ALTERMOBILITIES: EVERYDAY LIFE ON THE MOVE IN THE WESTERN BALKANS
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2023
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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.
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Keywords
Geography, Afghan Parks, Altermobilities, Autoethnography, Power of things, Self-made squat topology, Western Balkan Route
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