(PRE)FIGURING FASCISM #1: Border Imperialism in the Balkans

It’s been a decade since the Balkan Route was declared “closed” by the EU. What followed, however, has been a surge of investment: more funding for policing, expanded infrastructures of securitization, and a growing archipelago of detention across the region. This talk traces how a once relatively open corridor has been remade into a fragmented and intensely controlled landscape of surveillance, confinement, and expulsion through alliances between EU institutions, Balkan states, international organizations, and commercial actors.

Drawing on long-term engagement, the discussion examines what the EU’s new deportation bill will mean for the region and people crossing it, arguing that it will further entrench its role as a border guard in the EU’s evolving border regime.

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Nidžara Ahmetašević is a journalist, scholar, and activist. She is the author of “The Media as a Tool of International Intervention: House of Cards“ (Routledge) and co-author of the report Repackaging Imperialism: The EU-IOM border regime in the Balkans. She lives and works in Sarajevo.

Manja Petrovska is researcher at the University of Amsterdam and co-author of the of the study Repackaging Imperialism: The EU-IOM border regime in the Balkans.

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(Pre)Figuring Fascism is a series of talks drawing attention to the continuities between liberal governance and fascism, hoping to stimulate an understanding of fascism as it relates to colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism – rather than viewing it as a kind of shock to an otherwise well-working liberal system. Because we know: So long as the conditions for fascism’s emergence are not overcome, we are always living in proto-fascist times.