The reproduction of borders and the contagiousness of illegalisation: A case of a Belgrade youth hostel

Abstract

For the past couple of years, Serbia has become a transit country for the ever increasing number of migrants from Africa and Asia, travelling towards the EU. As part of the process of approaching the EU - first achieving the liberalisation of the visa regime for entry into the Schengen area in 2009 and then getting the official status of a candidate member in 2012 - Serbia needed to harmonise its policies with those of the EU, especially in the areas of border control and migration management. As a result, Serbia adopted a series of laws and policies which effectively illegalise migrants. In this paper, we first look into how migrant “illegality” is produced by Serbian migration legislation and policy, and second, we look at the consequences of this illegalisation. The first set of consequences are those that are felt by migrants themselves, as they are its principle target. The second set of consequences affects those persons that come into contact with the illegalised migrants. We speak of contagiousness of illegalisation, which affects those people who are providing professional services to illegalised persons. Under the treat of possible criminalisation, pressure is put on them to conduct “legality” checks and thus reproduce borders far away from the actual state border. We look particularly at reproduction of borders in the area of accommodation of migrants, taking as a case study a Belgrade youth hostel.

Keywords

• migrants
• illegalisation
• contagiousness of illegality
• criminalisation
• crimigration
• reproduction of borders
• Serbia
• Belgrade
• youth hostel