenty-four exiles I met in Lipa, twenty-three had already tried to cross to Croatia. Most were on their fifth or sixth failed crossing; one had tried 26 times. During their refoulement, none of these people had received a copy of any document. This was the case for H*, R*, T* or U* [37], who did not even see a single written document during their refoulement. This is also the case for B*, who explained that he “signed a lot of papers, without understanding anything because they were in Croatian”.

The reason is simple: a large proportion of these deportations are carried out illegally. They even take place outside the frameworks designed over the last twenty years to organize expulsions, such as readmission agreements. The latter have proliferated under the impetus of European institutions, in order to enable the rapid removal of a person to a state in which he or she has merely been staying or transiting [38]. Readmission procedures are, however, subject to minimum procedural guarantees - in particular, receiving a written decision on the grounds for removal, being informed of one’s rights and being able to understand the decision in a known language.

The recorded illegal removals go even further: they openly violate the European Convention on Human Rights (which prohibits collective expulsions on motives which are not individualized) and the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which in itself should guarantee the principle of non-refoulement. According to this principle, states are prohibited from returning an individual to a country where his or her life or freedom is seriously threatened – i.e. if the individual is at risk of persecution, torture or degrading treatment on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Non-refoulement implies that all requests for asylum must be registered, and that the person making the request must be protected while his or her application is examined.

This text is included in the acquis communautaire and secondary legislation on asylum, with which both European institutions and Member States must comply. Nonetheless asylum requests expressed in Croatian border regions are not taken into account, as all testimonies concur in affirming. People seeking protection are well aware of this, and many have experienced it first-hand during their own refoulement: the aim of the game at this border is not simply to enter Croatian territory, but to reach the capital, Zagreb, where current practices are reputed to be more respectful of the right to asylum.

B*, a young Syrian who had just been turned back to Bihać despite his request for asylum to the Croatian police, put it simply: it is “a strange game, a completely crazy game!”. When we met, he was stunned by the idea that an institution could act so openly illegally on European soil.

A word has become widespread to describe the increasingly frequent refoulements carried out outside legal framework: pushback. Its variation, “to get pushed back”, has also become commonplace. The Balkan-based Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) estimates that the term first appeared with the mass illegal returns from Croatia and Hungary to Serbia from 2016 onwards [39], when the official Balkan migration corridor closed [40]. More generally, pushbacks are used in all chain removals from Austria to the southern Balkans – as documented notably by the Push back alarm Austria initiative from 2021. Illegal refoulements have also been widely observed at the internal borders of the Schengen area: in France, the Association nationale d’assistance aux frontières pour les étrangers (Anafé) publishes numerous reports on the subject [41]. At the French-Italian border in particular, the recurrent practice led to a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union on September 21, 2023 [42].

The corollary of pushbacks is the outpouring of violence made possible by the absence of rights. There have been countless reports by researchers [43], associations [44] and institutions [45] documenting the violence perpetrated by police forces in the Balkan states, particularly since 2016 and the closure of the formal Balkan corridor. Now, the thousands of stories collected add up to a sum. Those compiled by the BVMN network can be consulted in an online database and an open-access Black Book of Pushbacks [46] , a truly painstaking effort to reconstruct the sequence of events and their massive nature.

The first Black Book, published in 2020, listed 12,000 cases of violence, depicted on 1,500 pages; the second edition of the Black Book, published two years later, in 2022, counted 25,000 cases on 3,000 pages of description (more than double).

The map below spatializes these acts of violence and attempts to reveal, behind the numbers, the individuality of the people who gave their testimony – whose identities are anonymized by the drawing [47].

First published in Atlas des migrations dans le monde. Libertés de circulation, frontières, inégalités, Migreurop, Casella-Colombeau Sara (dir.), Armand Colin, 2022, p.121 © Morgane Dujmovic

Detailed testimonies, compiled by BVMN according to a precise methodology, report various types of violence: insults; beatings; blows and injuries; theft, confiscation and destruction of property; dog attacks; armed threats; mutilation. Some practices are particularly inventive: intimidation and humiliation, such as marking people with a cross of red paint on the head [48], or forced undressing. They also deliberately endanger people by forcing them to swim out to sea or into icy rivers.

Testimonies go as far as allegations of rape and torture, which have been relayed by Amnesty International, among others, and taken up in court rulings. For example, in January 2021, the Court of Rome issued a judgment in favour of a claimant who had been subjected to illegal chain-removal between Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, based on the testimony he had given to BVMN [49]. This work by civil society volunteers has become a necessity for documenting the facts, in the absence of any investigation by the public authorities.

Survivors of a European geostrategy of violence

Dismissal, refusal, expulsion, refoulement or pushbacks... Words cannot express the indelible imprint of these experiences of violence. Nor can numbers measure the impact of these inhuman and degrading practices. But in the presence of the people it affects, this widespread violence takes on a consistency: that of the countless traces left by pushbacks on bodies and in traumatic narratives.

In Borići and Lipa, everyone carries with them, or on them, a story of physical or psychological violence endured. M* has an injured leg from his last attempt to enter Croatia, and can no longer afford to walk, in the absence of proper examination and care. For T*, his life’s work and dreams were shattered at the Croatian border: “My boxing career came to an end because the Croatian police injured my right and left knees”.

His mental strength enables him to put things into perspective: “There are those who have become completely unable to walk, and this continues to happen here in Bosnia”. F* says he has suffered violence at the hands of the Croatian police, which he does not allow himself to detail. E* explains that music gives him the strength not to go mad.

Far from the miserabilist or victimizing portrayals – which would have us believe that people who are violently repressed are victims by nature, when in fact they are victims of clearly identifiable legislation, systems and practices [50] – it is important to take the time to ask a simple question: who are the people targeted by such violence?

“Here, you could write a book about everyone”. As R*, one of the men I met in Lipa, suggests, migratory journeys are rich and plural. The routes differ, whether you come from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa. The socio-economic profiles range from the unemployed, to students, to the qualified; in Lipa, you’ll find a cook, an economist, an engineer, a musician, a professional boxer... The taxi drivers know it well: “Among them, you’ll find highly educated people, graduates, even professors”.

These multiple experiences show that it is pointless to compare the reasons for departure: people flee wars as much as persecutions, or social and political contexts that make a decent life impossible.

Another disturbing trend is that many of the people blocked in the canton of Una-Sana have already spent time in EU member states, sometimes for several years, before new physical and administrative barriers were erected. These are the result of tougher legislations introduced with the construction of the Schengen area in the 2000s. Control is now exercised upstream of the Schengen area, from the moment a Schengen visa application is submitted in the country of departure; it then extends to all transit countries, where EU-funded control systems are outsourced; finally, administrative barriers are put in place following forced returns to the country of origin, for example via bans from European territory.

See the map online (only in French)

J* tells me that he lived legally in France in the 1990s, where part of his family still lives, before returning to Tunisia; to make the same journey again twenty years later, he had to take an illegal route through Turkey, Bulgaria, Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he is now at a standstill. For his part, X* was able to work for two years in Italy after leaving Morocco; he was then deported to Serbia, from where he resumed his journey towards Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro, where I met him before he in turn joined one of the IOM camps in Bosnia.

These stories illustrate that people caught in the “buffer-zone” of the Balkan borders are subject to a gradual process of “illegalization” [51]. As Steffen Mau rightly writes, a “cascade of borders” stands in front of those who take the Balkan routes [52]. But this multiplied border operates beyond the Balkan space: it is “embedded in a supra-regional constellation” and integrated into EU border and migration management – or, more precisely, reactivated in the Balkans by the EU.

People caught up in these extended border meshes experience cumulative, gradual violence. Beyond its administrative, filtering function (see episode 1 above), the Balkan “buffer-zone” fulfils a biopolitical, degrading function: if people categorized as undesirables do not give up, they arrive in Europe increasingly destroyed by the crossing.

A sensitive experience of border violence

I sought to give an account of this gradual violence with other words than those of the researcher, which tend to neutralize violence in order to objectify it. The methodology I use in the field aims to facilitate the expression of narratives and knowledge derived from the experience of borders. My approach is to include people in the representation of their journey, through participatory mapping workshops [53]. When imposed by the violence of the border context (lack of intimate space, evictions, shelter deprivation), these workshops take place in a converted vehicle (the CartoMobile), designed as a space for respite, creation and work, better suited for self-expression and intellectual reflection.

In the spring of 2024, I took the CartoMobile to the outskirts of the Lipa and Borići camps. It welcomed several people, all affected by gradual institutional violence during their journey to Europe. The cartographic work I undertook with R* illustrates his journey from Tunisia to Bosnia-Herzegovina, attempting to adopt his gaze, to approach the sensitive dimension of his experience. The resulting narrative map bears the title of a quotation from R*: “Ten years of travel, and how many borders before I have the right to become someone?” [54].

R*’s individual journey reflects macro realities. Like J* and X*, this is not his first time in Europe: in 2013, he left Tunisia following the Arab Springs, to reach Italy by sea, then France and Germany. Five years passed before his asylum application was rejected and he was deported back to Tunisia with a five-year ban.

R* set off again in 2019, this time via Turkey. This was the beginning of a series of deportations across seven countries in south-eastern Europe. Over the course of this five-year journey, until our meeting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the map shows how the border gradually thickens and the journey fragments, seeking new routes through EU member states (Greece, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia), or non-member states that apply the border control measures promoted by the former (Northern Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina). This stage of the journey reveals the “cascading” border that can be experienced when approaching the EU, when one is engaged on roads made illegal.

R*’s testimony is also among those that question the role of Frontex, the agency being mentioned as responsible for illegal and violent refoulements at two stages of the journey (at the Macedo-Greek and Croatian-Bosnian borders) [55].

From R*’s perspective, the border experience can be understood on several levels. In addition to geopolitical and administrative barriers, there are physical, geographical and individual borders: on the one hand the Mediterranean Sea, the Balkan mountains and border rivers, such as the one he accidentally fell into in 2023; on the other hand his own body, whose capacities have deteriorated since that accident and an hospitalization for several months. This is partly how R* explained his difficulties in undertaking the game to Croatia (two attempts in one year).

The fact that he considers himself “stuck” in Bosnia-Herzegovina is also the effect of the tightened control systems at the Bosnian-Croatian border, with regard to his whole journey:

“I left 10 years ago, I’ve crossed more than 10 countries. I’ve been stuck here in Bosnia for 10 months. Eventually, I was stopped here at the Croatian border. Of all the borders, Croatia is the most difficult”.

However, the words that accompanied the mapping process reflect his lucidity about the dissuasive function of indiscriminate police violence: “They hit a lot to scare us, to prevent us from crossing the border again. But they’re afraid of terrorists, not people like us”.

With R*, our graphic choices sought to convey this retrospective experience. Of a body affected by the hardships of travel, at the centre of the map. Of a border that imprisons, hence the circular arrangement of the countries crossed. Of a journey fragmented by multiple expulsions, rendered by the dislocation of spatial landmarks. Of a sticky, omnipresent and insidious illegality, in the image of the snatches of experience that wind their way through. Of long, cyclical time, of the eternal game starting again. And, at last, of an uncertain and misunderstood condition, as reflected in his question: “How many borders [do I have to cross] before I have the right to become someone?”.

On the scale of journeys lasting several years, border violence permeates memories as much as future prospects. B* deplores the fact that his little brother’s legs bear the scars of the long journey from Syria through the Balkans. H* describes how his health has plummeted since his confinement in Serbia, showing me the anti-anxiety medication given to him in the Lipa camp: “I used to be fit, very sporty, and now: cigarettes, psychologist, medication”. As for E*, he talks at length about his condition as a black man in the Balkans, since his arrival on an island on the Greek-Turkish border.

The physical and psychological impacts of Balkan journeys continue to be observed across time and distance, for example in those who later reach the French-Italian border [56]. In the map below, made at the Terrasses Solidaires refuge in Briançon in 2023, Marouane has recomposed his Balkan experience by associating an emotion or key word with each country he crossed: agony [agonie, in French] for Morocco, racism [racisme] in Turkey, fear [peur] in Serbia and death [mort] in Hungary. More generally, when exiled people escape from the Balkans, their retrospective account takes the shape of of a veritable “journey of death” [57].

While these stories of border violence are singular, they are recurrent enough to be significant and instructive. The huge amount of the testimonies reveals the experience of a “mobile” border, a “borderity” that is exercised along the way, with little discernment [58]. Several authors have shown that violence is an integral and structural part of the border, either as a means of asserting the State [59], or as a means of depriving people of certain resources [60].

From the accounts of R* and the other people I met at the Bosnian-Croatian border, I understand that this deprivation targets personal achievements and fairly simple life projects, in front of which the warlike geostrategy deployed by the EU seems disproportionate.

Eventually, testimonies from the Balkans lead to the chilling realization that physical and psychological violence has become part of the border control strategies of several European states, supported in this by the EU. The border filter no longer operates so much on the level of rights linked to status (since these rights are massively violated), but on each individual’s ability to survive this institutionalized violence.

Those who emerge unscathed are the survivors of the European border.

To be continued in the third part of this series: How did the Croatian police reach such a level of violence and illegality? What is the responsibility of the Frontex agency, increasingly present in the Balkans?