The European Borderspace in Practice: Rethinking Bordering and Migration Control in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) became part of the EUropean borderspace in 2018, when an unprecedented increase in the arrivals of people on the move turned the country into a focal point along the Balkan migration route. Since then, complex and dysfunctional mechanisms of migration management have emerged, with overlapping roles between local governments and international organizations and a clear tendency toward the securitization of borders through externalization practices aimed at creating a European borderland (Balibar, 2009). The discriminatory and oppressive dynamics put in place by bordering practices are proficiently analyzed by critical post-structural literature; in particular, Tazzioli (2020) sees migration policies in terms of biopolitical control, explaining how institutions govern migrant lives, producing patterns of exclusion. In addition, postcolonial perspectives (Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2018; Rexhepi, 2023) interpret the process of border externalization as a form of imperialist expansion, highlighting how contemporary border policies are shaped by colonial power relations that reproduce racial hierarchies. Drawing on critical and postcolonial perspectives, this paper foregrounds intersubjectivity and relationality, delving into the dynamics of boundary-making through which centers of power are produced and contested. In order to explore how the power imbalances of the EU border regime are produced in BiH, the analysis centers on two concepts used as analytical tools: liminality and visibility. To begin with, framing the Bosnian borderspace as a liminal space - an in-between zone of transition and ambiguity - makes it possible to highlight the situational and processual nature of bordering practices. This perspective takes distance from fixed subject/object understandings and sheds light on the multiplicity of practices that shape the lived reality at the borders (Mälksoo in Horvath et al., 2015). Building on this theoretical lens, this analysis provides an understanding of how power asymmetries are produced through the forces that shape what is made visible and through the often violent production of invisibility (Lisle in Guillaume & Bilgin, 2017). Seeing the Bosnian border site through the lenses of liminality and visibility allows for a reconsideration of normative accounts that tend to depict power relations as static, highlighting the significance of non-institutional actors who operate outside established structures of authority. It becomes possible, therefore, to draw attention to migrant agency within the complex context of BiH’s borderspace, as well as to the subversive potential of everyday resistance practices and border-crossing attempts, commonly referred to as the game (Martini, 2024; Zocchi, 2023). Starting from this standpoint, it becomes also possible to re-establish the crucial role of the solidarity actors who, with varying levels of political engagement and commitment, actively support the movement of people and participate in diverse subversive practices (Ambrosini, 2022; Della Porta & Steinhilper, 2021). This perspective enables a nuanced exploration of the micropolitical dynamics of border sites, examining how power relations are produced within the specific context of the border site and how forms of contestation emerge.