The Balkan Route (and Its Afterlife): The New Normal in the European Politics of Migration

This article examines the political and policy-related developments regarding the Balkan Route intended both as a migration path and as a conceptual node where both symbolic and physical re-bordering processes converge. The article argues that these two processes represent the foundation on which the sum of the policies to address migration issues enacted in the last years are based: specific constructions of migrants and asylum seekers as well as of the Balkan region have shaped policies to push back migrants, eventually halting mobility and implementing containment in formal and informal camps in the region. This is not the result of challenges connected to ‘crises’ and ‘emergencies’, but rather the intended aim of both EU and non-EU national governments in the absence of more far-reaching strategies on migration and integration. These developments represent the political background of vulnerability and precariousness experienced by stranded migrants along the Balkan Route.