Papers by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
Journal of International Relations and Development, 2023
This article examines the overlap between European Union migration controls and internal counter-... more This article examines the overlap between European Union migration controls and internal counter-terror measures in the Kurdish populated region at the Turkey-Iran border. It highlights the development of an 'externalisation creep' in the context of this overlap. We discuss how the EU's external measures aimed at people classed as 'irregular migrants and smugglers' creep into local internal border security, leading to the prioritisation, on the ground, of measures against people broadly labelled as supporting 'terrorism'. This development has resulted in the expansion of borderwork, which is associated with unexpected border control outcomes beyond those originally intended by the EU. The article draws upon an ethnographic data collection at the Turkey-Iran border, a geographical area that has seldom featured in EU-supported border controls studies. Our analysis seeks to contribute to the academic literature on externalisation by moving away from an EU-centric perspective, and instead focusing on border governance dynamics that are situated in the local histories and domestic sites of conflict, as understood by diverse border crossing survivors. This approach allows us to foreground how EU migration externalisation co-opts domestic practices in the context of borders with pre-existing forms of insecurity, and targets migrants as well as residents.
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2023
Pushbacks have become a key feature of EU migration controls since 2015. As this article argues, ... more Pushbacks have become a key feature of EU migration controls since 2015. As this article argues, practices of pushbacks stretch from EU spaces, such as Croatia, to its external borders and neighbouring countries, reaching as far as Iran. Although pushback tactics and their consequences are widely discussed in public, activist, policy debates, and by refugees, academic literature does not engage sufficiently with pushbacks and their effects. To address this gap, we set up the concepts of "push" and "back" to question the ripple effect of informal and violent border controls that occurs transversely in multiple geopolitical contexts and timelines of migratory journeys. The article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in two border locations: the Croatian border with Bosnia-Herzegovina 1 and the Turkey-Iran border. We argue that the EU's governance of its external border encourages identical practices of "push" to different locations. We show that "pushes" generate multi-layered violence enmeshed in the local security (and at times militarized) contexts when people are "back"; or forcibly returned to their starting locations. The analysis of "push" and "back" contributes to the literature on the EU externalisation of migration governance and border violence, which we examine through informal and violent border practices inside and outside of the EU.
Trends in Organized Crime, 2023
This article examines people smuggling in the Kurdish borders between Turkey and Iran, and descri... more This article examines people smuggling in the Kurdish borders between Turkey and Iran, and describes how members of local Kurdish border communities use their roles as kaçakçı (smuggler in Turkish) to navigate externalised EU border controls amid internal displacement and poverty. It draws upon ethnographic data collection between 2020 and 2022 in the Turkey-Iran border that has not been considered in studies on the EU-supported external counter-smuggling. This article specifically narrows down on corruption, an often mentioned yet understudied element of smuggling, and discusses the payment of bribes to border officials, and the creation of riskier routes to facilitate border crossing. We show how unequal access to corruption allow some people smuggling attempts to result in relatively uneventful passages while others are permeated by risks and death. While vilified by governments, corruption is also widely known and accepted as a social equalizer: as a safety valve that allows marginalized Kurds-both kaçakçı and border and security guards-to navigate precarity and survive borderland enforcement regimes. Our analysis from the perspectives of Kurds working as kaçakçı in the context of conflict and internal displacement seeks to move away from the dominant lens used in the analysis of people smuggling, which has almost solely examined it as a form of transnational organized crime and/or as an element of externalised border governance.
Migration and Torture in Today’s World, 2023
This chapter explores whether and how refugees’ past experiences of torture at home interconnect ... more This chapter explores whether and how refugees’ past experiences of torture at home interconnect with extreme violence at borders and impact migration journeys. To do so, it draws upon eight months of ethnographic fieldwork at the Bosnian-Croatian border, which includes sixty-eight interviews. The chapter suggests that racialisation and ‘othering’ of people makes torture a fluid practice that migrates across globalised borders, despite their institutional format remaining unchanged. By shedding light on complex relational patterns of torture in migration, the text contributes to the literature on torture, racial studies and critical migration and border studies.
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2021
Istanbul Policy Centre, 2021
Due to the recent political changes in Afghanistan, more people have been pushed to flee across T... more Due to the recent political changes in Afghanistan, more people have been pushed to flee across Turkey’s Eastern border with Iran. This IPC Analysis reflects on the fight against “illegal migration” in Eastern Turkey as managed by EU-Turkey cooperation and questions how this cooperation is currently evolving and impacting Afghans migrating through here. The analysis draws upon participant observations in Van between February and August 2021, interviews with sixty-five individuals (mainly Afghan refugees), and policy and media analysis.
Geopolitics, 2021
Migrants' involvement in smuggling increases alongside restricted cross-border movement and viole... more Migrants' involvement in smuggling increases alongside restricted cross-border movement and violent borders, yet this dynamic is usually examined from migrants' position as clients. In this article, we move away from migrants and smugglers as two separate roles and question migrants' aspirations to and experiences of resorting to smuggling networks as workers in the context of EU land borders, where direct violence is used daily to fight cross-border crime. By doing so, we move further the examination of fluid relations in smuggling provisions and the way they are intertwined with care and exploitation, as shaped and circumscribed by violent borders. The article illustrates the intersections between border violence and migrants' active involvement in smuggling by drawing on the case study of an anonymised Border Town and multi-site, multi-author fieldwork from Serbia and Bosnia. By questioning migrants' experiences of shifting roles from clients to service providers, and by taking into account their work in smuggling provision, we show that, in a situation of protracted vulnerability orchestrated by border violence, state and law enforcement, the categories-"migrant" and "smugglers"-can blur.
IPC–MERCATOR POLICY BRIEF, 2021
While public and political debates about EU-Turkey migration cooperation have cantered on Turkey’... more While public and political debates about EU-Turkey migration cooperation have cantered on Turkey’s western borders (i.e., its border with Greece), increasing levels of EU-Turkey migration cooperation along Turkey’s eastern border with Iran and the increasing precarity of migration journeys there have been largely ignored. This policy brief sheds light on military and technology projects at the Iran-Turkey border, which merge anti-terror and anti-migration measures and often result in illegal border deterrents against migrants (i.e. push-backs). It also discusses restricted (il)legal procedures that migrants in Eastern Turkey are subjected to, which are shaped by Turkey’s policies and the EU's support.
Antipode, 2020
This paper examines how racial violence underpins the European Union's border regime. Drawing on ... more This paper examines how racial violence underpins the European Union's border regime. Drawing on two case studies, in northern France and the Balkans, we explore how border violence manifests in divergent ways: from the direct physical violence which is routine in Croatia, to more subtle forms of violence evident in the gover-nance of migrants and refugees living informally in Calais, closer to Europe's geopolitical centre. The use of violence against people on the move sits uncomfortably with the liberal , post-racial self-image of the European Union. Drawing upon the work of postcolo-nial scholars and theories of violence, we argue that the various violent technologies used by EU states against migrants embodies the inherent logics of liberal governance, whilst also reproducing liberalism's tendency to overlook its racial limitations. By interrogating how and why border violence manifests we draw critical attention to the racia-lised ideologies within which it is predicated. This paper characterises the EU border regime as a form of "liberal violence" that seeks to elide both its violent nature and its racial underpinnings.
movements, 2020
Thousands of people on the move, travelling through the Balkan route to Europe, are caught in a c... more Thousands of people on the move, travelling through the Balkan route to Europe, are caught in a cycle of structural violence marked by repeated denials of access to asylum procedures, physical attacks from EU border authorities, and collective expulsions. Since May 2017, the grass root organization No Name Kitchen has been collecting testimonies of border abuse in informal transit camps in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. While being present along the Balkan route, we have observed an increase in the deployment of police forces and violent practices, making legal and safe transit to Europe impossible. We have received consistent reports from men, women and children, of abuses that remain either uncovered or denied, leading to a lack of real prosecution of the perpetrators and continued border violence. This research report, derived from 338 interviews with people on the move, communicates the diverse practices of violence communicated through an increasingly securitized EU border apparatus. We focus on the lived experiences of border abuses, as narrated by the people on the move, by exploring who the victims and perpetrators of this violence are. We argue that violent push-backs demonstrate a flagrant violation of international, European and national laws by EU border authorities, leading to slow destruction of lives of people searching for safety.
Thesis Chapters by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
Unpublished thesis, 2020
This thesis explores violence against migrants at the Croatian-Bosnian border, with the focus on ... more This thesis explores violence against migrants at the Croatian-Bosnian border, with the focus on migrants’ everyday sites and practices. Whilst the rich literature discusses structural violence against migrants at the EU’s borders, it omits to consider direct and concrete daily acts of violence. We also know little about violence against migrant men and violence at the latest transit spot at the Croatian-Bosnian border.
This thesis addresses this research lacunae while drawing upon eight months of participant observations in makeshift camps in Velika Kladuša (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and 68 interviews with
migrants. It questions diverse forms of violence against migrants and seeks to what degree and in which ways this violence impacts their everyday practices. In addition, it asks whether and how the
dominant assumptions about race and gender impact migrant men’s experiences of violence and how this violence is circumscribed by the historico-political context of the Bosnian-Croatian border.
The findings suggest that direct border violence against migrants – border attacks, takes place alongside more structural violence - border administrations and withdrawal of aid in makeshift camps.
Yet border violence is also at work in migrants’ everyday practices where violence is least expected; in private sites, where violence is routinised and leaves no visible marks, but has power to harm or kill.
This thesis also argues that Arab Muslim men, in this context at least, are most commonly subjected to border violence due to the dominant racialized and gendered assumptions about (migrant) men of
colour as dangerous and in need of violent interventions. Yet violence against migrants is also enforced and concealed by the Western dominant imagination of the Croatian-Bosnian border as a line between
peaceful Europe and the violent Balkans. However, migrants challenge such assumptions by their own meaning makings of this geographical location upon their experiences of solidarities and violence here.
This thesis nuances knowledge on border violence as a complex phenomenon that functions as an ongoing daily process across months or years rather than singular episodes that come and pass. By doing so, it demonstrates the importance of bringing direct but also taken-for-granted practices in research analysis of violence to develop an understanding of how violence is experienced and made meaning of by diverse people exposed to it.
Books by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
Trends in Organized Crime, 2023
This special issue of Trends in Organized Crime brings together recent empirical research on migr... more This special issue of Trends in Organized Crime brings together recent empirical research on migrant smuggling. Challenging the overemphasis on criminal networks that has long characterized mainstream discussions on smuggling, and which gained renewed traction during the pandemic, the contributions refocus our attention towards critical but underexamined dynamics present in the facilitation of irregular migration in corridors around the world. The contributors demonstrate how the excessive attention to the persona of the smuggler present in smuggling research and migration policy has led to the invisibility of the mobility efforts facilitated by other critical actors –most notably, migrants themselves. Furthermore, using intersectionality-informed approaches, the authors shed light on the roles lesser examined elements in smuggling like race, ethnicity, class, gender, sex and intimacy play in irregular migration, often becoming key determinants in the ability of a person to migrate.
In Nikielska-Sekula, K. & Desille, A. (Eds.) Visual Methodology in Migration Studies, 2021
Migratory pathways across the borders of South Eastern Europe have been commonly recognised withi... more Migratory pathways across the borders of South Eastern Europe have been commonly recognised within public and policy discourses as the "Balkan Route" (Frontex, 2018; UNHCR, 2019). Yet those pathways do not follow one linear route across the official border checkpoints of former Yugoslav states-Serbia and Bosnia, to the European Union-Croatia and Hungary (Obradovic-Wochnik & Bird, 2019; Stojić & Vilenica, 2019). As often encountered by displaced populations, the journeys consist of perpetually moving onward and being pushed backward across diverse European towns, highways, mountains, forests, rivers, minefields, and camps, necessary to cross to reach western or northern Europe. Displaced people stranded in Serbia and Bosnia generally call their border crossing attempts the "game"; the term that conveys the daily mobility struggles, violence and deaths. Although the "Balkan Route" has served as the transitory point for migration and smuggling to western and northern Europe (Ahmetašević & Mlinarević, 2019) for centuries, it reached its visibility in 2015/2016, when hundreds of thousands of displaced people walked through here while searching for protection in the EU (Cocco, 2017). However, the passage soon became entangled with the EU's political sentiments against immigration, while repeatedly picturing those seeking protection as a "security threat" (Dobreva & Radjenvic, 2018). For example, the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party called for "taking back control of the EU's borders" when releasing an anti-immigration poster "Breaking Point";
Drafts by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
This is an example of successful ESRC postdoctoral fellowship application 2021 that may help futu... more This is an example of successful ESRC postdoctoral fellowship application 2021 that may help future candidates to navigate the process of this grant scheme.
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Papers by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
Thesis Chapters by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
This thesis addresses this research lacunae while drawing upon eight months of participant observations in makeshift camps in Velika Kladuša (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and 68 interviews with
migrants. It questions diverse forms of violence against migrants and seeks to what degree and in which ways this violence impacts their everyday practices. In addition, it asks whether and how the
dominant assumptions about race and gender impact migrant men’s experiences of violence and how this violence is circumscribed by the historico-political context of the Bosnian-Croatian border.
The findings suggest that direct border violence against migrants – border attacks, takes place alongside more structural violence - border administrations and withdrawal of aid in makeshift camps.
Yet border violence is also at work in migrants’ everyday practices where violence is least expected; in private sites, where violence is routinised and leaves no visible marks, but has power to harm or kill.
This thesis also argues that Arab Muslim men, in this context at least, are most commonly subjected to border violence due to the dominant racialized and gendered assumptions about (migrant) men of
colour as dangerous and in need of violent interventions. Yet violence against migrants is also enforced and concealed by the Western dominant imagination of the Croatian-Bosnian border as a line between
peaceful Europe and the violent Balkans. However, migrants challenge such assumptions by their own meaning makings of this geographical location upon their experiences of solidarities and violence here.
This thesis nuances knowledge on border violence as a complex phenomenon that functions as an ongoing daily process across months or years rather than singular episodes that come and pass. By doing so, it demonstrates the importance of bringing direct but also taken-for-granted practices in research analysis of violence to develop an understanding of how violence is experienced and made meaning of by diverse people exposed to it.
Books by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
Drafts by Karolína Benghellab (Augustová)
This thesis addresses this research lacunae while drawing upon eight months of participant observations in makeshift camps in Velika Kladuša (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and 68 interviews with
migrants. It questions diverse forms of violence against migrants and seeks to what degree and in which ways this violence impacts their everyday practices. In addition, it asks whether and how the
dominant assumptions about race and gender impact migrant men’s experiences of violence and how this violence is circumscribed by the historico-political context of the Bosnian-Croatian border.
The findings suggest that direct border violence against migrants – border attacks, takes place alongside more structural violence - border administrations and withdrawal of aid in makeshift camps.
Yet border violence is also at work in migrants’ everyday practices where violence is least expected; in private sites, where violence is routinised and leaves no visible marks, but has power to harm or kill.
This thesis also argues that Arab Muslim men, in this context at least, are most commonly subjected to border violence due to the dominant racialized and gendered assumptions about (migrant) men of
colour as dangerous and in need of violent interventions. Yet violence against migrants is also enforced and concealed by the Western dominant imagination of the Croatian-Bosnian border as a line between
peaceful Europe and the violent Balkans. However, migrants challenge such assumptions by their own meaning makings of this geographical location upon their experiences of solidarities and violence here.
This thesis nuances knowledge on border violence as a complex phenomenon that functions as an ongoing daily process across months or years rather than singular episodes that come and pass. By doing so, it demonstrates the importance of bringing direct but also taken-for-granted practices in research analysis of violence to develop an understanding of how violence is experienced and made meaning of by diverse people exposed to it.