Croatia in the EU Border Regime: An Analysis by the Centre for Peace Studies
In this video, Sara Kekuš, Coordinator of Protecting and Promoting the Right to Asylum and Migration programme and Lucija Mulalić, from the Supporting an Inclusive Society Programme at Centre of Peace Studies, Zagreb, speak to us about the evolution of migration control at the “external” EU border in Croatia since 2013.
In 2013, Croatia entered into the European Union and the Schengen Border system and throughout the following decade began to hold a newly marked position as “defender” of the “external” European border against people on the move entering Europe to seek asylum through the Balkan Route from the Middle East, Asia and Africa (Lucija Mulalić, 2025). In 2015, the “external” border in Croatia started out as a transit corridor to Northern Western Europe following the entry of higher numbers of refugees from Syria into Europe through the Balkan Route: the corridor moved to Croatia after Hungary constructed a fence on its border with Serbia and then on from Croatia to Slovenia where people were transferred with trains and buses to the northern border with Austria, towards Germany. From this moment onwards, Croatia became a local Balkan power “in charge of restoring the European border regime on behalf of EU core states and powers.”(Beznec and Kurnik 2020).
In 2015 and 2016, people on the move “through” Croatia were perceived as transitory, and solidarity and assistance at Croatian borders were more stable, reliable and possible. However, as the decade went on, Croatia’s main goal has become that of stopping migration into the EU, as structured acts of solidarity that facilitate it, with police-led intimidation and increasingly violent and obstructive border practices. The opened corridors and solidarity practiced within them have been gradually closed and restricted from 2016, with State Authorities in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina fortifying their border infrastructures and relying “heavily on racializing practices and the mobilization of racist sentiments in the public sphere.” (Beznec and Kurnik 2020). At an infrastructural level, borderzones are being heavily developed with fences and new technologies (e.g in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia all the countries’ development funds are conditioned by each State’s willingness to become temperate zones for migration). The “external” EU border in Croatia is also increasingly renowned for its implementation of illegal pushbacks, a core practice of the EU border regime describing “informal expulsion without (due process) of an individual or a group to another country”, as opposed to “deportation” which is conducted in a legal framework (Border Violence Monitoring Network, 2025).
At the same time, on a narrative level in public debates, people who were perceived as refugees in 2015 have increasingly transformed in public debate into narrations of illegal migrants who do not have the right to asylum (Lucija Mulalic, 2025) and the securitization discourse on people on the move seeking asylum and their association to terrorism and danger has increased, fuelling higher levels of xenophic and racist violence committed in the public space and rendering perceptions of the deeply human and rooted phenomenon of migration ever more negative.
Bibliography
Old Routes, New Perspectives. A postcolonial reading of the Balkan Route by Barbara Beznec and Andrej Kurnik (https://movements-journal.org/issues/08.balkanroute/02.beznec,kurnik--old-routes-new-perspectives.html)
This video and article was developed within the framework of Lives in Motion, a non-formal educational project created by Maghweb in partnership with CPS, WWF and Polylogos, funded by the EACEA in the CERV, strand European Remembrance. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
