Rethinking Migrant Figures and Solidarity from the Peripheral Borderland of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

ABSTRACT Following the post-2015 migration crisis, forced migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia (MENASEA) have been stranded in the Western Balkans (WB) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). While WB and BiH citizens have been emigrating in large numbers to the EU to become new labor force, Bosnia’s new immigrants, also in search of livelihood opportunities in the EU, have ended up being stranded in BiH with slim chance of crossing the border into the EU via neighboring Croatia. From the vantage point of this new European borderland, the paper invites us to think these migrant figures together. It raises the issues of entangled inequalities and solidarity amidst border struggles and migration regimes allowing for convergences in postcolonial and postsocialist scholarship.