Balkan Migration Crises and Beyond

Anna Krasteva

doi:10.30965/18763332-45020001

Abstract

Abstract This article has a threefold aim. First, to create a typology of Balkan migration crises. Second, to reflect on how migration is theorized in a crisis situation by analyzing the competing conceptual clusters and proposing new ones. Third, to measure the ratio between the region’s crisis and anti-crisis potential in the field of migration in regard both to agency and policies. The article is structured in four parts. The first part reconstructs the conceptual history of “crisis” and its affirmation as the hegemonic discourse of contemporary times. The second part introduces temporality as a theoretical zoom that illuminates a different migration profile depending on whether we are observing it in a short-term, mid-term, or long-term perspective. The third part presents a new typology of Balkan migration crises based on different criteria. It structures Balkan migration crises into two clusters: real and constructed. The article seeks to answer the question of why, given the abundance of real refugee and migration crises, new ones are constructed. The fourth part goes beyond the crisis and analyzes the migration and development nexus as a major policy innovation. The conclusion offers a comparative analysis of the diverse Balkan migration crises.

Highlights

“Here is Serbia, whether it is a war, sanctions, Kosovo, it mostly works the same way
People say – the crisis in Serbia, it is not the crisis, it is Serbia.”. This statement by a Serbian refugee in Belgrade who fled from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 illustrates three phenomena: the multiplicity and omnipresence of crises in the Balkans; the systemic affinity between migration and crisis; and the embeddedness of crises in national identity
The Western Balkans are aspiring to EU membership, but the region is fragmented by the different stages of EU integration of the different countries – from potential candidates to current candidates to full members

Summary

Introduction*

“Here is Serbia, whether it is a war, sanctions, Kosovo, it mostly works the same way. The temporality and migration nexus forms another conceptual cluster with modernity where it is linked to globalization, nation-states, multicultural societies, and the neo-liberal order (Cwerner 2001; Castles, Haas, and Miller 2014) Both clusters are relevant in analyzing migrations in the Balkan region of post-conflict reconstruction, creation of new states, and redefinition of the role of agency in this dynamic geo-political context. In-between the two poles of time, the long-term and the short-term, Braudel situates the conjunctural temporality: “A new kind of historical narrative has appeared, that of the conjuncture, of the cycle, and even of the ‘intercycle,’ covering a decade, a quarter of a century” (ibid.: 29) These three types of temporality are necessary as a precaution against allowing the theoretical attention to be usurped by the most dramatic events and the loudest actors, and ensuring that it is evenly table 1 Migration profile according to different temporalities. The three-decade period from the beginning of the 1990s to the present is characterized by multiplication and diversification of refugee crises: – 1991–2001: Yugoslav wars and conflicts. – 2015–2016: Western Balkan refugee route. – Recent years: Inward and outward migration outbreaks. – Fluid political temporality: The populist migration crisis

The Western Balkans

Populist Migration Crisis – between Securitization and Ontological Insecurity

Objective

Findings

Bottom-up Securitization