The Rise and Fall of Migration Solidarity in Belgrade

Céline Cantat (1)

1 CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS)

This article discusses the experience of migrant self-organised spaces and migration solidarity groups in Serbia (particularly Belgrade) over the last four years. It first looks at how »solidarities in transit« emerged in the country between 2015 and 2018 and analyses the heterogeneous community of actors that came together in order to provide assistance to people on the move and to support migrants’ self-organised living spaces. The article then examines the gradual marginalisation of migrant presence and migration solidarity in Belgrade. It explores how the Serbian authorities, thanks to vast amounts of European Union funding, established an institutionalised, official, camp-based, and heavily regulated refugee aid field from which political subversive actors and practices have been excluded. One of the consequences of the institutionalisation of the field is that the prescribed identity for refugee aid groups has become a purely humanitarian, non-political one. Ultimately, this article proposes an analysis of the further integration of Serbia into the EU border control regime since 2015 from the perspective of refugees’ experiences and solidarity practices.

Keywords: Balkan route; solidarity; grassroots refugee support; migration governance; NGO-isation

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Political science

Céline Cantat. The Rise and Fall of Migration Solidarity in Belgrade. movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies, 2020, The frontier within: The European border regime in the Balkans, 5 (1), pp.97-123. ⟨hal-03455795⟩