Bodies and Borders, Repertoires of violence against illegalized travelers and refugees along the Croatia/European Union border.

Abstract

This thesis provides an analysis of the repertoires of violence perpetrated against illegalized travelers and refugees along the EU border between Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The focus of the article is placed on a multi-causal approach towards analyzing violence and demonstrates how violence operates on a manifest, structural and cultural level. The in the analysis identified repertoires of violence are perpetrated by different actors, including state officials and traffickers, in different manners, including physical violence and illegal expulsions. It shows how different actors make use of similar repertoires of violence to make claims towards illegalized travelers and refugees. In this thesis it is argued that the moral panic about immigration to the EU is used as legitimization of large-scale human rights violations by member states against people on the move along the Balkan Route. Concluding that EU borders are more than territorial dividing lines, but function as in- and exclusion mechanisms and to create a normative EU identity.