In the Shadow of the Transit Spectacle

Abstract

In the shadow of a specific form of border spectacle (De Genova 2002) and the spectacle of statistics (Stierl et al. 2016), i.e. in the shadow of the spectacle of the mass transit of refugees on their way to Western Europe in the autumn and winter of 2015/2016, the so-called profiling and detention of migrants took place. Mostly invisible to the general public, this profiling led to the forced mass movement of refugees in the opposite direction and/or their explicit detention i.e. confinement. By relying on different types of sources, ranging from public reports to our own field observations, this article deals with detentions in the Croatian part of the Balkan corridor. According to the argument offered in this article, detention can be seen as an integral part of the corridor itself and can be traced from the beginning of its establishment. Furthermore, the article presents a basic outline of what was happening in the Slavonski Brod camp after the closure of the borders on the night of March 8 th to the 9 th , 2016. It proposes a possible framework for understanding the imprisonment of hundreds of people in the camp from the perspectives of the specific "productiveness" of the camp and modes of resistance towards it.

Between supporting and reporting : Grassroots textual responses to the pushbacks at the fringes of EU

“…On the following pages, I would like to outline the recent literature about the phenomena of self-organized pro-migrant citizen initiatives and groups in the critical months of 2015 and 2016, as well as to analyze the commitment of self-organized groups and initiatives to document and denunciate border violence at the external EU border, in particular, pushbacks and deportations to neighboring non-EU countries. Following my previous research about the Croatian section of the Balkan refugee corridor (Hameršak & Pleše, 2017;2018a;2018b) and Croatia's direct involvement in pushback operations since then, this paper focuses on the Croatian context in the period from the Balkan corridor and the beginning of 2016 until today.…”