Beyond Transit : Precarious Emplacement and the Wavering Reception of Migrants in the City of Zagreb

Abstract

The territory of the Republic of Croatia has historically been a place of forced and economic migration, mainly consisting of population movements between former Yugoslav states and other neighbouring European countries. Since the 2000s, these borderlands have become sites of continuous transit migration from the Middle East and Africa. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Zagreb over several periods between 2016 and 2020, this thesis seeks to understand how non-European migration and places of transit in the Balkans interrelate and transform each other. Thus, the study explores how different migrants’ trajectories meet, and how they interact with the spaces and people in Zagreb as the country prepares to enter the Schengen area of free movement, and the city is absorbed into the European border regime. The focus on ‘migrant’ and ‘non-migrant’ relations in a transit area presents a particular viewpoint on the mediated dynamics of large-scale migration into Europe. The thesis argues for a study of migration and emplacement as entangled with borders, the histories of transit localities, relations within them, affects in everyday encounters, and structures of precarity. As a contribution to the anthropology of transit migration, three interrelated concepts are formulated. First, ‘precarious emplacement’ captures the complexities of moving and staying on the European periphery by taking these (im)mobilities to be embedded in local spaces, relations and histories. Second, by highlighting the relationality of emplacement, the concept of ‘wavering reception’ is developed to depict the discourses, practices and orientations of local residents. These fluctuate between hospitality and hostility, and therefore form a complex affective landscape in the urban spaces where migration is prevalent. Third, the thesis develops the concept of ‘the Gap’ as an indeterminate and ductile space between individuals and groups. It is used as an analytic for exploring the qualitative shifts in position, perceptions and feelings that produce these vacillating relations of proximity and distance which are central to emplacement. This conceptual framework illuminates the changing dynamics of transit migration in Croatia, as well as the various processes and transformations which emerge as (im)mobilities interact with transit areas