Social Boundaries at the EU Border: Engaged Ethnography and Migrant Solidarity in Bihać, Bosnia–Herzegovina

Abstract

This paper is a reflexive examination of ethnographic positionality in the Bosnian border town of Bihać as it experienced a bottleneck of migrants and refugees from outside of Europe attempting to reach prosperous EU states by traversing the Balkan Route of irregular migration. Drawing from critical border studies and the principles of engaged ethnography, I approach the relational quality of life on the border as it shapes and also produces social boundaries that must be navigated also by researchers. The paper gives an account of my own active engagement in migrant solidarity activities and chronicles how this positioning came to be seen as my aligning myself with one distinct “side” of the social boundary between those working to support migrants in the community, whether as part of the official migration management response or as autonomous solidarians, on one hand, or those advocating the containment and expulsion of migrants, or “anti-migrant” positions, on the other. I show how this positioning helped to reveal the relational quality of social boundaries created through different ways of relating to the border.