Sanja Milivojevic - Border Policing and Security Technologies: Mobility and Proliferation of Borders in the Western Balkans

This book is a unique and original examination of borders and bordering practices in the Western Balkans prior to, during, and after the migrant crisis of the 2010s. Based on extensive, mixed-method, exploratory research in Serbia, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, and Kosovo, the book charts technological and human interventions deployed in this region that simultaneously enable and hinder the mobility projects of border crossers.

Within the rich historical context of the Balkan Wars and subsequent displacement of many people from the region and beyond, this book discusses the types and locations of borders as well as their development, transformation, and impact on people on the move. These border crossers fall into three distinct categories: people from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia transiting the region; citizens of the Western Balkans seeking asylum and access to labour markets in the EU; and women border crossers. This book also maps border struggles that follow these processes, analyses the creation of labour reserves in the region, and examines the role that technology in particular smartphones and social media play in regulating mobility and creating social change. This volume also explores the role of the EU in, and the impact of the aforementioned processes on nation-states of the Western Balkans, their European future, and mobility in the region.

Whilst the book focusses on a particular region in Southeast Europe, its findings can be easily applied to other social contexts and settings. It will be particularly useful to academics and postgraduate students studying social sciences such as criminology, sociology, legal studies, law, international relations, political science, and gender studies. It will also be useful for legal practitioners, NGO activists, and government officials.

Sanja Milivojevic is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at La Trobe, Melbourne, Australia. Sanjas research interests are borders and mobility, security technologies, surveillance and crime, gender and victimisation, and international criminal justice and human rights. She is Associate Director of Border Criminologies at Oxford University and editorial board member for the journal Temida (Serbia). Sanja publishes in English and Serbian. Her latest book, co-authored with Marie Segrave and Sharon Pickering, is Sex Trafficking and Modern Slavery: The Absence of Evidence (Routledge 2017).

Globalizing forces have had a profound impact on the nature of contemporary criminal justice and law more generally. This is evident in the increasing salience of borders and mobility in the production of illegality and social exclusion. Routledge Studies in Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship showcases contemporary studies that connect criminological scholarship to migration studies and explore the intellectual resonances between the two. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the theoretical and methodological challenges posed by mass mobility and its control. By doing that, it charts an intellectual space and establishes a theoretical tradition within criminology to house scholars of immigration control, race, and citizenship including those who traditionally publish either in general criminological or in anthropological, sociological, refugee studies, human rights and other publications.

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Mobility and Proliferation of Borders in the Western Balkans

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/criminology/series/CJBC

First published 2019

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

2019 Sanja Milivojevic

The right of Sanja Milivojevic to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-85893-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-71763- 0 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by codeMantra

Border Policing and Security Technologies is before you against the odds. While I believed this book would see the light of day eventually, the volume in front of you is an artefact of a long, and at times a very difficult, journey, one I (somewhat hastily) commenced in early 2013. I was at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, looking for my next big adventure in the Western Balkans. At the dawn of what will later be called the European migrant crisis, it was clear to me that the time was ripe to do a project on migration regulation strategies in this part of the world. I remember thinking and hoping that, almost a decade after I left Serbia to take on academic opportunities in Australia in 2004, I would still be considered an insider when I returned to research migration and mobility in the region. I thought that my Serbian passport and prior academic credentials and connections would enable access to research sites, such as border crossings and refugee camps, and government officials and movers and shakers behind the scenes. I remember wishing that things would had changed for the better in my Northern Hemisphere home and that gatekeepers would recognise that a genuine care for this troubled region drives my research agenda. I was, and still am, as passionate about the state of affairs in the Western Balkans as I was in the mid-1990s, when I graduated from Belgrades Law School. After the war and NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 I embraced academic opportunities in New York City, and later Australia. As I commenced a PhD programme at Monash University in Melbourne in 2004, a desire to return to the region was constantly there, steering my research agenda towards this part of the world. I remained in close touch with scholars, activists, policy-makers, and professionals working in the field of borders and mobility in Serbia, Croatia, and the rest of the region. I kept contributing to the criminological literature with the Western Balkans firmly in focus, hoping it would assist my colleagues in the region in unpacking many complexities pertinent to crime, criminal justice, and victimisation in this part of the world.