The everyday at the border: Examining visual, material and spatial intersections of international politics along the ‘Balkan Route’

Abstract

This article examines the intersections between the visual, spatial and material and considers how these interactions capture the border politics of everyday ‘banal’ objects. We do this by looking at some of the objects and things that constitute the ‘Balkan Route’ through Europe: posters, signs, directions, notices, flyers and maps produced by state authorities and volunteer-led aid networks. We use objects to reflect more broadly on how seemingly banal and everyday things become incorporated into the political work of states and become constitutive of fluid borders. We argue that everyday objects become visualisations of states and authorities, and help to make and regulate physical spaces. We show how each visual object encountered along the route gives us a broader insight into the macropolitics of European border regimes, specifically the effects of ‘closed borders’ and the criminalisation of aid networks. The article pushes forward the ‘aesthetic turn’ debate in international relations by bringing in insights from political geography and materialism, and suggests that a walking methodology can be a productive way of encountering the visual and understanding how its physical location creates political effects.

The ‘Badlands’ of the ‘Balkan Route’: Policy and Spatial Effects on Urban Refugee Housing

“…Thus, squats run informal management policies, even though they are informal and have no requirement to do so. As we note elsewhere, they also operate safeguarding, health and safety policies and emergency evacuation procedures on a fairly regular basis (Obradovic‐Wochnik and Bird, 2019). This level of organisation is in place partly because squats – as the urban ‘badlands’ – need to avoid giving any reason to the local authorities for eviction or a raid, and so must maintain the housing situation such that numbers are under control and manageable, and living conditions sanitary.…”

“…As Bulley (2016) argues, people are often governed, channelled or managed in subtle ways away from public or commercial spaces which allows governments to make often racialised decisions about who is and is not seen in the public sphere (Zoppi, 2019). We find that with regards to refugee populations, this management is often carried out through selective mapping or partial representations of the city and its services (Obradovic‐Wochnik and Bird, 2019).…”

Trembling city: Policing Freetown’s war-peace transition

“…A central premise of this view on borders and bordering is that policing is not only dependent on their material or physical manifestations (Obradovic-Wochnik and Bird, 2020: 61). As indicated earlier, bordering is equally a practice informed by imaginaries and affective orientations, such as the fear and anxiety, hope and desire that were engendered spatially and relationally in Freetown during its war-peace transition – a particularly potent time of flux.…”

The Second Displacement of Refugees: Urban Regeneration Against Commoning Practices in Belgrade's Waterfront

“…Empirically, the case study fills a significant gap in research data on refugee housing and commoning practices in Belgrade, since research on refugee housing in Serbia focuses mainly on state policies (Beznec et al. 2016; Obradovic‐Wochnik and Bird 2020; Stojic Mitrovic 2019), solidarity initiatives towards refugees (Cantat 2020; Milan 2019), humanitarian aid activities (Jovanovic 2020), and refugee housing conditions in the period prior to the old train station barracks occupation (Hristic and Stefanovic 2020; Obradovic‐Wochnik 2018; Stojic Mitrovic and Meh 2015).…”