Paper short abstract:

This paper compares two spaces of waiting on the Balkan Route and interrogates the ways in which waiting is negotiated by migrants subjected to it. In this context, waiting interrogates the relation between time and space as both a tool of resistance by migrants and control of their movement.

Paper long abstract:

During the summer of 2015, migrants have cut paths through the fences of Fortress Europe. These recent movements, have made the European border regime appear less impenetrable. However, the state-controlled "humanitarian corridor", which currently channels people arriving on the Greek islands all the way up to Germany plays a paradoxical role in this celebration of movement. In temporal terms, this "Balkan route" entails many long hours of waiting for both, those who are let on it and those who are refused movement. In this paper, we examine and compare two spaces of waiting that have appeared along the "Balkan route": the abandoned service station of Adaĺevci, where people wait to cross the border between Serbia and Croatia and the discarded cargo train border crossing in Eidomeni, Greece before the Macedonian/FYROM border. In December 2015, many people were unable to cross the border in Eidomeni because of governmental decisions from the corridor states to decrease the flow of migrants. We ask how times of waiting are negotiated by those who are subjected to them? How is the time of waiting imposed by the state subverted by travellers? And how is waiting employed as a tool of resistance by those refused the right to travel on? As time cannot be analyzed without reference to space (Conlon 2011) we look at how the resilience that lingers in the process of waiting (Khosravi 2014) also becomes a critical point of the politics of control of the spaces in which these processes take place.