ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the march of asylum seekers in Europe through the Western Balkan route in September 2015 and aims to clarify what kind of political agency was expressed during the course of the march that traversed the borders of the nation-states. The chapter identifies four kinds of avant-garde political agents with a cosmopolitan potential: several EU states; the part of civil society upholding some power that acted on behalf of refugees; the part of civil society upholding some power that acted to empower refugees; and finally, refugees themselves with no formal status who nevertheless acted in democratizing ways. The chapter argues that despite playing an important role in the articulation of the injustices asylum seekers are subjected to, the agents acting on impartial principles of universal scope may undermine cosmopolitan values by reproducing power disparities. The task of transforming the world should not be achieved by non-cosmopolitan means, and the chapter articulates the tension between this imperative and the necessity of cosmopolitans to make use of all types of agency and all that can be put to its use to ultimately bringing about cosmopolitan institutions required for achieving justice for refugees.
