| dc.description.abstract | In our presentation we will discuss bordering practices during the initial COVID-
19 lockdown in Croatia and Serbia in the period from mid-March to early May
2020. These states occupy at the same time complementary and antagonistic
structural positions toward the EU: while both function as the gates of the EU,
Serbia represents an outer space, an antechamber where people are forced to stay
and Croatia is an internal space, from which the unwanted people are repelled.
The practices of bordering and imposition of mobility control were differently
framed, executed and challenged in these two contexts. Framed as potentially
detrimental were not only those with confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 but,
according to the official decrees that started to multiply in the first months of
2020, the list included anyone with the most common symptoms, anyone in
contact with someone with confirmed diagnosis, as well as those who were
considered to be in the particular risk (older persons, with chronical illnesses,
immunocompromised persons etc.). Medical reasons were not the only ones that
were taken as a basis for compartmentalization of society. The states took
extensive measures to surveil and control movement and social interactions of
different social categories, by introducing moving schedules, lockdowns,
obligatory self-isolation, allocating special sites for quarantine, etc. Drawing
from the analysis of legislation, reports, press releases, our individual
engagements, interviews and informal personal and online exchanges, we will
outline crucial othering narratives and practices which affected daily lives of
people on the move in these two states. From exaggerated visualization of the
“dangerous migrant” and incarceration in heavily guarded camps in Serbia to
invisibilized presence of people on the move and continuation of violent
pushbacks in Croatia, we will unravel the interconnectedness and mutual
stimulation of anti-pandemic discourses and practices with migration and border
policies executed at the fringes of the EU. Starting from the question for whom
the borders were closed and for whom bordering was imposed, that is, who were
the objects of the bordering strategies, this presentation approaches first responses
to corona virus and initial bordering in the name COVID-19 in Croatia and Serbia,
from the perspective of the European border regime and its self-produced
antagonist: irregular migration. In other words, we will be interested in questions
such as: what has been happening with those for whom the same borders had
already been closed before the pandemic, how did they experience borders during
initial stages of the pandemic and what does their perspective reveal about
COVID-19 related bordering? | sr |
