In-Securitization through Externalization? The EU and the Western Balkans “Borderlands”

The massive flows of migrants traversing the “Western Balkans”1 region in the attempt to reach central and northern Europe in 2015 have impinged on a fragile context made of fragmented local societies, still dealing with unresolved issues connected to the legacy of war and violence in the 1990s as well as scarce experiences of effective regional cooperation ever since (Meka & Bianchini, 2020; Qorraj, 2018). Despite that, the regional countries have cooperated among themselves and with the EU in the face of migration along the Balkan Route for the management of the flows by improving border control capacities and exchanging information, ultimately reducing the unwanted mobility of migrants. In this way, they have contributed to the “securitization” of the entire region, in line with EU policies (Bogucewicz, 2020; Šelo Šabić, 2017; Tomic, 2017; Webb, 2020). In fact, the flows of migrants entering Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries have represented a break in the existing European border regime, causing profound insecurity and political impasse, and subsequently triggering several different yet often coordinated reactions from both EU and non-EU member states.