Balkan Mobility

Since the end of the Balkan wars in the 90s there have been a continuous mobility flows towards Western European countries from the Western Balkans. This mobility was mainly possible under the umbrella of the asylum protection. However, since the beginning of the humanitarian crisis on the European borders, some EU Member States, with Germany ahead, had changed their asylum laws, including Balkan countries as "safe" countries. This fact, together with the absence of visa liberalization to Kosovo and Bosnia, have made legal mobility from these countries more difficult. In this paper, we will try to identify which will be the main drivers of mobility and which kinds of migration have been the most frequent ones (temporary, permanent, circular) and how these trends have changed (or not) depending on the administrative barriers applied towards mobility.