Abstract
In response to the mass mobilities disruption of the European Union border control regime, numerous self-organized, pro-migrant ad hoc solidarity groups proliferated across Europe. Depending on the local, national, and migratory contexts, these groups employed different methods and practices to support the people on the move and to challenge the inefficient, bureaucratized, discriminatory and securitized modes of action of official, state and humanitarian actors. Some practices that were developed in this framework of grassroots or vernacular humanitarianism with strong solidarity and a volunteer dimension (Brković, 2017; McGee and Pelham, 2017; Rozakou, 2017a; Sandri, 2018) outgrew the initial crisis context and evolved over time into distinctive formats of response to the border restrictions, exclusions, and violence. One of them is still today a lating practice of reporting of pushbacks by grassroots groups active at different locations at the southeastern territorial fringes of the EU. After reviewing the relevant literature and outlining the grassroots, self-organized, humanitarian and human rights background of pushback reports and reporting practices, the author focuses on these reports as a form of writing. Interest in the style, narrtive structure, and positionality of these reports opens questions of their parallels with ethnographic inquiries.
Highlights
The year 2015 can be understood as historical for the migration in Europe for several interconnected reasons. It will be remembered for the dramatic media images of endless groups and columns of refugees heading from Greece to the center of the European Union
The year will be remembered for mass mobilities disruption of the repressive border control regime and in actu demonstration of the agency and the power of the movements of migration
In Croatia people of different ages and with different personal histories and social backgrounds were spontaneously arriving at the border crossing or checkpoints, to share food, offer a lift, provide information, or support newcomers in some other way
Summary
The year 2015 can be understood as historical for the migration in Europe for several interconnected reasons. Activities of these groups were fostered by divergent modes: personal and professional contact, history of common activist or related engagement, as well as by social media group exchanges and public calls In these first spontaneous gatherings, differences among mostly self-organized supporters seemed obscured and power relations minimal, some of the actors very quickly gained more dominant positions, depending on a range of reasons, varying from their habitus to group dynamics. Some of these groups grew with time into formal organizations active even today, some continued to act informally, some transnationally, some merged, some switched locations or interests, some further atomized, and some shrank as the movement of people shifted in another direction or became isolated once mobile detention of the Croatian section of the Balkan refugee corridor (Hameršak & Pleše, 2018b) was fully established at the end of 2015. Be een ppo ing and epo ing well as the galloping problem of criminalization of groups and individuals involved in their production, this essay strives to approach pushbacks reports as a form of writing and to sketch their parallels with humanitarian agendas, human rights reporting, and ethnographic inquiries
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