Description
Push-backs have become a key feature of EU migration controls since 2015. As this article argues, practices of push-backs stretch from EU spaces, such as Croatia, to its external borders and neighbouring countries, reaching as far as Iran. Although push-back tactics and their consequences are widely discussed in public, activist, and policy debates, as well as by people living in makeshift refugee camps; academic literature does not engage with pushbacks extensively. To address this gap, we set up the concepts of “push” and “back” to question a ripple effect of informal and violent border controls that transversely occur in different geopolitical contexts and timelines of migratory journeys. The article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in two border locations: the Croatian-Bosnian border and the Turkey Iran border. We argue that the EU’s governance of its external border encourages symmetrical practices of “push” to different locations. We show that “pushes” generate multi- layered violence enmeshed in the local militarised security contexts when people are “back”; or forcibly returned to their starting locations. The analysis of “push” and “back” contributes to literature on the EU externalisation of migration governance and border violence, which we examine through informal and violent border practices in and outside of the EU.
