Photovoice as a Research Tool of the "Game" Along the "Balkan Route"

Abstract

Migratory pathways across the borders of South Eastern Europe have been commonly recognised within public and policy discourses as the ‘Balkan Route’ (Frontex, 2018; UNHCR, 2019). Yet those pathways do not follow one linear route across the official border checkpoints of former Yugoslav states – Serbia and Bosnia, to the European Union – Croatia and Hungary (Obradovic-Wochnik & Bird, 2019; Stojić & Vilenica, 2019). As often encountered by displaced populations, the journeys consist of perpetually moving onward and being pushed backward across diverse European towns, highways, mountains, forests, rivers, minefields, and camps, necessary to cross to reach western or northern Europe. Displaced people stranded in Serbia and Bosnia generally call their border crossing attempts the ‘game’; the term that conveys the daily mobility struggles, violence and deaths.