How Bosnia and Herzegovina Was Bordered: The Supervised Making of a Border/Mobility Assemblage in the European Semiperiphery

Abstract

This article has an empirical and a conceptual aim. The first aim is to provide additional historical depth to recent analyses of the “Balkan Route” through Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with a reconstruction of the making of a border/mobility assemblage during the first two and a half decades of that state’s existence. These processes occurred under direct foreign supervision and were framed in terms of the conditionality of the “Road into Europe” specific to the European semiperiphery. The second aim concerns a prominent feature in recent studies of borders and mobility: the use of assemblage theory. I use my historical analysis to reflect on the implications of that theory’s programmatic call to foreground heterogeneity and provisionality. Specifically, in tracing patterns and tensions in the bordering of BiH I call attention to the importance of actors’ encounters with already-assembled hierarchical configurations, provisional but effective at the time of the encounter.

Keywords

• border
• mobility
• assemblage
• bosnia and herzegovina
• european union