Movements upon movements: Refugee and activist struggles to open the Balkan route to Europe

ABSTRACT

In 2015–2016, 1.2 million refugees sought safety in Europe via the Balkan Route. How, in an era of securitized borders, did this unprecedented movement of people from the global south reach the global north? Ethnographic research from two post-Yugoslav nodes along the Route—Preshevë, Serbia and Ljubljana, Slovenia—offers answers that diverge from state-centric accounts, revealing that the relationships between movements, in the sense of both migration and activism, were integral to the dynamics of the Route.