From Gevgelija to Budapest: The bare life in transit camps of the Balkans and Eastern Europe

Abstract

At the end of August 2015, the refugee crisis was mounting across the whole European Union, and particularly in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Things were becoming heated, not only in terms of high temperatures, but also in terms of tension and debate within the European Union about how to manage what was, and still is, rightly considered a humanitarian crisis (Forino, 2015). Refugees from the Middle East, mainly – but not limited to – fleeing from conflict areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, Syria, and Iraq, were trying to enter the European Union area via Turkey and Greece, towards aspired destinations in Northern Europe. In the Balkan area and Eastern Europe, refugees were contained in organized or spontaneous transit camps close to national borders or in the main railway stations of cities. In those camps, ignominious conditions of depersonalization and deprivation of human rights and primary needs took place for thousands of people. Those lives and those bodies, in those conditions, were a classic example of the “bare life” as theorized by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2005). The bare life of refugees results from a neoliberal governance of the European Union and member states, using the state of exception as a core instrument of national sovereignty, and dividing people – and related rights – who have a recognized citizenship under a legal system from those who do not (Agamben, 2005). This life becomes stripped of any political and legal significance and protection, banished from collectivity, and perpetually exposed to violation and deprivation (Ziarek, 2012). During that time, I was traveling on my own, and had neither volunteerism or research purposes, nor was I working for non-governmental organizations or international institutions. Therefore, this report is simply based on a personal and subjective experience (see also Forino, 2015). The report presents a very brief description of the life conditions and the surrounding environments of the transit camps, in the following order: Gevgelija (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, FYROM), on the FYROM-Greece border; the Central Station in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia; Kanjiža (Serbia), on the Serbia-Hungary border; and the Keleti Station in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Camps were visited between 28 August