The new refugee ‘Balkan Route’: Field notes from the Bosnian border

Titolo Rivista RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA
Autori/Curatori Claudio Minca, Dragan Umek
Anno di pubblicazione 2020 Fascicolo 2020/1
Lingua Inglese Numero pagine 30 P. 5-34 Dimensione file 445 KB
DOI 10.3280/RGI2020-001001
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This article is one of the results of an ongoing project focussed on the refugee Balkan Route, which began in 2015. In adopting a style and structure that have been deliberately conceived as a first hand fieldnote-based account, we discuss the informal mobilities of refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the country was incorporated in the Balkan Route in 2018. In particular, we investigate how this change in the Route has impacted the Bosnian Canton of Una-Sana with the arrival of thousands of refugees in the cities of Bihac and Velika Kladusa. After discussing in detail the emergence of several makeshift and semi-formal camps in these two cities, and the related difficult living conditions experienced by a growing number of refugees waiting to cross the Croatian border and enter the EU, the article concludes with a few general considerations on the geopolitical relevance of the new Balkan Route and on how the border politics in the region tends to be, literally, ‘marked’ on the bodies of the refugees.

Il presente articolo e il risultato di un progetto di ricerca che ha come "focus" la cosiddetta ‘Rotta Balcanica’ dei rifugiati, un progetto iniziato nel 2015 e che ha previsto, nel corso degli anni, numerose visite istituzionali e intenso lavoro sul campo. Per tale motivo, lo stile e la struttura del testo sono stati deliberatamente concepiti come un ‘resoconto di prima mano’, frutto dell’esperienza diretta sul terreno, nel quale viene data priorita agli elementi ‘empirici’ della nostra ricerca anche per enfatizzare il ritmo dei cambiamenti della condizione dei rifugiati nella regione e la precarieta della loro condizione. L’articolo intende proporre un’analisi della mobilita informale dei rifugiati in Bosnia-Erzegovina, dopo che nel 2018 il Paese e stato incorporato nelle nuove rotte migratorie della regione. In particolare, la nostra analisi si focalizza sull’impatto che tale evento ha avuto sul Cantone di Una-Sana con l’arrivo di migliaia di rifugiati intenzionati ad attraversare il confine. Dopo aver esaminato l’emergere di numerosi campi formali e informali e le precarie condizioni di vita dei profughi nelle cittadine di Bihać e Velika Kladusa, l’articolo chiude con alcune considerazioni di carattere generale sulla rilevanza geopolitica della nuova Rotta Balcanica e su come la ‘geopolitica dei confini’ messa in atto dai Paesi Balcanici si imprima, letteralmente, sul corpo dei rifugiati che tentano di raggiungere, lungo questo corridoio informale, l’Unione Europea.

Keywords:Balkan Route, Bosnia, campi, profughi, geopolitica, confini.

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Claudio Minca, Dragan Umek, The new refugee ‘Balkan Route’: Field notes from the Bosnian border in "RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA" 1/2020, pp 5-34, DOI: 10.3280/RGI2020-001001