ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a picture of the potential intersections of gender and borders in the Western Balkans, and their impact on women non-citizens prior to, during, and after the “crisis”. It discusses the multiplicity of borders and bordering practices, deployed as conventional and “humanitarian” interventions in the region, and highlights their role in regulating women’s transborder mobility. Trafficking has been constructed as a gendered issue from the very beginning of the renewed national and international engagement as women border crossers ‘tend to embody a particular kind of “powerlessness” in the Western imagination’. The goal of ending trafficking and exploitation has commonly been pursued through graphic, violent, and gendered representation of women’s vulnerable and sexualised bodies but also through restrictive border control measures. The role of technology as a potential facilitator of trafficking and a tool that can potentially prevent exploitation has been emphasised in the literature.
