Geographies of migrant mobile containment along the Balkan Route

This article examines the spatial and temporal dynamics of migrant 'entrapment' in the Una-Sana Canton, a border region between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. A substantial body of scholarship has shown that journeys along migratory routes do not only consist of straightforward movement, but also involve stopping and waiting, as well as episodes of frantic hypermobility. This article focuses on a particular 'passage' along the Balkan Route, where these two dynamics converge as migrants become stranded while remaining frantically hypermobile. Through ethnographic work, we trace and analyse the complicated patterns of exhausting circular mobility experienced by three migrant families. Between frequent attempts to cross the border irregularly and seek international protection in Croatia, and pushbacks from the Croatian police, these migrant families have found themselves 'trapped in movement'. We argue that this is the result of a key strategy of deliberate 'mobile containment' enforced by border authorities, which prevents people on the move, including families with children, from accessing the protection they seek. By addressing and analysing different instances of such mobile containment, and providing a preliminary mapping of the trajectories involved, we hope to help illustrate how border enforcement strategies along the Balkan Route may imply forms of slow violence that rely on migrants' desire and imperative to move on.