The Balkan Route: Keywords of the European Regime of Ir­regularized Migration at the Periphery of European Union

The present book critically approaches the current migration regime shaped by proscribed and criminalized migrant movements across borders of countries at the south-east external land borders of EU, by identifying keywords (for example Autonomy, Route, Waiting, Game, Solidarity, Sound), their various meanings, genealogies, points of overlap, and ambivalences. The proposed book is a collective work of all involved authors, col­laborators from Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia, spanning various aca­demic disciplines, united by their interest in ethnographic research on the irregularized migration regime and engaged in critical perspectives and formats. The starting point of the book is the understanding of migra­tion as a layered and fluid phenomenon, as emphasized by the use of the term “regime” in its subtitle, which in this context refers to a complex interplay of diverse practices and actors. The “periphery” is another concept found in the subtitle of the keywords which is also understood in a decentralized manner. The term irregularized (instead of “irregular” or a similar term) is used to indicate that migrations are not inherently illegal or irregular and it emphasizes that such categori­zations are constructed and produced through a series of practices and diverse processes of (ir)regularization.