From Region to Route. An Ethnography of Solidarity Infrastructure along the Western Balkan Route

This dissertation investigates the transformations of the Western Balkan route as both an object of governance and a lived, contested space shaped by practices of solidarity. Since the summer of 2015, the route has become a key site where European border externalisation, regional cooperation, and local forms of resistance intersect. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between October 2023 and November 2024 in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Zagreb (Croatia), this dissertation explores the ever-changing nature of the route by juxtaposing the macro and micro scales of analysis. To this aim, the discussion is structured around three key concepts – scales, borders, and infrastructures – which illuminate the tensions between the macro- and micro-social dynamics shaping the route. At the macro level, the research analyses how the Western Balkan route has been constructed as an object of governance through securitarian discourses embedded in the EU accession process. By examining cooperation frameworks, funding mechanisms, and policy instruments, it shows how the borders of the Schengen area have become increasingly blurred, incorporating non-EU states such as Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European migration governance model. At the micro level, the dissertation investigates solidarity actors operating in urban contexts outside institutional reception systems, supporting migrants’ presence and mobility. It argues that these initiatives, while non-confrontational, articulate a significant critique of the institutional governance models through infrastructures that facilitate the circulation of goods, information and practices. Ultimately, the dissertation demonstrates that the Western Balkan route is a space of tension: on the one hand, a geopolitical construct of multi-scalar governance aimed at controlling and illegalising migrant mobility and criminalising solidarity initiatives; on the other, a lived space where encounters and relationships are forged, giving rise to solidaristic practices that uphold dignity and guarantee access to rights. The cases of Sarajevo and Zagreb illustrate how everyday encounters between solidarity actors and migrants play a crucial role in identifying and deconstructing the proliferation of borders along the route.