Reappropriating the Balkan Route: Mobility Struggles and Joint-Agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

In this article the authors question how the EU’s enlistment of the post-Yugoslav states into the EU’s border regime has exacerbated local nationalisms. They also question how, on the other hand, migrant struggles to cross this territory have intersected with local movements against nationalism and silenced political alternatives. They use the notion of joint-agency, that is, the co-articulation of mobility struggles and anti­nationalist struggles, in ex-Yugoslavia to read the recent history of the route across the region generally and the current predicament in Bosnia and Herzegovina in particu­lar. This alternative reading facilitates an understanding of the potential of struggles for freedom of movement to reanimate a critique of the coloniality of power in the EUropean borderlands such as the Balkans.

Keywords

• migration
• social movements
• autonomy
• bosnia and herzegovina
• balkans
• europe