TY - JOUR
T1 - Social Boundaries at the EU Border
T2 - Engaged Ethnography and Migrant Solidarity in Bihać, Bosnia–Herzegovina
AU - Helms, Elissa
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/8/8
Y1 - 2022/8/8
N2 - This paper is a reflexive examination of ethnographic positionality in the Bosnian border town of Bihać as it experienced a bottleneck of migrants and refugees from outside of Europe attempting to reach prosperous EU states by traversing the Balkan Route of irregular migration. Drawing from critical border studies and the principles of engaged ethnography, I approach the relational quality of life on the border as it shapes and also produces social boundaries that must be navigated also by researchers. The paper gives an account of my own active engagement in migrant solidarity activities and chronicles how this positioning came to be seen as my aligning myself with one distinct “side” of the social boundary between those working to support migrants in the community, whether as part of the official migration management response or as autonomous solidarians, on one hand, or those advocating the containment and expulsion of migrants, or “anti-migrant” positions, on the other. I show how this positioning helped to reveal the relational quality of social boundaries created through different ways of relating to the border.
AB - This paper is a reflexive examination of ethnographic positionality in the Bosnian border town of Bihać as it experienced a bottleneck of migrants and refugees from outside of Europe attempting to reach prosperous EU states by traversing the Balkan Route of irregular migration. Drawing from critical border studies and the principles of engaged ethnography, I approach the relational quality of life on the border as it shapes and also produces social boundaries that must be navigated also by researchers. The paper gives an account of my own active engagement in migrant solidarity activities and chronicles how this positioning came to be seen as my aligning myself with one distinct “side” of the social boundary between those working to support migrants in the community, whether as part of the official migration management response or as autonomous solidarians, on one hand, or those advocating the containment and expulsion of migrants, or “anti-migrant” positions, on the other. I show how this positioning helped to reveal the relational quality of social boundaries created through different ways of relating to the border.
KW - Balkan Route
KW - Borders
KW - Bosnia–Herzegovina
KW - engaged ethnography
KW - migrant solidarity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135841435&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/08865655.2022.2108109
DO - 10.1080/08865655.2022.2108109
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85135841435
SN - 0886-5655
VL - 38
SP - 283
EP - 301
JO - Journal of Borderlands Studies
JF - Journal of Borderlands Studies
IS - 2
ER -