ABSTRACT
The Global North has been consumed by a fortification of borders and externalisation of bordering practices that alters the social, political, and economic milieu in countries of origin and transit. This chapter examines the origins, developments, and impact of multiplication of borders on non-citizens transiting the Western Balkans. It analyses the expansion and proliferation of borders, and the regulation of the mobile population prior to, during, and after the migrant “crisis” of the 2010s. The chapter focuses specifically on measures implemented at physical, internal, and digital borders along the Western Balkans route. It argues that, as the migrant “crisis” progressed the right number of the right people allowed to transit through was established through the concoction of solid, liquid, and cloudy borders in the region. The migrant “crisis” amplified and accelerated a process that has long been in the making: the process of de-balkanisation of the Balkans.
