Mobility in The Times of Closed Borders – The Fieldnotes from Serbia

In the course of the last two years, migration through the Balkan Peninsula has shaken public opinion and influenced the political scene in Europe. As the result of bilateral agreements and the European Union’s pressure on the Balkan states, the Balkan route has been closed for migrants from the Global South. This paper aims to present ethnographic material which unveils biographical narratives of people traversing Serbia after the closure of EU external borders in February 2016. Working on collected histories, I analyse the migrants’ survival strategies and deconstruct the image of a migrant as a passive aid-taker and a victim of human trafficking.