ABSTRACT
For a brief period of time, between September 2015 and March 2016, the ‘Balkan passage’ or ‘Balkan corridor’ served as the main and preferred route to and through Europe before the EU-Turkey deal came into force. In this case, the Balkans were, and continue to be, ambiguously placed within the European spatial ordering and imaginary (not least because the Hungary/Serbia as well as the Serbia/Croatia border demarcates spaces within and outside of the EU): neither fully inside nor fully outside, they represent a grey zone in which the borders of Europe continue to be contested and redrawn. The Balkans represent the shifting boundary between an ‘authentic’ European space and a more compromised, supposedly less civilized Europe. This chapter will study the role of the Balkan passage in a European context with a focus on mediatized political discourse. It claims that the notion of the Balkan corridor in light of Europe’s migration crisis can be understood as acceleration and amplification of anxieties surrounding the securitization of Europe’s identitarian and spatial boundaries because of the Balkans’ liminal role in Europe, while the influx of undesirable Others that find their way through this passage became a force of abjection that threatens Europe’s integrity.
