ALTERMOBILITIES: EVERYDAY LIFE ON THE MOVE IN THE WESTERN BALKANS

Abstract

This dissertation contributes to migration studies from below by focusing on people on the move and their political agency. It conceptualizes processes of altermobilities along the Western Balkan Route (WBR). This dissertation draws on six and a half months of qualitative research (2017-2018) and some field revisits (summers of 2021 and 2022) in Srbija (Serbia) and Bosna i Hercegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina). The ethnographic data collection included semi-structured interviews, structured interviews, participant observation, and follow-ups through social media and smartphone messaging applications. The participants were people on the move, governmental and non-governmental organization staff, and humanitarian volunteers along the WBR. This thesis also blends in an autoethnographic approach to knowledge production—the author’s autobiographical experiences as a former refugee are situated alongside contemporary people on the move to reveal the power of those who are perceived to be powerless. While it is important to discuss the sovereign state’s wrongdoings and condemn border violence to hold states accountable, we must also acknowledge how people avoid these obstacles and reach safe destinations. My concept of altermobilities removes negative connotations surrounding people on the move— they are humans who, through solidarity and self-capacity, move forward in the face of state violence. The first chapter situates this study within the critical geopolitics’ theoretical framework and feminist geopolitics conversations. The second and third chapters discuss my autoethnographic knowledge production methods in Srbija and Bosna i Hercegovina, respectively. The fourth and fifth chapters outline the topology of the self-made squats system and the everyday practices people on the move developed along the route. The sixth chapter demonstrates the power of the migrants’ rumors as an everyday lived knowledge and the state’s ineffective attempts at counter-rumors. Chapter seven unravels the web of interconnectedness between people on the move, their things, and places—such assemblages create everyday political subjectivity along the route and elicit (often violent) state reactions. When read together, this dissertation foregrounds people on the move’s wit and resourcefulness in incredibly precarious conditions and times. This thesis introduces three main interventions. Firstly, it humanizes people on the move and tells their stories of survival and altermobilities along the WBR. Secondly, it recenters the researcher into knowledge production; a researcher’s ‘I,’ when combined with the experiences of those researched, can shed light on everyday practices of marginalized people and illustrate how their political subjectivity reimagined sovereign state territories. Lastly, this work considers critical geopolitics through assemblage thinking to explore the power of assemblages (i.e., of people on the move, their things, and places). Each one of these assemblage elements acts in symbiosis to allow altermobilities to occur across the WBR. Crucially, people will move forward—fences, deterrence, and violence at the borders may slow them, but will never stop them. The people on the move involuntarily escaped their homes, and many experienced (extended) violence before embarking. There was no option but to move forward. Nothing could dampen the dream of a safe and secure environment for themselves and their families, not even the potential of death at the border.